Suspect Held in O.C. Rape Had ’85 Conviction

A salesman convicted in 1985 of a series of “date rapes” involving four Newport Beach women has been arrested after being identified by a woman who was recently raped at gunpoint behind the Laguna Hills Mall.

Paul William Jensen, 48, who was required to register with police as a sex offender after his release from prison in 1988, was taken into custody without incident late Monday at John Wayne Airport, Sheriff’s Department Lt. Richard J. Olson said. Jensen is being held without bail in the Orange County Jail.

Jensen served 2 1/2 years in prison for raping four women whom he met in trendy Newport Beach bars or when they answered his newspaper advertisement for a roommate, according to court documents. He received a six-year sentence, and got six months off for good behavior and three years’ parole.

No weapon was used in any of those cases.

“He’s definitely become more violent,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Sturla, who heads the sexual assault unit of the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Sturla said that Jensen’s 1985 sentence was not unusual.

“Probably for a date rape with no priors, it probably was not out of the ballpark,” Sturla said. Nor was it unusual for Jensen to serve only half his sentence behind bars, Sturla said, because the state routinely allows prisoners to be released for good behavior and for work programs.

But, Sturla said, prosecutors are becoming more frustrated that the prison system seems unable to provide adequate therapy to convicts. Prison therapy programs “don’t seem to be that effective,” Sturla said. “It doesn’t seem to compute too well to them.”

On March 5, a 35-year-old Mission Viejo woman told authorities she had been raped in the east parking lot of Laguna Hills Mall, Olson said.

The woman told police she had walked out of the mall about 2 p.m., gotten into her van and started to pull out of the parking lot when a man sprang from behind the driver’s seat, Olson said.

Pointing a gun at her head, the man ordered her to park in a remote area of the parking lot, Olson said. There, he tied her hands and assaulted her in the back seat.

Afterwards, he cut her bonds with a knife and ordered her to drive him back to the mall. He took her driver’s license, memorized the address and warned that if she told anyone, she and her children would be killed, court documents show.

He then disappeared into a J.C. Penney store, the documents show. The woman later told investigators that her attacker was wearing blue jeans and a Polo shirt. He used condoms during the assault.

Investigators distributed a composite drawing of the rapist to other law enforcement agencies.

On June 3, a Sheriff’s Department investigator working on an obscene caller case, in which Jensen’s ex-girlfriend accused him of sexually harassing her by telephone, recognized the composite drawing, according to court records.

Two days later, the Mission Viejo rape victim picked Jensen’s photo from a group of pictures and identified him as the attacker, Olson said.

A nine-count criminal complaint and search warrants were issued, but when deputies went to Jensen’s house on Sanoria Street in Laguna Niguel, his roommate told detectives he was on a business trip to Philadelphia, court documents said.

Jensen was arrested at 10 p.m. Monday as he stepped off a plane, Olson said.

Investigators who searched his home on Tuesday confiscated blue jeans, three condoms, two Polo shirts and a pair of tennis shoes. They also found personal ads, and roommate-wanted ads, according to court documents.

Jensen is being held on suspicion of kidnaping, rape by force, forced oral copulation, sexual battery and restraint, assault with a firearm and possession of a firearm. He is scheduled to be arraigned today in Municipal Court in Laguna Niguel, officials said.

Jensen, once an IRS auditor and computer salesman, repeatedly denied at his 1985 date-rape trial that he had attacked the four women in that case.

Psychologist LeRoy Cordrey suggested during the trial that Jensen did not understand the severity of his crimes, and he advised that Jensen receive psychological counseling while in prison.

Defense attorney Ronald Kreber said then that Jensen should receive probation rather than a prison sentence because he was otherwise a responsible individual who never had been convicted of a crime.

He also said that Jensen had not used a weapon in the Newport Beach cases and did not physically harm the women beyond the sexual assault.

Superior Court Judge David O. Carter agreed that Jensen was well-mannered, articulate and intelligent, indicating that the issue of “date rape” was new legal ground.

“The problem is that you fit a strange category that the law’s not used to dealing with,” Carter told Jensen during his July 25, 1985, sentencing.

He added, however: “Because you wear a coat and tie or purchase wine or go to a number of establishments like Baxter’s or Bobby McGee’s in the county and then throw a woman on her back and rape her or orally copulate her . . . you’re (no) less dangerous than a person who breaks into a house and rapes a homeowner. The result is the same.”

Jensen was sent to the California Institution for Men in Chino, but was transferred shortly afterward to the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, said state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Patricia Mook.

He was paroled on May 7, 1988, and discharged from his conviction three years later.

Times staff writer Davan Maharaj contributed to this story.