From Jail Cell, Luster Denies Kidnapping and Rape Charges

Andrew Luster knows what people are saying.

They say he is a millionaire rapist who preys on young women. They say he slips sedatives into their drinks before attacking them. They say he likes to videotape his assaults so he can watch them over and over.

Luster denies it all.

“This is ridiculous, overblown and outrageous,” said Luster, who is being held in Ventura County Jail on $10-million bail for 50 counts of kidnapping and rape in connection with alleged assaults on three women.

“Prosecutors are just slinging as much mud at the wall as they can and seeing what sticks,” he said.

From his jail cell last week, Luster, 36, said he is anxious for his preliminary hearing, scheduled for Thursday. That is when prosecutors will present their evidence to a judge, who will decide if it’s strong enough to go to trial.

As he spoke, Luster sat in a pale blue jumpsuit, looking tired from the strain of the past few months. He described his current situation as “a nightmare.” He is locked in a single cell 23 hours a day, a consequence of being a segregated inmate because of his famous family and high-profile case.

It is a far cry from the life he is used to.

He grew up in an oceanside home in Malibu. His neighbors were the rich and famous--Barbra Streisand, Larry Hagman, Michael Landon.

His mother is Elizabeth Luster, granddaughter to Max Factor, the cosmetics king who built a financial empire pushing makeup to Hollywood’s elite. The family sold the business in 1973 for $480 million, and Elizabeth Luster inherited some of the cash. She married, had two children, and bought homes in Malibu, Sonoma, Beverly Hills and Pacific Palisades.

Luster, whose friends call him Drew, graduated from the private Windward School in Santa Monica, where field trips included excursions to Hawaii, Mexico, and skiing in Utah. His 1981 graduating class, made up of just 24 students, voted their classmate Most Frank “for his forthright and often blunt appraisals of his surroundings.”

It was during these years that Luster developed a love of outdoor sports. Next to his name in his high school yearbook, he stenciled the words “surfer, skier, skater, student.”

But that was all a lifetime ago for Luster, who is still stunned at the turn his life has taken.

“I’m a pacifist,” Luster said. “I’ve never been in trouble with the law before . . . And I’ve never hurt anyone in my life.”

He is angry at the way authorities have characterized him, notably claiming he had dozens of videotapes of himself raping women rendered unconscious with the date-rape drug GHB.

Most of the estimated 200 tapes seized at his seaside home near Ventura were store-bought movies, he said.

“Maybe twelve of those were homemade,” Luster said. “And only about eight of those had women on them.”

Yes, those eight do show him engaged in sexual acts with women, Luster said. But the women were not unconscious, he said. And it was not against their will, Luster and his attorneys insist.

His glitzy family name is partly driving the case, Luster believes. Authorities and prosecutors, eager to grab a little glory of their own, have overblown the facts, he said. He bristles at their reports that his self worth is an estimated $31 million--an amount that prompted a judge to slam Luster with an unprecedented $10-million bail.

A family friend put Luster’s assets at closer to $2 million or $3 million. Luster, however, said he lives on about $60,000 to $70,000 a year, derived from interest, real estate deals, and the stock market.

Topmost in his mind these days, he said, are the two children he shares with a former girlfriend. He hasn’t seen Connor, 9, and Quinn, 6--both of whom were living with their mother in Pacific Palisades--since his July 18 arrest.

“My heart is broken, I miss them so much,” Luster said.

But most thoughts are consumed with trying to answer the hefty charges prosecutors have levied against him. It will all come out in court, he insists, and the facts will stack up in his favor.

Prosecutors disagree. He is a danger to women, they argue, with multiple victims in Ventura, Santa Barbara, and possibly Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. Deputy Dist. Atty. Rebecca Day has hit Luster with enough counts to send him to jail for life, plus 150 years.

Carefree Lifestyle

After a privileged childhood, including a nanny and private schools, Luster began a life filled with surf, travel and the party scene.

