Prostitutes, Police Ally in Serial Rape Case

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

But what happened that Sunday morning in March was so cruel, so violating. She was going to see her mother and daughter, not working the street, when she accepted a ride from a clean-cut man in a blue family 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, Danielle recalled thinking she had little choice but to risk the help of law enforcement. 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 over the course of several weeks 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 based on their accounts. 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 in an interview.

Stone credits Fanelli’s arrest to Danielle and another prostitute who overcame their mistrust and contacted police. Their detailed reports enabled him to detect a pattern in the attacks, information vital in identifying more victims.

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

Ann Korban, the prosecutor assigned the case, charged Fanelli with 34 separate offenses that carry a potential prison term of 281 years. The judge who heard Fanelli’s preliminary hearing in Van Nuys Municipal Court 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 Court 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 for this story. 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. One took place in Pacoima, another in Van Nuys. The rest unfolded in an industrial section of North Hollywood, about three miles from the Hollywood Way apartment that Fanelli shared with his wife and two sons.

Danielle was the first victim. (Her name and the names of the other victims were changed to protect their identity.) Although she had been streetwalking in Pacoima for four years to support a heroin habit, she said she left her motel room at 9:30 a.m. on family business.

She was walking to a bus stop on San Fernando Road, looking forward to seeing her mother and 11-year-old daughter, with whom she had recently reestablished contact. When a man wearing a gold wedding band pulled over and asked if she needed a lift, she accepted.

“Being in the line of work I’m in, I take myself as a good judge of character,” Danielle recalled in an interview. “It just goes to show that looks are totally deceiving.”

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 emptying trash into a dumpster, the man put his hand around Danielle’s throat.

He parked the car in front of a closed warehouse, and ordered her to remove her pants. When she stalled, hoping the security guard would come by, he tightened his grip on her neck, she said.

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. He was into dominating, into hitting and spanking and choking,” she testified in court.

After he’d finished, the man started his car and 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 Ford Taurus station wagon. After he drove her to a secluded neighborhood, Linda panicked when she discovered 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.

Afterward, fearing the man would kill her and “leave me in a ditch somewhere,” Linda said she made conversation. He told her he was married, had two sons and worked in construction.

After he dropped her off, Linda called police, unknowingly giving Stone the clues he needed to determine 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” and agreed the rapist sounded like a dangerous man, Stone said. They worried that if left unchecked, he could wind up killing someone.

Stone went to the Valley’s four other police divisions and asked if they had any similar cases. Linda’s report immediately surfaced. She had given police the license plate number of her attacker, which matched a Taurus 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. In court, she testified that she spent a week in bed recovering.

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. It differed from the others: It was more violent. 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 white 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, Deputy Dist. Atty. Korban agreed to cooperate with police in seeking an arrest warrant for Fanelli, who was taken into custody near his apartment on April 26.

Korban concedes that despite the evidence collected, there are problems with the case: Three of the six witnesses are drug users, and two admit they were high the day of their alleged attacks.

But, she said, “When you read the reports and see the similarities and hear the victims tell their stories, the case builds on itself.”

Korban said she has been impressed by how “completely forthright and reliable” the women have been as witnesses.

She expects Fanelli will argue the women consented to sex.

“If it was consensual, why would any of them go through the humiliation of making the report, knowing their credibility is a problem because they are prostitutes?” she said. “Why would you be willing to sit in front of 12 human beings you don’t know and admit you are a prostitute and you have a drug problem?”

During an interview, Danielle said that the dignity the police, the prosecutor and presiding judge afforded her in the weeks since the rape caused her to “look at the law in a totally different way.”

“Before, I was terrified of and despised police and hated the D.A. because they were the ones who would put me away so I couldn’t use drugs for 120 days a year,” she said, toying nervously with her long, red hair. “I had no faith in the system at all.”

Now, Danielle includes herself in “a big family--all of us working together as a team.”

She said she has stopped working as a prostitute since the day of the rape, and has been off drugs for six weeks. She jokes that it is time to hang up the towel because she is getting too old for the work.

Then her smile fades.

“Who knows, I might not be lucky enough to escape next time,” she whispers.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Prostitute Attacks

A serial rapist has been charged with attacks on six prostitutes during a three-week period this spring in the Valley. Shown below are the locations of the attacks:

1. March 10, 1996, 9:30 a.m. Victim picked up on San Fernando Road at Osborne St. Attack occured at 12024 Montague St., Pacoima

2. Sometime between March 10 and March 31, around noon. Victim picked up at Motor Lodge Hotel, 10800 block of Magnolia Blvd. Attack occurred at end of Riverton below Chandler Blvd., North Hollywood.

3. March 21, 1996, 9 p.m. Victim picked up at Western Village Hotel at 10822 Magnolia Blvd., taken to Satsuma just south of Chandler, but she escaped before being assaulted.

4. March 31, 1996, 1 p.m. Victim picked up at Magnolia and Riverton. Attack occurred at 10853 Camarillo St., North Hollywood.

5. April 1, 1996, 9 p.m. Victim picked up at Sepulveda and Cohasset St., attack occurred at Sepulveda and Runnymede, Van Nuys.

6. April 5, 1996, 5:30 p.m. Victim picked up at Magnolia and Riverton and rape occurred at 5487 Satsuma, North Hollywood.

Suorce: Times staff