Man Pleads Guilty of Assaulting, Abducting His Ex-Girlfriend

A former USC football player pleaded guilty Tuesday to beating his ex-girlfriend in two separate attacks last year, ultimately abducting her to Mexico at gunpoint.

Jeff Maree, 25, will face up to 16 years in state prison for the assaults on Laura Zovich, 21, when he is sentenced in Torrance Superior Court on April 11, Deputy Dist. Atty. Diana Teran said.

Maree, who was a reserve defensive back for the University of Southern California from 1985 to 1987, abducted Zovich the day after he was freed on bail on a previous charge of assaulting her in front of her Redondo Beach apartment.

At the time of the attacks, Maree was just completing a probationary sentence for a 1987 case in which he allegedly kidnaped another girlfriend and drove her from El Monte to Pasadena. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of false imprisonment in that case and served no jail time.

Physically recovered now from beatings that knocked out her front teeth, smashed her nose, scarred her legs and shattered the bone structure around one of her eyes, Zovich said in a telephone interview Tuesday that Maree’s brutality has left psychological scars that will never heal.

“I have nightmares every night of my life that he’s chasing me,” she said. “I’m going to have to live with this for the rest of my life. . . . I have no doubt in my mind that he will come after me as soon as he’s let out.”

Defense attorney Howard Beckler described the attacks as “explosive, dangerous aberrations” in Maree’s behavior.

“He can’t believe he’s done this. His family can’t believe it,” Beckler said. “He’s just not this kind of guy, (but) for whatever reasons, he acted in a peculiar and certainly dangerous manner that he knows he must be responsible for.”

Zovich said she had broken off their relationship several weeks before Maree’s first attack on March 11, 1990, which took place as two friends of Zovich tried to intervene.

During that attack, Maree locked Zovich inside her own car and beat her severely, Teran said. He then forced her to walk several blocks from the apartment with him before he fled the area.

Shortly afterward, Maree left the state to visit with his parents in New Jersey. He returned to California when he learned that charges had been filed in the case.

His bail initially was set at $22,000, but it was lowered by South Bay Municipal Court Judge Thomas P. Allen Jr. to $2,500 because Maree had turned himself in. Maree paid the bail and was released on May 6.

That night, Zovich stayed with a friend in Manhattan Beach because she feared Maree would come looking for her.

The following morning, she said, Maree--who had stolen a set of car keys from Zovich’s apartment--was waiting in the trunk of her car with a gun.

Punching her in the mouth, Maree forced Zovich into the trunk of the car, drove a few blocks to where he had parked another car, and then forced her into the trunk of that vehicle.

During the drive down to Tijuana, Maree threatened repeatedly to kill her, Zovich said.

“I thought I was going to die,” she said. “I kept picturing my funeral. It was awful.”

Shortly before they reached the border, Maree ordered Zovich to clean her face and join him in the front seat of the car. Border guards waved them through.

All that day and night, Zovich said she tried to find ways to calm Maree down so she could slip away. At one point, she said, she told him she loved him and wanted to marry him.

Nearly 21 hours after he abducted her, Maree responded to her assurances and returned to the South Bay. He freed her in front of a Torrance all-night coffee shop and told her he would call her soon.

Zovich immediately contacted police. Maree disappeared.

On Sept. 23, after more than four months on the run, he turned himself in. This time, his bail was set at $500,000, where it has remained.

The high bail has been little comfort to Zovich.

“I’ve had to call the jail every day to make sure he’s still behind bars, (because) until he’s sentenced, they can bail him out,” she said.

Even Maree’s pending prison sentence will not provide much relief, she said.

Maree’s prison term, Zovich said, would allow time for her to “get it together so that when he is let out, I can be long gone. I’m not going to let it ruin the rest of my life . . . but when something like this happens to you, it’s with you forever.”