Man Convicted on 38 Felony Counts in 1986-87 Rape Cases : Trial: Jurors are still deliberating six additional charges stemming from attacks on nine women and a girl, 13. Most of the victims were walking or jogging at the time.
A man known to authorities as the “Impostor Rapist†because victims said he sometimes impersonated a police officer was found guilty Wednesday of 38 felonies, including sexual assault, kidnaping and assault with a deadly weapon.
Jurors still are deliberating six additional counts against Wayne Taira, 32, a former resident of Gardena and Highland Park.
The charges stemmed from a series of attacks on nine women and a 13-year-old girl that began in December, 1986, and ended four months later. Most of the victims were walking or jogging in or around Los Angeles when they were approached. Five were college students.
Taira was charged with the crimes four years ago after he was arrested in Oregon. He pleaded guilty to similar charges there before being brought to California.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John W. Ouderkirk ordered the jury to return to court Monday to resume deliberations on the remaining counts.
Ouderkirk said he wanted to record the verdicts that had been reached in case one of the jurors could not return after the Christmas holiday. The judge forbade the prosecutor, Ron Geltz, and Taira’s defense lawyer, Michael Belter, to publicly discuss the case until it is fully resolved.
Taira could be sentenced to as many as 160 years in prison on the verdicts reached so far.
During the trial, which began Nov. 30, victims described a common method of attack, saying Taira would cut them off with his car and then push them inside. One said she was riding a bicycle in Griffith Park when she was forced off the road. Another said she was standing outside her grandmother’s home in Alhambra. A third was walking to school in Los Angeles.
In his closing argument, Geltz said Taira made victims of women “merely because they were outside and alone.â€
Two of the victims said Taira told them he was a police officer. Another described how he talked into a microphone, acting like an officer, but said: “I never heard anything come back. It seemed like the end of the microphone was in the ashtray.â€
Taira, a laborer who has served prison time for sexual assault, is a native of Los Angeles. One victim testified he screamed at her that “his life was miserable. He had no happiness in his life.â€
The case took a strange twist when Taira, at the beginning of his trial, attempted to defend himself. In a rambling opening statement, he compared himself to the 17th-Century astronomer Galileo, who was punished for saying that the Earth revolved around the sun.
He cross-examined two victims, creating a tense, unsettled atmosphere in the courtroom. One, now a high school senior in Ohio, was 13 when she was abducted as she walked down a Silver Lake street.
“Did you have an opportunity to look at the suspect’s shoes?†asked Taira, dressed in a gray suit.
“You had on white tennis shoes,†the girl replied tearfully, staring straight ahead. She refused to look at him.
After she left the stand, Taira told Ouderkirk he needed an attorney.
Taira was charged with the rapes after being arrested on sexual assault charges in Oregon in September, 1987. An officer there remembered a flyer that Los Angeles authorities had sent about a serial rapist and contacted Los Angeles police.
Taira pleaded guilty in Oregon to the robbery and kidnaping of two women and was sentenced to 50 years in state prison there.
Time staff writer Penelope McMillan contributed to this report.
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