Jury Views Videos of Alleged Rapes

Millionaire date-rape suspect Andrew Luster did not use a gun or a knife to prey on young women, but a potent drug that knocked out his victims and erased any memory of sexual assaults he gleefully captured on a hidden camera, a prosecutor said Monday.

Those homemade movies, scenes of which were shown during opening statements in Luster’s trial, are now prosecution evidence to prove the 39-year-old surfer drugged and raped three women at his Mussel Shoals beach home.

“He did this so he could rob them of their memories and violate them over and over again,” Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox said, as she projected grainy pictures of two naked and unconscious women onto a courtroom wall.

Defense attorneys, who did not give an opening statement Monday, maintain the women were pretending to be asleep while acting in pornographic movies Luster hoped to sell.

They say Luster engaged in consensual sex with the alleged victims, who have been described as embarrassed party girls lying about the sexual encounters.

Luster, a great-grandson to legendary cosmetics magnate Max Factor, is charged with 87 criminal counts stemming from alleged assaults on three women during a four-year span.

He faces a possible life prison sentence if convicted of rape, sodomy, sexual battery, drug possession and poisoning.

Fox told the seven-woman, five-man jury the case is unusual because many of those crimes were captured on videotape and will be seen in graphic detail.

Although the victims will testify, Fox said, two have no memory of the 1996 and 1997 videotaped encounters and the third, identified as Carey Doe, has only a spotty memory of her alleged assault by Luster in July 2000.

It was Carey’s report to law enforcement that led to Luster’s arrest two years ago.

A 21-year-old UC Santa Barbara student, Carey told police that she met Luster while partying at a downtown Santa Barbara bar, then went back to his beach house where Luster allegedly drugged and raped her.

Carey’s report led to a search of Luster’s home, where detectives seized numerous homemade movies that depict him raping the two videotaped women and others who have not been identified, Fox said.

Criminal charges were filed on behalf of Carey and the two women, Shawna and Tonya, after they identified themselves as the women on the tapes.

On the tapes, the two women can be heard snoring and having trouble breathing while Luster appears to assault them and makes remarks to the camera, Fox said.

On one tape, Fox said, Luster can be heard saying that his perfect dream is “a strawberry blond passed out on my bed ... ready for anything.” The blond is 17-year-old Shawna, naked and comatose, the prosecutor said.

“She is blacked out cold, she is not playacting,” Fox said.

On another tape, the second groggy woman winces in pain as the defendant sodomizes her, Fox said.

She urged jurors to watch the women’s faces when the tapes are played in court to determine for themselves whether they were pretending to be asleep.

In addition to the tapes and women’s statements, jurors will hear from an expert on the date-rape drug gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, which prosecutors contend was Luster’s “weapon of choice” to incapacitate women.

The clear, salty-tasting liquid, which can be produced from a powerful drain cleaner, is commonly used by rapists, Fox said, because it quickly renders victims unconscious and leaves them with no memory of what occurred.

In the prosecution case, jurors will also hear a telephone “cool call,” set up by detectives between Carey Doe and Luster, in which he admits giving her Liquid X, or GHB, Fox said.

Jurors will then see a videotape of Luster’s July 18, 2000, interview with Ventura County sheriff’s detectives in which he denies giving Carey drugs, then admits to mutual GHB use after being confronted about the earlier call.

“The evidence will show that Mr. Luster knew exactly what the significance of the GHB was,” Fox said.

She also noted that during the police interview Luster described himself as a wealthy real estate investor and stock trader -- but never as a porn producer, as the defense now insists.

Before the prosecutor’s opening statement, defense attorney Roger Jon Diamond filed a flurry of last-minute motions and asked Superior Court Judge Ken Riley to postpone the trial to give the defense time to investigate new evidence of police and prosecutor misconduct.

“We cannot make an opening statement without this information,” Diamond said, holding up large poster boards of investigative reports, which he contend warrant further scrutiny. But Riley refused to postpone the trial.

For months, the defense has accused prosecutors of concealing acts of police misconduct, and specifically accused a sheriff’s detective of coaching an alleged rape victim to lie.

They also argue the detective altered a tape-recording of an interview.

But in a series of pretrial rulings, Riley found no evidence of misconduct and barred defense counsel from making any references of police wrongdoing in opening statements.

Last week the judge struck another blow to the defense case by denying Diamond’s request to play other videotapes which allegedly depict Luster and Tonya Doe engaging in consensual sex before the camera.

Diamond renewed his request in court papers Monday, arguing that “Tonya enthusiastically participated in fetish films with the defendant.”

Riley told Diamond that he could renew his request to play the “fetish” tape at the conclusion of the prosecution’s case.

But in an unusual move late Monday, Diamond requested an open-court prescreening of his opening statement, outside the jury’s presence, to ensure that his remarks are consistent with the judge’s prior rulings.

After a wild exchange of pleas and accusations -- including Deputy Dist. Atty. Anthony Wold charging Diamond with grandstanding before reporters in violation of a gag order -- Riley agree to a closed-court review of the defense opening remarks, which may be presented today.