Man Accused of Serial Rape Goes on Trial : Courts: David Lopez, 30, allegedly sexually brutalized seven women, several of whom were tortured and two of whom were left almost dead. The defense contends he was misidentified.

A prosecutor opened the case Wednesday against an Anaheim man accused of serial rape by describing brutal sex attacks against seven women that included instances of torture and left two victims near death.

David Lopez, 30, could face a maximum of three life terms plus 225 years in prison if convicted of attempted murder and 37 other counts stemming from assaults during eight months beginning in June, 1992.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jo Marie Escobar told jurors that Lopez picked up the women, most of whom were prostitutes, in his station wagon and assaulted them at knifepoint or while holding a gun. All were bound and gagged and some were tortured sexually with electrical prods and burned with a cigarette lighter.

In one case, the victim, a 17-year-old runaway from New Mexico, was found wrapped from head to toe in packing tape in a water-filled ditch in Anaheim. Another victim was dumped near the Santa Ana River in Anaheim, so severely injured that police at first thought she was dead.

“This is a serial rapist,” Escobar said outside of the courtroom. Lopez “was essentially a serial rapist-murderer who never got to the murder.”

Lopez’s lawyer, William G. Morrissey, declined to offer an opening statement and would not comment on the case outside the courtroom. He has said in the past that Lopez was erroneously identified by the women. Morrissey has said his client suffered a work-related injury that disabled his left arm, the same arm that many of the victims claim he used to point a gun or knife at them.

The prosecutor said items belonging to some of the victims were later found in Lopez’s car and in the Anaheim apartment he shared with his mother. Scientific tests on towels found in the car, and on carpet stains, linked them to some of the victims, Escobar said. Lopez’s handwriting matched that in a letter mailed to the home of one of the victims shortly after her attack, the prosecutor said.

The string of attacks began June 29, 1992, when a prostitute was picked up on Garden Grove Boulevard, raped in the car and dumped on a deserted stretch of Santa Ana Canyon Road. A driver later saw the woman, still tied with rope and partially clothed, hopping along the road.

Some of the victims were sodomized with metal objects, burned or tortured with electrical shocks, Escobar said.

The rapist told the victims that he hated his mother and other women, the prosecutor said.

The 17-year-old runaway was close to death when Anaheim public-works employees found her on Santa Ana Canyon Road with only her head above the muddy ditch water, Escobar said. The girl was completely wrapped in tape except for her nostrils, the prosecutor said.

Police compiled composite drawings of the suspect, and a sheriff’s deputy who saw the flyer recognized the car as one he had stopped two months earlier, Escobar said. That led police to Lopez, who was living with his mother in Anaheim. Escobar said later searches turned up some of the victims’ belongings, a tool box containing rolls of tape, electrical wire and a knife believed used in the attacks.

The first victim who will testify is expected to take the stand today.