At 18, he bought a modest, one-story beach-side home in Mussel Shoals. He enrolled in community college in Santa Barbara, but quit before graduating.

He never took on a full-time job. He spent time trading stocks and trying to develop the occasional real estate deal. He also dabbled in small business ventures, such as the time he and a former girlfriend sold fish-shaped pillows from a stand in Mexico.

But mostly he loved outdoor activities. He skied, on the snow and in the water. He enjoyed mountain biking and kayaking.

And nearly every day he clutched his surfboard and rode the waves in nearby Rincon. He had a lot of surfing buddies in Malibu and Mussel Shoals, and sometimes, for fun, they held competitions.

It was a serious hobby for Luster, and he worked hard to hone his craft.

“It’s an artistic form,” he said. “Like a dance.”

Luster’s mother disapproved of his carefree lifestyle, friends said. She loved her son, whose father died when he was just 9. But she occasionally urged him to take on more adult responsibilities. He took vacations that centered around surfing, usually in Hawaii or Mexico. Cabo San Lucas was a favorite spot, where, until two years ago, friends said he owned a beach-side, two-story time-share condominium with tiled floors, a fireplace and stylish furniture.

But he wasn’t known for lavish vacations. Friend Eric Brictson, who owns a rental boat company near Cabo San Lucas, remembers Luster once pulling up in his rental car, an older model Volkswagen Bug.

“He had a couple of gold chains and a nice watch,” said Brictson, who often rented 22-foot sport fishing boats to Luster. “But otherwise you wouldn’t even know he was wealthy. He used to ask for special rates for his boat.”

He was most comfortable in baggy shorts and T-shirts, friends said. And he rarely talked about his wealthy family roots.

“He’s not a real flashy guy,” said one friend, who did not want to be identified because he feared harassment by the media. “He didn’t want to be known as a Factor, to be associated with all that. He’s a very private guy, really.”

Luster made no secret, however, of his love of the night life. In Cabo, he was a regular at the popular bars: Squid Row, Giggling Marlin, Cabo Wabo. It was the same story in Santa Barbara, where he frequented the collection of college bars along State Street.

He had an easy charm that allowed him to slip into conversations with pretty women he met on the beach or in a nightclub, friends said.

But they said Luster was not known to use drugs, for himself or on anyone else.

“I never even saw him drunk,” said Shannon Lethin, a longtime friend who once dated Luster. “He would maybe have one drink or two, and that’s it.”

Lethin, 31, met Luster when their dogs began playing together on the beach in Ventura in 1986. They dated for about two years, and Lethin moved into the Mussel Shoals home. After breaking up, they remained friends and Lethin continued to live with Luster on and off for seven years.

“We were roommates and I trusted him completely,” said Lethin, adding that Luster did have frequent nights out, but “he certainly wasn’t going around bringing home different people every night. I wouldn’t tolerate that.”

Relationship Troubles

During that time, Luster was ending a relationship with Valeri Balderama, the mother of his two children.

Though Balderama and Luster had bumpy moments, often squabbling over money, Luster maintained close ties with his children, friends said. At least once a week, he picked them up from their Pacific Palisades home, bought by Elizabeth Luster, and spent time with them in Malibu.

Other relationship problems would plague Luster.

In September 1996, a former girlfriend, Lisa Perez, filed for a restraining order with a Santa Barbara court.

“I told him that I didn’t understand why he was so bent on hurting me,” Perez wrote in the restraining order, “and he told me that he didn’t want to, but he didn’t know what else to do and that it is a known fact throughout history that people hurt the ones they love.”

The order goes on to say, “He has tried to blackmail me by saying he has an incriminating videotape of me and has told a mutual friend the same thing.”

The restraining order was never served to Luster, however, and the matter was dropped in court. Investigators have contacted Perez, concerned she may have been one of the alleged victims on the videotapes, but she declined to participate in the case, attorneys for Luster said.

