2 Victims Testify at Rape Hearing

Two of the 14 women attacked by the so-called Room-for-Rent rapist detailed in San Diego Municipal Court Thursday just how they fell prey to the attacker.

Details of the attacks were given during the first day of a preliminary hearing for Kurt Newman, 33, who faces 45 charges ranging from rape to kidnaping to burglary. Municipal Judge Frank A. Brown will decide whether there is enough evidence to try Newman for the crimes.

Newman, a San Carlos bill collector, sat unmoved as his accusers told of how they were bound, raped and threatened.

One woman, who no longer lives in San Diego, said she was raped in June, 1991, after answering a knock at the door of her La Mesa apartment. Before opening the door, she said, she asked who it was and a male voice answered, “I’m looking for an apartment for rent. Can you please help me?”

When she opened the door to give her landlord’s name and phone number to the man, he asked to use her telephone and forced his way into her apartment, the 24-year-old woman said.

“I said, ‘What the hell are you doing,’ ” the woman recalled. “He said, ‘I’m going to rape you.’ ”

The woman said she was threatened with a gun and led to the bedroom, where her hands were bound behind her back with a necktie and her mouth was gagged with a handkerchief.

A second victim, 26, said she was attacked last September after placing a classified advertisement to sell a bed in a newspaper. After showing the bed to a man who inquired about it, she said, he threatened her with a knife.

The woman said her attacker forced her face-down on the floor and tied one of her hands behind her back with an Ace bandage. He set the knife down next her head and as she tried to grab it with her free hand the two began to wrestle.

“He said, ‘That’s it. You’re dead,’ ” she told the court. “I just rolled around and started kicking and fighting to do anything I could to save my life.”

At one point, the man came toward her throat with the knife and she blocked it with her hand, cutting her fingers, she said. She passed out after he placed his knee on her throat. When she awoke, the man was gone.

Both women Thursday identified Newman as the man who attacked them.

The hearing will continue today and is expected last through Tuesday.

Newman, who is married and has children, is being held in lieu of $1-million bail.