I think I'll send an e-mail to America's Most Wanted. This SOB needs to be brought to justice. Hopefully, John Walsh will do a feature on this creep.
Posted on 01/07/2003 2:15:58 PM PST by Liz
Police in California are hunting an heir to the multi-million dollar Max Factor cosmetics fortune.
Andrew Luster, who faces 87 charges relating to date rape, has disappeared in the middle of his trial.
The 39-year-old has been declared a fugitive after he jumped his million-dollar bail over the weekend.
Ventura County District Attorney Gregory Totten said in a written statement that police suspected Mr Luster had fled after he failed to check in with a probation officer on Friday night, as required under the terms of his house arrest.
A search revealed he had disappeared from his beachfront home along with his dog, his car and many of his personal possessions, Mr Totten added.
Mr Luster faces multiple rape charges and stands accused of drugging his victims and then videotaping his assaults.
His lawyer, Roger Jon Diamond, told the Los Angeles Times newspaper that he did not believe his client would run away.
He said he feared he may have been in a car accident.
"Flight is inconsistent with everything I know about him," Mr Diamond said of the make-up heir.
Bail was initially set at $10m after prosecutors argued that Mr Luster might flee.
It was later reduced to $1m, which was deposited by Mr Luster and his mother.
'Unconscious women'
The great grandson of Max Factor, Mr Luster was arrested after a woman he met went to the police alleging he had spiked her drink with the so-called "date rape" drug, Gamma-Hydroxybutyrate (GHB).
When detectives raided his home, they say they found 17 videotapes or Mr Luster having sex with apparently unconscious women, many of whom have yet to be identified.
Detectives were reportedly investigating whether he could have been part of an international ring of playboy millionaires said to be known as the Bachelors, who trade film of their date rape attacks over the internet.
Several years ago a British woman claimed that she had fallen victim to such a gang, telling police she had been raped in a London hotel after GHB was slipped into her drink.
Mr Luster has consistently denied the charges against him, claiming the women on the videotapes were engaged in consensual sex.
He had been under house arrest for the last two years pending his trial.
The judge has now decided the trial will continue without him and, if found guilty, Mr Luster faces life imprisonment.
Yeah, sure He took his valuables and his dog and had an "accident."
"Who wants to marry a millionaire rapist on the run?"
"Flight is inconsistent with everything I know about him," Mr Diamond said of the make-up heir.
A serial rapist is too morally upright to split?
Yea right .. this lawyers is too sharp is he??
In California? Not a chance. Kenneth Parnell, who kidnapped and raped a 7-year-old boy and has multiple child rape convictions, only served 5 years before his release. But Mr Luster won't serve time at all. As we speak, the French are hand-feeding him their best brie while he guzzles champagne in the "planetary enzyme's" cottage.
I think the lawyer meant to say "truck," semi-truck. He fears Andy lost control of his Ryder semi-truck, full of all his household goods, while speeding South toward the border at 90 mph. Why, the poor boy could be lying out there somewhere on I-5 in Los Angeles this very minute, trapped in the wreckage and unnoticed by passersby.
Good flick.
You would think that the public should have an idea what this scumbag looks like.
LOL. But at least the "planetary enzyme" is performing lifetime services for Big Bubba and the boys at SCI Graterford.
Any competent criminal defense attorney will get his money on the front end. Win or lose, defendants won't pay after the trial is over.
Nuthin gets by the keen eye of the law, duz it?
And bounty hunters are granted under the law infinitely more flexibility than that afforded to LEOs. For example, such niceties as extradiction proceedings, the Fourth Amendment, etc. do not apply to a private contract between a bondsman and an arrestee and/or guarantor.
I have a good California-based friend who is a major figure in the trade (and trained me) who probably got the arrest order. $100K - $200K (+)is not bad for a few days' -- or weeks' -- work. Hope he remembers me if the skip decides to see the sights in DC...
I think I'll send an e-mail to America's Most Wanted. This SOB needs to be brought to justice. Hopefully, John Walsh will do a feature on this creep.
Maybe in the Max Factor Annual Report?
So9
Are you sure that isn't Sen. John Breaux (dem.)?
So9
In light of the fact that this guy is wanted on 87 date rape charges, Diamond's character endorsement means a heck of a lot here.
Some roguish recovery agents have returned a skip to the custody of a sheriff while telling a tale of finding said fugitive "wandering aimlessly in the desert just north of the (Mexican) border."
