Testimony Given on First Day of Sex Assault Trial

She was only 17, a beautiful girl with long blond hair and blue eyes, walking the few blocks to her Canoga Park home from the bus stop in the middle of a bright May afternoon.

She hadn’t gone far when Howard August Davis, the portly son of a retired Beverly Hills police officer, pulled over and asked for directions.

In testimony Wednesday on the opening day of Davis’ trial on 43 counts of sexual assault against five women and girls, she said he grabbed her by the hair and around her waist and dragged her into his truck. He drove her to one alley, and then another, she said, taking her virginity and forcing her to perform a variety of sex acts.

She was the fourth of the five victims accosted by the man authorities dubbed the Valley pickup truck rapist, prosecutors said. All of the attacks took place during the month of May in 1994, and all in the western San Fernando Valley, prosecutors said.

Davis, 30, of Woodland Hills, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. If convicted on all counts, he faces more than 400 years in prison.

His lawyer and his father said in interviews that he suffers from multiple personality disorder, brought on by a serious head injury suffered when he was the victim of a carjacking six months earlier and the illness of his mother in the months before the attacks began.

The rapes, the sodomy, the kidnapings were the work of Leo, an evil alter ego named after Davis’ cat, his lawyer and father said. The girls were released, they say, by the good personality of Howard.

“Leo is the bad guy,” said his father, Howard Davis Sr. “Howard is the good guy.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin Herscovitz, who is prosecuting the case, said in an interview that the claim to multiple personality disorder “would not hold water” for the eight-man, four-woman jury hearing the case.

He said in his opening statement that Davis’ first victim was a woman who was walking near the intersection of Tampa Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard. He forced her into his car, took her to a secluded alley and forced her to engage in oral sex.

The second victim was accosted at Winnetka Avenue and Saticoy Street, Herscovitz said. After a struggle during which she was allegedly cut on the hand by Davis’ knife, she escaped.

The next victim was the now 19-year-old who testified Wednesday. In questions apparently leading to the issue of Davis’ sanity, Herscovitz asked her whether Davis appeared to be on alcohol or drugs. She said no.

He asked if Davis appeared to be hallucinating or if he referred to himself by any name. No, she said.

“Did he call you any names?” Herscovitz asked. “Did he ever say things that didn’t make sense?” No, she replied.

The final victim was a 10-year-old girl who was abducted on Memorial Day, on her way home from buying a lemon-lime soda and a Butterfinger candy bar, prosecutors said.

“We are not going to put on a defense,” Davis’ attorney, Peter Knecht, told the jury. “I do not want to browbeat or harass any of these victims.”

“You will find him guilty,” Knecht said in his opening argument. Then, when the trial moves into a second phase to determine the issue of Davis’ sanity, the defense will present its case, he said.

“I do ask you to be patient and not build up tremendous hostility toward this defendant as you hear the evidence,” he said.

Still, Knecht said, he would attempt to show that some of the charges had been “exaggerated” by “zealous” police and prosecutors.

“You’re going to hear a very sad story, a sad story of mental illness,” Knecht said in an interview during a break in the proceedings. He said he had known Davis’ family for 30 years, sharing a bond that goes back 30 years to when Knecht was a young prosecutor and Howard Davis Sr. was his investigating officer.

“I remember when he handed me a cigar and said, ‘I have a son,’ ” Knecht said sadly. “Who would have thought 30 years later it would come to this?”