Transient, Serving Time in Texas, Gets 20 Years for Sex Assaults in L.A.

A transient who twice forced women in aerobics classes to disrobe at gunpoint was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison for a series of assaults in the Los Angeles area.

San Fernando Superior Court Judge Robert D. Fratianne ordered William Dixon Steen, 37, to serve the time concurrent with a 45-year sentence he is serving in Texas for sexually assaulting a woman in Houston. Steen fled to Texas after he escaped from a court holding cell in Van Nuys in January, 1984.

Steen, who originally was arraigned under the alias Sidney Alvin Goodyear, pleaded guilty last month to committing 10 sexual assaults and robberies in the San Fernando Valley, West Los Angeles and Marina del Rey during October and November, 1982, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth Barshop said.

The 36 felony counts against Steen, who appeared in court wearing leg shackles, included 18 counts of assault with a deadly weapon, four counts of attempted sodomy, four counts of attempted rape and charges of attempted rape with a foreign object, indecent exposure, false imprisonment, burglary and child molestation.

Two of the incidents took place in November, 1982, in the California State University, Northridge, physical education building. In one attack, Steen brandished a handgun, forced five women in an exercise class to disrobe and then exposed himself to them, police said. Ten days later, Steen assaulted a woman in a locker room of the same building, police said.

Shortly after those incidents, Steen held 14 women in an exercise class at a Marina del Rey health spa at gunpoint, forcing them to disrobe and then sexually assaulting several of them.

During the series of crimes, Steen also used a gun to force two women who had been playing tennis at Taft High School in Woodland Hills to disrobe in front of him, Barshop said. Steen also sexually assaulted a clerk at a bathing-suit store in Woodland Hills.

Steen also pleaded guilty to an attempted robbery, exposing himself to schoolchildren in West Los Angeles, assaulting a clerk at a beauty-supply store in Marina del Rey and sexually assaulting two women and a girl in separate incidents at residences in West Los Angeles and Marina del Rey, Barshop said.

Steen was arrested in December, 1982, while working as a teacher at a Lake Arrowhead church camp after an informant notified the FBI that Steen was wanted in other states for flight to avoid prosecution for sex crimes.

After he is returned to Texas, Steen could be extradited for prosecution in Kansas, Georgia and Missouri, where he is wanted on numerous felony sex charges, Barshop said.

A probation report showed that Steen’s arrest record for indecent exposure and sexual assault dates from 1968, including more than a dozen arrests in four states. The report said that a psychiatrist determined in 1983 that Steen “is dangerous, seriously disturbed and the prognosis for a normal existence is low.”

‘Sick Man’

“I don’t believe there can be any rehabilitation for Mr. Steen,” Barshop said before the sentencing. “He is a sick, sick man. He needs to be incarcerated for as long as humanly possible so the public can be protected.”

Fratianne sentenced Steen to the maximum term allowed under a plea bargain arranged with authorities in Los Angeles and Texas. Steen could have been sentenced to as much as 35 years in prison for the charges, but received the 20-year term in return for agreeing not to fight extradition.

Although the probation report said that Texas law makes Steen eligible for parole in about 15 years, Barshop said Texas officials have indicated that Steen will serve the full 45 years.