Man Faces Trial in Kidnaping, Attack on Judge

A Tarzana man Thursday was ordered to stand trial on charges of kidnaping and assault with intent to commit rape.

The victim is a Van Nuys Municipal Court judge who, coincidentally, had sentenced her alleged attacker in another case four years earlier. Investigators believe there is no connection between the current case and the previous one.

The man, Stephen Andrew Weible, 26, will be arraigned May 2 in Los Angeles Superior Court.

During a two-day preliminary hearing, Judge Leslie Ann Dunn, 36, her voice cracking with emotion, identified Weible as the man who abducted her while she was jogging Jan. 4. Dunn said the man told her he was going to kill her, then tried to rape her.

“I’ll never forget his face,” Dunn said.

Weible, a car salesman from Tarzana, stared back without expression as Dunn referred to him at the hearing.

It was the second time the two had faced each other in court. Dunn sentenced Weible four years ago after he was charged with attempted rape. Prosecutors in that case agreed to a plea bargain that reduced the charge to a misdemeanor.

In the Los Angeles Municipal Court hearing before Judge Alan E. Ellis, Dunn said she did not recognize Weible from that occasion.

In the hearing, Dunn described the assault about 7 a.m. as she was jogging on Wells Drive in the hills above her Tarzana home.

She said a man in a “Camaro-type” vehicle pulled up beside her and asked for directions. Dunn said she ignored the man. The driver drove ahead, she said, stopped, got out of his car and lunged toward Dunn.

“He didn’t say anything, he just grabbed me by my arms and wrist,” she said. “I screamed and tried to pull back, to kick or strike him. I then fell on my knees, and he dragged me on my knees.”

Dunn said the man threw her through the driver’s door into the passenger seat.

Dunn testified that she told the man she would give him money if he let her go. “And I also said, ‘I’m a judge,’ ” she said. But the man only said in a thick accent, which sounded Middle Eastern or European, “I’m going to kill you,” she testified.

The man drove to the service entrance of Collier Street Elementary School, where he continued to fight with Dunn, she said. Dunn managed to get out of the car and tried to escape, she said, but the attacker followed Dunn, grabbed her hair and hit her head against a brick wall.

He then ran to his car, Dunn said, and drove away.

Dunn said she saw the attacker about two weeks later, on Jan. 16, driving along Ventura Boulevard in a late-model Camaro. She did not get a license number, but the bailiff in her courtroom, Deputy County Marshal Jerry Kearns, staked out the area the next night and saw a car fitting the description supplied by Dunn. Kearns gave a license number to police, who linked Weible to the attack on Dunn, police said.

Defense attorney Barry Levin challenged her testimony. Levin said Dunn had described her attacker as having a thick accent and a scar along his left cheek. Weible has no accent or visible scars, Levin said.