Prostitutes, Police Ally in Rape Cases

After she was raped by a stranger, Danielle was not supposed to go to the police. Prostitutes, junkies and convicted felons usually don’t. She was all three.

But what happened that Sunday morning in March was so cruel, so violating.

She was on her way to see her mother and daughter, not working the street, when she accepted a ride from a clean-cut man in a blue station wagon. Within minutes, his hand was on her throat, and he was on top of her, taking what was not for sale at any price.

After she was released, a million worries raced through her mind. What if the cops didn’t believe her? What if she were arrested for an outstanding parole violation?

In the end, Danielle decided, “Whether I had to end up in jail over this didn’t matter to me. There was no question in my mind that it was rape. The main thing was I didn’t want this to happen to another woman who was not as strong as me, physically or emotionally.”

Her decision ultimately led police to Burbank construction worker Vincent Paul Fanelli II, a 38-year-old married father of two, who has been charged with attacking Danielle and five other San Fernando Valley prostitutes this spring.

The case stands out from other assaults of prostitutes--which often go unreported and unpunished--because of the unusual cooperation between adversaries. So far, the criminal justice system has been as swift in its pursuit of the so-called “spanker rapist” as it has been supportive of the victims.

Los Angeles Police Department Det. Greg Stone took just 16 days to locate six victims and then arrest Fanelli. Stone said he did not let the background of the women prejudice his investigation.

“It doesn’t matter that these were acts they maybe would have done for a fee. They were not done by choice and when something is not by choice, it hurts,” he said.

Other law enforcement officials have also sought to protect the women.

Ann Korban, the prosecutor assigned to the case, charged Fanelli with 34 offenses that carry a potential prison term of 281 years. The judge who heard Fanelli’s preliminary hearing raised his bail to $2 million, even though he could not afford his bail when it stood at $1.2 million.

“He preyed on vulnerable people and thought because of the nature of their work, he could do what he wanted and be safe, and that is horrible,” Van Nuys Municipal Judge Jessica Silvers said in court last month before ordering Fanelli to stand trial. No trial date has been set.

Fanelli has denied all of the charges, and his defense attorney, Barry Hammond, declined to give permission for his client to be interviewed. Hammond said only that Fanelli admits seeing “one or two” of the women as a customer, with the rape charges “quite possibly” growing out of “a grudge over not being paid.”

Hammond also noted that two of the victims failed to identify Fanelli from police photographs, naming him as their attacker only after seeing him in court.

The six attacks occurred in less than four weeks, beginning March 10 and ending April 5, according to testimony during Fanelli’s preliminary hearing.

Danielle, who had been streetwalking in Pacoima for four years to support a heroin habit, was the first victim. (Her name and the names of the other sexual assault victims were changed to protect their identities.) She said she left her motel room at 9:30 a.m. to see her mother and 11-year-old daughter. When a man wearing a gold wedding band pulled over and asked if she needed a lift, she accepted.

As soon as she sat down, the man hit the automatic door locks and then turned into an industrial park, according to court testimony. He asked how much she would charge to perform oral sex. As they passed a security guard, the man put his hand around Danielle’s throat.

Before long, he was on her. Her pleas for him to stop only seemed to excite him more, which made Danielle even more afraid.

“At this point, I knew that I was dealing with a type of person that it just wasn’t going to be somebody getting on top of me, getting off and that was it,” she testified in court.

After he’d finished, the man calmly ordered Danielle out. She ran to the security guard and asked him to write down what she could recall of the man’s license plate number. She also asked the guard to call police.

The rapist’s fifth victim, Linda, a 19-year-old Van Nuys prostitute, also called police. The April Fools’ Day attack came three weeks after the attack on Danielle, and followed a similar pattern.

Linda was working Sepulveda Boulevard when she agreed to oral sex with a man in a blue station wagon. After he drove her to a secluded neighborhood, Linda panicked when she discovered that the driver had parked so close to a fence that she could not open her door.

While assaulting Linda, the man “told me I had been bad . . . more than once. He kept repeating himself,” she testified in court.

After he dropped her off, Linda called police, unknowingly giving Stone the clues he needed to determine that a serial rapist was loose.

Stone, who works for the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division, has oversight of sex crime investigations in the Valley. On April 10, a Foothill detective investigating the attack on Danielle mentioned that, after a month, he had reached a dead end. The license plate number she had supplied didn’t match any cars registered in California.

The detectives were struck by “the fact that the person appeared to gain pleasure by inflicting pain,” Stone said. They worried that if left unchecked, he could wind up killing someone.

Stone went to the Valley’s other police divisions to search for similar cases. Linda’s report immediately surfaced. She had given police the license plate number of her attacker, which matched a station wagon registered to a Burbank owner.

Stone asked Valley vice detectives to spread the word that he was seeking other prostitutes who had been similarly attacked. Soon, more women came forward.

Barbara, 47, told police that she had been choked and sodomized a week or two after Danielle by a man who offered her a ride to a Magnolia Boulevard convenience store.

A third prostitute, 40-year-old Katie, was luckier. After a customer grabbed her roughly by the neck, she elbowed him in the groin and managed to escape unharmed, she said in court.

The last known attack was on 32-year-old Katrina during the early evening of April 5--Good Friday. Katrina said she was hit in the face and choked so hard that she lost consciousness.

“I may work the street and all that . . . “ she said, dissolving into tears on the witness stand. “But I didn’t ask for that to happen to me, you know?”

Investigators traced the station wagon to Fanelli’s wife. They obtained his driver’s license photograph and showed it to victims. In addition, a truck similar to the one that was used in two of the attacks was traced to Fanelli’s employer.

After interviewing one of Fanelli’s accusers, Korban agreed to seek an arrest warrant for Fanelli, who was taken into custody near his apartment April 26.

She expects that Fanelli will contend that the women consented to sex.