Suspect in 3 Rapes Also Faces Charge of Intimidating Witness

Paul William Jensen will face trial on 21 counts of sexual assault and one charge of trying to intimidate a victim from his cell in Orange County Jail, a Municipal Court judge ruled Tuesday.

During a preliminary hearing, Municipal Judge Pamela Iles dismissed four of 25 counts against Jensen, 48, who is accused of abducting at gunpoint, then raping three women in Orange County shopping mall parking lots.

Jensen’s trial was set for Aug. 6 in Orange County Superior Court.

The new charge of witness intimidation stems from a July 10 phone call in which Jensen gave instructions to the common-law wife of a fellow inmate to deliver a note to a Mission Viejo woman he is accused of raping in the Laguna Hills Mall parking lot on March 5.

The inmate told the district attorney’s office of Jensen’s plans to send the note, and investigators recorded the telephone phone call between Jensen and the inmate’s wife.

According to the recording, which was played during the hearing, Jensen wanted a note delivered to the woman that would read: “You bitch. I warned you. Don’t you dare call police again. Don’t think I don’t know.”

Defense attorney Sylvan B. Aronson said that Jensen’s purpose in sending the note was not to frighten the victim.

“His sole purpose was to convince police (the rapist) is still on the street,” he said. “It wasn’t to frighten (the victim).”

Aronson also accused Raymond Acosta, serving time in Orange County Jail for receiving stolen property, of aiming to secure an early release by setting Jensen up with promises to deliver the note.

Acosta said on the stand: “I thought I could get something out of it.”

But he said that Jensen came to him, insisted on his innocence and asked if he knew someone who could deliver the note.

Dressed in a light brown prison jumpsuit, Jensen, a former Newport Beach computer salesman, scribbled notes and whispered comments to his attorney during the hearing. At one point, Aronson was forced to quiet his client by saying, “Paul, shut up.”

The Mission Viejo victim testified that Jensen had beat her while he was raping her. He told her that “if I reported this to anyone he will kill me and my kids,” she said on the stand.

Two other women testified that Jensen used a gun to kidnap and rape them. Both women were attacked at different times in the parking lot of Santa Ana’s MainPlace shopping mall.

Aronson tried to shake their testimony, challenging their identification of Jensen as the attacker.

Judge Isles denied a motion to set Jensen free on $50,000 bail.

“Mr. Jensen appears to the court to be a predator,” she said. “I think releasing Mr. Jensen in this instance would be folly.”