Trial Opens in Rape, Robbery Case

He looked innocent enough when he knocked on South Bay doors and gave residents a friendly wave and a smile.

Twice, the neatly dressed man handed the women who answered their doors a small bottle and asked to analyze a sample of their tap water. Another time, he said he was selling insurance.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Julie Sulman told Torrance Superior Court jurors Thursday that Steven Thomas Jones, 27, was not at all what he claimed to be.

During her opening argument at Jones’ trial on 19 felony charges, Sulman said Jones invaded seven homes, savagely beat several women and raped one young victim before smashing a typewriter into her face. On each occasion during his seven-month crime spree, she said, Jones took cash, guns, electronic equipment and jewelry from the homes before fleeing.

But Oksana Bihun, Jones’ defense attorney, said her client is a victim of overzealous police investigators too willing to blame a series of crimes on Jones, who she said committed only the last two of the robberies for which he has been charged.

According to Sulman, the series of crimes began in Torrance on Oct. 28, 1988, when Mary Ann Knopp, who was home alone cooking dinner for her family, answered a knock on her front door. The man at the door asked Knopp to fill a small plastic bottle with some tap water so he could analyze it and try to sell her a water purification system.

Knopp did so, but when she bent down to fill out the card the man had handed her, he beat her in the head with a crescent wrench and left her unconscious and bleeding in her front entryway, Sulman said. The robber snatched her necklace from her neck and carried out a television, cash, a gun and other jewelry.

Knopp’s husband found her several hours later, Sulman said. She has undergone neurosurgery and requires medication to control seizures.

The second incident occurred on Jan. 9, 1989, as a 22-year-old Manhattan Beach woman returned to her home after attending classes at El Camino College, Sulman said.

Shortly after the woman walked into her house, she answered a knock on her door. As she opened the door part way, a man forced his way into the house, threw her to the floor, hogtied her with a surfboard leash and blindfolded her with a pair of tights, Sulman said.

The robber, who ransacked the house, raped the woman and then beat her in the face and head with a typewriter. She survived the attack.

On the next day, a Gardena woman answered a knock at her door. The man standing on her doorstep offered to sell her insurance.

Distracted when her telephone began to ring, the woman turned from the door, and the man pushed inside, knocked her to the floor and yanked off her necklace. Sulman said the man fled when the woman’s 5-year-old son opened the kitchen door, startling him.

In March, 1989, a robber pretending to be a water salesman tricked a housekeeper into letting him into a house on 186th Street on Torrance, Sulman said. He hit the woman on the head, tied her hands and feet and put a pillowcase over her head before ransacking the house. He also tied up a 5-year-old girl who was being cared for by the maid, Sulman said.

A month later, Sulman said, the man followed a 71-year-old woman into her Calle Mayor home in Torrance as she carried groceries from her car. He tied the woman’s hands with picture wire, ransacked the house and walked out the front door with a briefcase full of valuables, Sulman said. The woman was not injured.

The series of robberies ended on the morning of May 18, 1989, Sulman said, when Jones grabbed 71-year-old Dorothy Twombly around the neck and held a gun to her head as she cleaned out her car in the driveway of her Manhattan Beach home.

When Twombly began screaming, Jones beat her with the gun and dragged her into her house, Sulman said. He left her unconscious just inside the front door as he rummaged through the house, Sulman said.

Twombly came to and ran, screaming, from her house. Sulman said Jones fled as neighbors responded to her cries, and he hid in the garage of a nearby house.

When the resident of that house, Dewey Bagley, 76, walked into his garage, Jones held the gun near his head and pulled the trigger, Sulman said. Although Bagley suffered powder burns to his face and neck, the bullet did not hit him.

Jones tied Bagley with an electrical cord, stole his wallet, took his car keys and went into Bagley’s house, Sulman said. Bagley freed himself and ran to a neighbor’s house, just as Jones drove off in Bagley’s Honda Accord, Sulman said.

Several minutes later, two Hawthorne detectives who had heard a police broadcast describing the car spotted it on Inglewood Avenue and began to follow it.

Jones abandoned the car in the 14300 block of Cerise Avenue, ran into a nearby house and pleaded with a teen-age boy living there to hide him, Sulman said. The boy locked Jones in a closet and flagged down police.

Although Bihun acknowledged to jurors that Jones had confessed to robbing Twombly and Bagley, she said he was not involved in the other crimes.

“A few policy agencies got together and cleared many of their cases by naming Steven Jones as their suspect,” Bihun told the jury. “I pray that you will be able to separate what Mr. Jones ought to be responsible for and what he should not.”