Rape Trial Witnesses Challenged

The prosecutor in an Orange County gang-rape case tried to cast doubt Thursday on the credibility of the alleged victim’s former friends, who continued to call the young woman a liar.

The teenagers testified as part of the defense team’s effort to impugn the young woman’s honesty and undercut her contention that during a summer party two years ago, three boys drugged her to unconsciousness, then videotaped themselves raping her.

“She over-exaggerated a lot, and she lied a lot,” high school senior Melissa Matsumoto said of the 18-year-old alleged victim, who is being called Jane Doe in court to protect her privacy.

Charged in the case are Gregory Scott Haidl, the 18-year-old son of Orange County Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, and Kyle Joseph Nachreiner and Keith James Spann, both 19. Each faces up to 55 years in prison if convicted of the alleged assault, in Don Haidl’s Corona del Mar home.

Prosecutors say the 21-minute videotape shows Spann and Nachreiner having sex with the girl, then 16, before Haidl joins them and helps rape her with a Snapple bottle, a pool cue and other objects. All of the teens were residents of the Rancho Cucamonga area at the time.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Hess, in questioning Matsumoto and another witness, Vanessa Obmann, tried to show that the contradictions between their testimony and Jane Doe’s could have been the result of the two witnesses’ collaboration beforehand. Matsumoto and Obmann, both seniors at Rancho Cucamonga High School, acknowledged discussing their statements with defense lawyers and each other, and reviewing a transcript of Jane Doe’s testimony, before testifying.

Although some of the details they offered during testimony had not been mentioned in investigative reports prepared by the defense, the girls said they had not fabricated their statements. For example, Matsumoto mentioned that the night before the alleged assault, when she and Jane Doe were at the Corona del Mar house, Jane Doe asked Gregory Haidl about the alcohol stocked there, specifically the creme de menthe liquor.

Jane Doe had testified last week that while alone with the boys the following night, Nachreiner gave her a mixed drink that was bluish-green and tasted like pine needles. The prosecution has suggested that the drink was drugged.

“You just happen to remember out of all the bottles the one that’s a green color?” the prosecutor asked Matsumoto. The witness said yes.

With Obmann on the stand, Hess also questioned the accuracy of her testimony and her motivation.

Obmann said that during dinner a few weeks after the incident, Jane Doe told her that Orange County district attorney officials described the date-rape drug GHB as being either bluish-green or red. That was the main reason Jane Doe believed she had been drugged, Obmann testified.

Hess then showed Obmann a copy of the report a defense investigator made after interviewing her, which contained no mention of the conversation about GHB and contained her handwritten notes in the margins.

“I’ve told them [about that conversation] several times,” Obmann testified. “It wasn’t like it was the first time I told them.”

Obmann said the report consisted only of the investigator’s paraphrasing of her statements and that it was missing many details or had recorded them inaccurately, so she added corrections in the margins.

Hess also asked Obmann if she had ever been told she could intern at the office of Haidl’s lawyer, Joseph G. Cavallo, after the trial’s end. She said no.

“Have you ever had a social relationship with Mr. Cavallo?” Hess asked. As defense lawyers objected to the question, Obmann said no.

After testifying, the alleged victim’s former friends said they didn’t consider their statements a betrayal of her.

“More than anything, we just knew it was the right thing to do, in our heart,” Matsumoto said. “These boys don’t deserve to go to jail. Our morals and our ethics came into it, because we wanted to make people know that what Jane Doe was saying isn’t the truth.”

Defense video expert Joe Micalizzi took the stand Thursday, but stopped testifying after 20 minutes when court was adjourned for the weekend.

Micalizzi said that after examining the tape and finding various faults in the footage, he concluded that “it’s not the original.

The defense contends that the tape was doctored.