Such is quite illegal and will cause the perpetrator thereof to be removed from the roster of a very efficient and powerful network of bondsmen and recovery agents worldwide. In any event, it is always wise for a private operator to obtain a UFAP (Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution) letter from the appropriate DA or U.S. Attorney (they usually are quite helpful in this regard) in order to avoid major border hassles in bringing a bail jumper back into the good old USA.....
True, but this isn't about sex. It's essentially rape. Rape is about ego, domination, power and control. Sex is just the vehicle.
Rich men also get bored.
Strange? Friend in the theatre has heard of it happening in those circles. Sexual appetites get jaded from the easy availability of partners. Perversion takes over.
Rich men don't lack for partners. Draw your own conclusions.
Did you know it is QUITE common for gold diggers and scam-hookers (black mailers) to make up such stories, just to extract cash. Or vengeance when the "mark" does not pay.If they can gather enough "sob stories" and fellow scammers, to fabricate enough "testimony" the circumstantial evidence can be overwhelming... especially if the guy does not pay... and organized CRIME is involved.
Organized crime does still run prostitution rings and extortion scams through the lega system.. you knew that right? When BIG money is involved of rich folks, the 'scam" should always be your first "suspicion". I think that goes double in LA...
I guarantee you there is an investigation of this angle going on... as we speak on other levels of law enforcement.
If this guy split the juridiction, I suspect that will end up being the story. It is, so they say, cheaper to run than stay and face the "fix" in a dubious local legal system, like the one that gave us the phony OJ trial.
Rich guys can live in LOTSA places, besides the USA, or even California. I would bet this DA is looking over his shoulder on this one. Big Brother might just be watching for any untoward contacts with interested parties.
We shall see won't we? It should prove very interesting indeed.
Link Here Nightmare on Mussel Shoals
The police photo of Andrew Luster. Andrew Luster is an heir to the Max Factor millions - and, say police, a man obsessed with drugging and raping young women. William Langley reports from California.
In a low, wooden beach house with spray-flecked windows and rickety floors, Andrew Luster, born into the Max Factor cosmetics fortune, an ace surfer and alleged sex fiend, is pondering the prospect of life beyond the breakers.
Mussel Shoals, a discreet and exclusive coastal "colony" 80 kilometres north of Los Angeles, is a place of beautiful bodies and high-gloss lifestyles, but 37-year-old Luster, great-grandson of the Polish-born Hollywood make-up legend, looks terrible. His face is grey and drawn and his dark hair raked back in a thick, greasy slick. "This is like a bad dream," he says. "A sick, crazy nightmare. It's unbelievable."
Luster is awaiting trial on 88 charges relating to the alleged drugging, raping and videotaping of young women. The case - dense with lurid detail and mutual rancour - has scandalised the glamorous but conservative community where Luster has lived quietly for almost 20 years.
After his arrest last year police seized a number of home-made videos from the beach house. Three of the women featured in them have been identified, but police say there are at least 10 more they have been unable to trace.
In a dramatic preliminary hearing last month, prosecutor John Blair portrayed Luster as a ruthless and accomplished "date rapist" with a predilection for having sex with unconscious women. To make the point he screened Luster's videos for the court. "We have almost 60 minutes of images on videotape of this defendant engaging in serious sexual assaults," says Blair.
The prosecution says Luster - playing on his wealth and family connections - would meet girls in bars or nightclubs, then lure them to Mussel Shoals, where he would lace their drinks with gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), a drug sometimes known as liquid ecstasy or simply Liquid.
Odourless and colourless, GHB was originally developed as an anaesthetic in the 1960s, and became popular as a diet supplement in the '80s. Its sale was banned in the US in 1990 after it was found to cause dizziness and fainting. Australia banned importation of the drug in 1996 and it is prohibited in several States, including NSW and Queensland.
One of the seized tapes - inscribed "shawna ghb-ing" - shows an attractive young woman stretched out motionless on a bed. Luster, sporting a hungry grin and a twinkle in his eyes, turns to the camera and says: "This is what I dream about. A beautiful strawberry blonde, passed out on my bed, waiting for me to do with her what I will." Luster is then seen undressing the girl and having sex with her. She remains silent and appears to be unconscious throughout.
Damning material, as Luster ruefully admits. But not, in his view, the whole story. "If these were rapes," he says, "do you think - does anyone think - I'd be crazy enough to leave the evidence lying around the house? Not even hidden away but right there on my bookshelves? Everything you can see on those tapes is consensual. The case is a set-up."
