2 Men Arrested in a Yearlong Series of Rapes at Acton Ranch

Two men were arrested on suspicion of committing a yearlong string of sexual assaults by abducting women from San Fernando Valley streets at gunpoint and raping them at a remote ranch, Los Angeles police said Wednesday.

Police said Theodore Conyers, 26, of Acton and Paul McDaniels, 23, of Canyon Country raped girls and women ranging in age from 12 to 31 in the guest house of a ranch in Acton, northeast of Santa Clarita, owned by a relative of Conyers.

Detective Dave Dempsey declined to say how many women police think were raped. One of the two men has confessed to a string of such assaults, but thus far detectives have been able to identify only some of the victims, police said.

Dempsey said he hoped other victims would come forward.

Both men were expected to be arraigned on rape and kidnaping charges in Van Nuys Municipal Court today. Dempsey said more counts could be filed if other rape victims identify the men as their assailants.

The pair allegedly forced lone women into a pickup truck--sometimes a white truck, sometimes blue--with a gun, or sometimes by pretending they had a gun. The women were blindfolded and taken to the ranch where Conyers lived, police said.

One of the victims told police that during the trip, her kidnapers repeatedly referred to the beach. But she managed to see a freeway sign indicating that she was actually in the Santa Clarita Valley, police said.

Some of the women were kept at the house for several hours, others overnight, Dempsey said.

After the rapes, the women were returned to the San Fernando Valley and dropped off in the area where they were picked up. Most of the women were abducted from the Van Nuys area, but at least one was taken from the northwest Valley, Dempsey said.

The most recent attack occurred last week, Dempsey said, but this time one of the men threatened to kill the victim. Dempsey said that led to a major break in the case, but he declined to elaborate.

Neither Conyers, who was unemployed, nor McDaniels, a construction worker, has a prior record of sexual assaults, Dempsey said.

The two men were arrested without incident Tuesday evening at their residences, police said.