Moses Takes Stand and Proclaims Innocence

Olympic gold medalist Edwin Moses said Thursday that he did not intend to have sex with a prostitute and contradicted police statements in testimony at his trial for soliciting prostitution.

Los Angeles police have testified during the trial in Los Angeles Municipal Court that Moses, 29, of Laguna Hills, initiated conversation with Susan Gonzales, a female undercover officer. She was acting as a decoy during a weekend Hollywood vice operation Jan. 13, the morning the hurdler was arrested.

Prosecutors charge that Moses, using street language, offered Gonzales $100 for two specific sex acts.

But Moses, whose defense attorneys maintain that the two-time Olympic champion is a victim of police entrapment, testified that Gonzales initiated the conversation at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Genesee Avenue.

Moses said that he pulled over on Genesee because he thought Gonzales had recognized him. He also said that he was taken by surprise when she propositioned him.

“I pulled over,” Moses said. “I didn’t think it was any big deal. She was dressed normally. She was well covered up. She didn’t look like a prostitute.

“People come up to me all the time and want to talk to me.”

Moses said he told Gonzales that he had been at some discotheques and that she asked if he wanted to have some fun.

“I said, ‘What kind of fun?’

“She mentioned the two sex acts and asked, ‘How much money do you have?’

“I said $100 bucks or so . . . but had no intention of having sex with her. I was very surprised. I said, ‘Wow, this is getting weird.’ My immediate response was to leave. . . . I was very much caught off guard.’

“She said, ‘Make a right down the corner and wait for me.’ I left the scene immediately. I had no intention of stopping.”

Moses was arrested by police 1 1/2 blocks away and later charged with soliciting an act of prostitution. If convicted of the misdemeanor offense, he faces a maximum penalty of six months in Los Angeles County Jail and a $1,000 fine.

Prosecutors, trying to prove that Moses offered Gonzales $100 for sex, had two LAPD officers corroborate Gonzales’ version of the incident.

Gonzales testified Tuesday that Moses had spoken to her first and that she had not approached the car until he waved her over.

Dep. City Atty. Michael J. Gaurino asked Moses about discrepancies between his testimony Thursday and what his contract negotiator, Gordon Baskin, a Malibu businessman, had told reporters shortly after the arrest. Baskin had said that Moses considered the conversation with the officer a joke.

Moses said Thursday that he had not considered Gonzales’ conversation a joke at the time but may have viewed it as such later.

Moses said he went to Hollywood during the early morning hours of Jan. 13 after having left a social function of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Athletes Advisory Council at a Marina del Rey disco. The group had had a three-day meeting at a hotel near the Los Angeles International Airport. Moses stayed at the hotel while attending the meeting.

Moses said he was thinking about the difficulties he had been having in trying to purchase a home and wanted to drive alone and listen to music before going to bed.

Moses said he decided to go an all-night Hollywood newsstand at which he had bought magazines in the past. He said he was looking for a magazine on track and field and for publications on aviation and foreign magazines for his wife, Myrella.

Before arriving at the newsstand, however, he said he stopped at a Hollywood disco for about an hour. Moses said he then went to the newsstand but did not buy anything.

He said he was heading back to the airport hotel but was hungry and wanted to eat first. Moses said he passed what he thought was an open restaurant on Sunset and decided to go back and eat there.

He eventually wound up on Genesee, where he encountered Gonzales, before driving east on Sunset. Moses said he was planning to return to the hotel via Santa Monica Boulevard to the San Diego Freeway after his conversation with the officer when he was apprehended, driving southbound on Spaulding Street.

Before resting its case Thursday, the defense called three character witnesses--former Olympic swimming champion John Naber, former Olympic rower Anita DeFrantz and Charles S. Brown, the pastor of Moses’ boyhood church in Dayton, Ohio.

DeFrantz, formerly a vice president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, was cross-examined by Gaurino, who asked:

“Do you actually feel some people are so very good, so wholesome that they’re incapable of committing a crime, big or small?”

DeFrantz replied: “If there is such a thing as perfection, then Edwin certainly is.”

Moses, who has won 109 consecutive races in the 400-meter hurdles, won gold medals in the 1976 and 1984 Olympics.