Luster met a different woman in a bar on State Street in 1996. He was charismatic, she said, and offered to buy her a drink. They ended up at his home that evening, where she said he asked her if she wanted some GHB, a clear but salty-tasting liquid that in small doses gives a buzz. In larger doses, or when mixed with alcohol, it causes blackouts.

“He asked me if I had ever heard of it,” she said. “I said no, and he started telling me it’s just herbal, it’s kind of a psychedelic drug, but it’s safe.”

She took a shot of the drug, and that is the last thing she remembers, she said.

The pair dated for a few months and she moved in for a while. But the relationship ended bitterly, with Luster suing her in court over a $4,000 loan.

It would be another four years before the woman would learn from police that throughout their relationship, Luster had been videotaping himself having sex with her while she was in a semiconscious state, investigators said.

Attorneys for Luster said it was all consensual.

Nonetheless, she is one of the three victims named in the case.

First Woman Comes Forward

But it was an encounter with another woman that first brought Luster to the attention of authorities.

In July, a 21-year-old woman and a male friend were dancing at a bar on State Street. Luster offered the woman a glass of water. She and her friend, who had been drinking that night, would later tell police they suddenly felt very drunk and hardly remember how they arrived at Luster’s home in Mussel Shoals.

Once there, Luster took the woman to a nearby pier. According to the search warrant affidavit, the woman took off her dress, shoes, jewelry, and, on Luster’s command, jumped into the water.

Later, at his home, Luster led the woman into a shower, where they had sex “against her will,” the affidavit says. Her memory then flashes to Luster’s bedroom, it alleges, where she saw another man, naked, lying on the bed. She can’t remember if she had sex with him or not.

Luster gave her another drink, she told detectives, and as she drank, a hot sensation came over her.

“It’s Liquid Ecstasy,” the affidavit quotes Luster as telling her. “Don’t you like it?”

Luster had sex with the woman two more times before driving her and her male friend home the next morning, the affidavit says.

Three days later, the woman went to the sheriff’s station to report that she had been raped. During a search of Luster’s home, investigators seized vials of an unidentified liquid they suspect is GHB. They also recovered dozens of videotapes, some with labels such as “Totally Hid Vid corner in living room.”

On one tape, according to authorities, Luster speaks into the camera: “I dream about this, a strawberry blonde passed out on my bed, waiting for me to do with her what I will.”

Since the investigation began, authorities have identified a third victim, who attorneys for Luster say was also a former girlfriend.

Luster said the case is not what it appears.

“This is not an open-and-shut case by any means,” Luster said. “That’s what the prosecution would like people to believe, but it’s not.”

Attorneys for Luster say the women on the videotapes are mostly former girlfriends. And all took the GHB drug willingly, knowing it was a “sex enhancer,” said James Blatt, attorney for Luster.

“That’s why they took it,” Blatt said. “It’s like taking an aphrodisiac. Why take it? It was a feel-good substance and they wanted to feel good and party.”

Joel Isaacson, another Luster attorney, also countered the argument that most of the women were unconscious on tape. Most are awake, even talking into the video camera, he said. Only one woman appears to be in a state of “questionable consciousness,” he said.

The girlfriends in the case, the attorneys said, are simply scorned lovers now out for revenge. And the first victim cried rape after sobering up and feeling ashamed about her conduct, they said.

“I think one of the elements is remorse,” said Isaacson, who describes the night in July as a sex party with the victim, her friend, Luster, and another man. “She did some things she was not proud of, having sex with two or three men. This is how she justified her conduct to herself.”

From jail, Luster replays that night in his mind time and again. He lets his lawyer talk about the details, but says he is eager to tell the tale himself in front of a judge. He knows he is in for the fight of his life.

“I’ve been in a plane I didn’t know was going to make it,” Luster said. “And I’ve been knocked under a surf in other parts of the world that I didn’t know if I could recover from. I’ve been in a lot of precarious situations. But nothing like this. This is a nightmare.”