Attack Not Like in Movies, Aissa Wayne Says

Her father, John Wayne, had confronted scores of killers and had defeated each one with tough, red-white-and-blue defiance.

But that had been in movies. The killers that his daughter Aissa faced last October were real ones, professionals who made her understand the reality of predator and prey.

Police say they are certain the two men were contract killers who were after her companion, Roger Luby, a 52-year-old real estate millionaire. Luby was going through a divorce, a bankruptcy and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a syndicate of lenders.

The men had called Luby by name as he and Wayne got out of a car at Luby’s Newport Beach estate last October. One methodically bound and beat Luby, slashed one of his Achilles tendons and tried to cut the other.

But the other man turned on Wayne, gashing her face and holding her, bound and face down, with a gun at the back of her head.

She thought he was going to pull the trigger. “I kept thinking, ‘I’m only 32, I’m only 32.’ It wasn’t fear. It was shock and disbelief.”

It was nothing like the hundreds of “hits” depicted in movies and on TV. “It was so fast, so abrupt. They knew what they were doing. It wasn’t like there was a chance to fight.”

According to Luby’s and Wayne’s account of the attack, the men were parked in a pickup in front of Luby’s walled estate on 22nd Street west of Irvine Avenue. They looked like construction workers, and since there was considerable construction going on in the neighborhood, neither Luby nor Wayne paid them any mind.

As Wayne pulled the car through the electrically operated front gate and into the open garage, the two men walked through the open gate and amiably approached Luby as he got out the passenger side.

One asked, “Are you Roger Luby?” As soon as Luby answered yes, the man drew a handgun and struck Luby in the head with it, knocking him down. The other man grabbed Wayne, bashed her forehead against the garage pavement opening a large cut, bound her hands behind her and held a gun to her head.

Both Wayne and Luby remarked later at how quietly the scene unfolded. The attackers said hardly anything. The victims were submissive, hoping it would save their lives.

“It was complete shock,” Wayne said. “When all of a sudden you turn around and there it is, there are no choices. The only thing we had to do was keep our wits about us and just hope whatever they were going to do they’d get accomplished and we could remain alive.”

She remembers the feel of the blood gushing from her wound. “It was warm. I don’t know why that shocked me.”

And she remembers that when she heard one of the men ask how to close the garage door, she thought they were going to kill both Luby and herself. “I thought, ‘They’re closing the door so no one can see.’ ”

She said it was odd that she felt no panic. Instead, she felt a strange calmness, perhaps the same that prey feels when it is in the jaws and no longer has hope.

“Maybe you would call it resignation. There’s something that takes over. Up to that time, I felt hope. Then it was just calm. I think when you’re tied up like that and can feel the gun at the back of your head, there’s just not much you can do. It keeps you sane for those last few seconds, I guess.”

She said her resignation to death lasted about 15 seconds, until Luby told her, “They’re leaving.” They had closed the garage door behind them and disappeared.

The fear came the following day, Wayne said. Despite the presence of bodyguards, police and friends, despite new security systems, “I didn’t leave the house for several days. Finally, I just forced myself. The first time getting in a car and going someplace was hard. I did it one step at a time: Go out, come back, go out a little farther, come back.” The fear decreased a little every day, she said.

Now, 14 weeks after the attack, “I’m still scared” but “I’m pretty much over being frightened every single day and looking over my shoulder and all that,” she said. “I’m not really in fear. Time really does heal.”

It has healed the gash her attacker left over her right eyebrow. The scar is invisible except to close inspection, she said.

Perhaps, she said, time also will heal her relationship with Luby, with whom she has been “very, very close” for more than a year.

“Roger’s in a different position. His children are grown. Mine are young.” (Wayne has two children--7-year-old Jennifer and 5-year-old Nicholas--from her first marriage and is undergoing a protracted and bitter court battle to gain custody of her 1-year-old daughter, Anastasia, from her second marriage.)

“You think of your kids more than yourself. You can’t put them in jeopardy. There’s somebody out there who doesn’t like either Roger or me, and probably both of us are worried that we don’t want to get in that situation again. We have to see what happens.” Now she sees Luby only “occasionally,” she said.

“When or if the police find out what happened, that can clear up a lot of things. But when there’s a mystery out there and you burn your finger in the fire, you don’t go back to the fire unless you know it’s out.”

“Emotionally, she’s scarred probably a bit more than I am,” Luby said in a separate interview. “It’s a tough one. ‘Your friends did it or my friends did it?’ It’s that kind of thing. I’d be less than candid if I said it didn’t affect our relationship.”

Luby said he, too, did not feel fear until the day after the attack. But unlike Wayne’s fear, his increased every day, making it more difficult to face the outside world, he said.

But things are on the mend, Luby said. His attacker did not entirely sever his Achilles tendon, making it easier to repair. Luby, an avid tennis player, is out of his cast now and walking confidently. Over the weekend he took his first careful swings at a tennis ball. There is still numbness of the right heel and ankle, but his surgeon predicts “at least 95% recovery,” Luby said.

He said he is no longer fearful, only watchful. An upgraded security system, a handgun and good marksmanship learned during his Air Force service make him feel reasonably secure at home, he said.

But he does not feel the need to carry a gun away from the house, he said. “First, they won’t give you a permit, and second, you may get excited and perceive danger where there isn’t any and really hurt somebody.”

Psychiatric counseling has helped a lot, he said. Yet, a distant car door closing still has an ominous sound to it, and when he comes home and finds a pickup truck parked on the street, “I mean, you watch real carefully.”

His pending divorce and his suit against a group of lenders who, he alleges, reneged on their obligations and sent him into bankruptcy have taken more of a toll on his mental health than the hit men did, he said.

But that same lawsuit should be resolved this year and restore his fortunes, he said. He will be wealthy again, “there’s no doubt in my mind.”

Soon after the attack, Luby announced that his friends had pledged a total of $100,000 as a reward for leading police to his attackers. Luby said that once his fortune is restored, he’ll pay the reward himself. He expects to spend the money, because he has confidence that police will eventually arrest whoever is responsible, he said.

But police expressed less confidence. “We don’t have anything right now,” said Newport Beach Police Sgt. Bob Oakley.

“We looked into a lot of personal stuff. We looked carefully at Aissa’s divorce and child-custody thing and the relationship (to the attack), but best we could find out, there was no relation.

“There’s such a large number of possibilities (on Luby’s side). Anybody would be upset over bankruptcy. So many possibilities, but none have panned out.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know who they were unless somebody slips up and says something.”