‘Knock-Out Drops’ Found in Search, Deputy Testifies

Ventura County sheriff’s detectives found a video camera and six small plastic bottles, including one labeled “knock-out drops,” during a search of date-rape suspect Andrew Luster’s beach house two years ago, a sex crimes detective testified Wednesday.

Investigators searched the 39-year-old surfer’s Mussel Shoals home after a 21-year-old college student reported that Luster drugged and raped her there after they met at a downtown Santa Barbara bar.

Deputy Scott Peterson testified that detectives were looking for the date-rape drug gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, when they found the six small bottles in a locked bedroom closet. Peterson did not testify to the contents, but he read the labels after removing the vials from a brown paper evidence bag.

“Spanish Liquid, Hypnotic Hypo,” the detective read. “Lollypop Juice, Knock-out Drops ... Frigid Fluid.”

No GHB was ever found during three searches of Luster’s home in July 2000. But prosecutors argue the six bottles are evidence of Luster’s propensity to knock out women and rape them. Defense attorneys suggested in a pretrial motion that the little orange bottles are irrelevant novelty items, and the labels merely a joke.

Luster, the great-grandson of cosmetics mogul Max Factor, is accused of using drugs to incapacitate three women before raping them at his beach house. He is charged with multiple counts of rape of intoxicated and unconscious women, as well as sexual battery, poisoning, sodomy and drug possession.

Defense attorneys maintain that Luster engaged in consensual sex with the purported victims.

In addition to the bottles taken from Luster’s home, Peterson testified that investigators seized a video camera and 17 videotapes, which allegedly depict Luster raping two unconscious women in late 1996 and 1997.

The defense insists that rogue officers tampered with evidence and conducted a dishonest investigation. However, Superior Court Judge Ken Riley has found no evidence of police misconduct and limited inquiry into it.