Luster was arrested on July 18 last year after a 21-year-old woman went to the police alleging that she had been drugged and raped at his home two days earlier. She was identified from the tapes - as, in the course of the investigation that followed, was Shawna and another woman called Tonja. All three are prosecution witnesses.
More than a year after his arrest, Luster, who has no previous criminal convictions, still appears to be in deep shock. "I'm just a beach guy," he says over the sound of the waves slopping near his doorstep. "I've lived here 18 years. The only trouble I've ever had is when my dog got loose and started a fight."
The beach and the surf are forbidden to Luster now. Under the terms of his $1million bail, he must wear an electronic tag and not leave the precincts of his property. Not even to go shopping.
The story of his fall from surfer heaven is complex and troubling. It began last year during a night out in Santa Barbara, the chic seaside town 24 kilometres up the coast from Mussel Shoals. At about nine on the evening of July 15, Luster and a friend, Michael King, drove into town in Luster's white Toyota Supra. They headed, as they usually did, for State Street, the centre of Santa Barbara's vibrant nightlife.
Young people come from everywhere on Saturday nights to join in the bar and club scene on State Street. One of them on that July evening was a 21-year-old student, who can only be identified as Carey, at the University of California's Santa Barbara campus. Carey lived in a small apartment in nearby Isla Vista. She didn't have a regular boyfriend, but had made arrangements to go into town with an older graduate student we shall call David. He came from a wealthy Catholic family, and would later say that the fear of exposing his parents to scandal explained the disturbing inconsistencies that would duly appear in his evidence.
Before leaving her home, Carey drank two bottles of Fat Weasel beer - a "boutique brew" with an alcohol content of 7 per cent. She and David first went to Woodstock's, a bar-and-grill in Isla Vista, where they drank Long Island iced tea - a mix of vodka, dark rum, gin and triple sec. At about 10.30pm they boarded a bus to State Street, hit a few more bars and at about 1am reached O'Malley's, a dance and drinks joint where Luster and King were sitting at the bar.
The four fell into casual conversation. There was some dancing, more talking and finally an agreement to move on to the Spearmint Rhino - an expensive strip club just behind State Street. But when the party arrived, a little after 1.30am, they were turned away. The club's head of security, Sergei Onishenko, a tough, crop-haired Russian immigrant, can recall the incident clearly: "The girl was everywhere, wasted," he says. "We don't have a problem with women coming to the club. But we have a strict door policy. No-one comes inside intoxicated."
So the foursome squeezed into the Toyota and headed south to Luster's house. Luster drove with King sitting next to him. It is only a 15-minute run from Santa Barbara to Mussel Shoals. David and Carey used the time to have sex on the back seat. When questioned by the police later, David at first denied that any such activity took place. He later admitted that it had, saying he had lied to spare his parents embarrassment.
All was quiet when they reached Mussel Shoals. The colony is no more than a disparate cluster of pastel-painted homes squeezed between the beach and the only street. There is an inn at one end and a jetty at the other. The backyards of the houses are full of surfboards and dinghies. The breakers arrive non-stop from Hawaii. Luster parked the car and the four got out, whereupon - according to statements made to police - Carey peeled off her dress and wearing only knickers skipped down the street to the jetty and plunged into the sea. Luster and King helped her out and the party went into the house.
Everyone involved is in reasonably close agreement as to the events of the evening thus far. Luster and Carey furthermore acknowledge that once inside the house they had sex in the shower. He says it was consensual. She says it wasn't. After this the participants' accounts of what happened diverge ever further. David appears to have crashed out on a sofa. He can remember little. Luster says that he and Carey went to his bedroom where they found King, dressed in nothing but a green mint-flavoured condom, waiting for them. King - who has not been charged - says that he also then had sex with Carey. Luster confirms this. Carey denies it. She says that once in the bedroom Luster offered her a tall peach-coloured drink. She asked him what it was and he told her "Liquid X". After drinking it, she says, she felt a tingling in her spine and "something like a hot wave" rushing through her body.
The next thing she remembers is waking up in bed with Luster at her side. She felt weak and could not fully open her eyes. At some stage during the night's proceedings she had been videoed, although she claims to have no recollection of it. They had sex again - twice - even though she didn't want it. After they had all risen, Luster drove Carey and David back to Santa Barbara. Two days later she went to the police. "I felt violated," she told the preliminary hearing. "I felt humiliated. I couldn't believe he had done this to me."
Date-rape allegations - as prosecutors know and the record clearly shows - are extraordinarily difficult to prove. It is in the nature of such cases that the plaintiff and defendant have - up to the point of the alleged rape - enjoyed a measure of contact and often an advanced degree of familiarity.
