Prostitute Rape Charge Refiled : Trial Ordered for Suspect as Alleged Kidnap Victim Reappears

With the reappearance and testimony of his alleged victim, a 41-year-old Burbank man has for the second time been ordered to stand trial on charges that he kidnaped and repeatedly raped a Hollywood prostitute at gunpoint.

The case against Paul David Sanchez was considered unusual from the start because he was first charged for the sexual kidnaping of a woman who had not filed a complaint and whose identity was unknown at the time. The ruling was made on the basis of eyewitnesses who said they saw the woman try to escape from Sanchez’s van.

It took police several months to locate the woman, but she disappeared again and the charges were dropped in January.

However, the 23-year-old woman has been found once more, and she took the stand this week at a preliminary hearing in Pasadena Municipal Court. As a result, Judge Victor H. Person on Tuesday ordered Sanchez to stand trial and set bail at $50,000.

The woman testified that Sanchez picked her up in his van in Hollywood on July 14, 1985, and that she agreed to have sexual intercourse with him for $30 to purchase drugs. After the initial intercourse, she said, Sanchez took her to a house in Burbank where she purchased heroin and used it.

Shortly afterward, she testified, Sanchez pulled out a gun, placed electrical tape over her eyes, handcuffed her wrists together and raped her several times. During the night, Sanchez took her to the home of one of his friends and forced her to have sexual intercourse with the friend, she testified. She said the man paid Sanchez for her services. Sanchez then kept her in the van 10 to 12 more hours and raped her several times more, she testified.

Another witness testified that, on July 15, 1985, he saw a woman, shackled at her feet, trying to escape from a Volkswagen van that was parked near a factory on San Fernando Road in Glendale where Sanchez worked.

John T. Wheelock, a foreman at Transo Envelope Co., said he saw a woman nude from the waist down, with her feet shackled, jump out of the van and scream for help. She was then grabbed by a man in a green uniform and taken back into the van, he said.

In an earlier hearing, Sanchez admitted pushing the woman back into the van and driving her to Griffith Park, where he said he dropped her off. He said she was a prostitute whom he had picked up and was helping through the trauma of drug withdrawal.

She was later found after her friend read a newspaper article about the case and told the district attorney’s office that the woman was a patient at a drug rehabilitation program at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

After the hearing Tuesday, Sanchez’s attorney, Benson N. Redding, said he will attempt to have bail reduced, pointing out that Sanchez recently posted $50,000 bail in a similar case in which he allegedly kidnapped and raped a 26-year-old Hollywood-based prostitute on July 5, 1985.

Police said that prostitute escaped, naked and handcuffed, by running from his van in Glendale. She, too, has testified against Sanchez.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Tamia Hope said after the hearing that she will attempt to consolidate the two cases at Sanchez’s arraignment Aug. 20.