The problem is how to prove that while the "date" was by agreement the sex was not. But there is one crucial difference in the Luster case. "We have the videos," says Blair. "We can actually see these crimes taking place. As far as I know, this has never happened before."
Sensitive to allegations by Luster's defence team that the prosecution has been deliberately playing to the media, Blair is reluctant to discuss it in any detail. "But I think we have a strong case," he says. "The idea that this man has been just picked out to be made an example of is ridiculous."
At the hearing, Luster's lawyer, Joel Isaacson, argued for the case to be dismissed. He says that all three women's complaints were motivated by malice and embarrassment at their own behaviour. Anyway, he contended, only one of them - Shawna, the "strawberry blonde" - was in a state of "questionable" consciousness.
An epic battle is now in prospect. The case is shaping up to be the biggest, most heavily publicised and lurid date-rape trial since the failed 1991 prosecution of William Kennedy Smith in Palm Beach, Florida. "I wouldn't want to call it," a seasoned California rape trial lawyer tells me. "The tapes are devastating. But the guy's got a good name and a lot of money. Who knows? There's some weird stuff in there."
In the "golden age" of Hollywood, Factor became synonymous with the creative application of make-up (he invented both lip-gloss and false eyelashes), and, on the strength of his fame, built a powerful commercial empire. The son of a rabbi, Factor was born in 1877 in Ldz, Poland. He trained as a pharmacist, but in his early 20s moved to Moscow where he worked first as a wigmaker, then as a costume and make-up consultant to the Russian Imperial Grand Opera. In 1904 he travelled to the World's Fair in St Louis, Missouri, intending to exhibit the range of emollients, rouges and fragrances he had created. He never returned. Factor had spotted the emergence of the movie industry and understood the huge opportunities it represented. In the mid-1920s he launched his first mass-market cosmetics range, promising that any girl "could look like a movie star".
In 1973 Factor's son, Max jnr, sold the business for $US480 million - equivalent to more than $US2billion ($3.9billion) today - and it was bought by Procter & Gamble, the giant American household products group, in 1991. Elizabeth, who now maintains a house in Beverly Hills and a ranch in the Sonoma wine country, received a substantial part of the proceeds.
The younger of the Lusters' two children, Andrew was privately educated at the Windward School in Santa Monica - a much-favoured destination for the offspring of ambitious showbusiness parents. He wasn't a brilliant student, but shone at sports, especially surfing and skiing. His good looks, physique and laid-back demeanour won him early and lasting popularity with women. A Windward contemporary, who refused to be named, says: "What I most remember of him was this terrific confidence. He was full of daring, and it came, I think, from his talent for sports. He didn't believe there was a wave he could ever fall off. There wasn't a mountain he couldn't come down. When I read about what had happened to him, I thought, 'Uh-oh - maybe Drew just found the wrong wave'."
At 18, using money left to him in a trust fund - about $US150,000, Luster says when pressed - he bought his single-storey house in Mussel Shoals. Some reports have depicted it as a palace, but it is far from that. The rough-hewn walls are hung with surfer pictures and maritime bric-à-brac. The furnishings are comfortable but threadbare. Property tax records filed with the Ventura County authorities valued it at $US800,000.
For several years Luster shared the house with Valeri Balderama, a girlfriend with whom he had two children. When the relationship broke up five years ago, Elizabeth Luster bought Balderama and the children a house down the coast in Pacific Palisades. Luster has not been allowed to see them since his arrest.
He has never had a proper job. Indeed, his finances are among the many murky aspects of the case. In opposing his bail application, prosecutor John Blair claimed that Luster could be worth $US30million, but Luster says this estimate is "insane" and just another attempt by the prosecution to fish for headlines.
Insofar as he does anything for a living, he "day-trades" on the Internet, buying shares and quickly selling them again in the hope of making a quick profit, claiming he makes an average of $US60,000 to $US70,000 a year.
The Telegraph, London
When detectives raided his home, they say they found 17 videotapes or Mr Luster having sex with apparently unconscious women, many of whom have yet to be identified.
You have a really big chip on your shoulder regarding women. All women are not gold diggers. All rich men are not angelic victims. I hope you don't have children.
Howard Beale, the first person in the history of television to be killed for bad ratings.
Authorities Locate Dog Of Max Factor Heir
I haven't followed this story. This guy could be in Brazil by now.
France. Yep, good thought.
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