Jury in Luster Rape Trial Sees Sex Video

As date-rape suspect Andrew Luster watched calmly, Ventura County prosecutors on Thursday showed a graphic videotape of his explicit sex acts with a woman who appeared to be unconscious.

Throughout the half-hour tape, Luster, now 39, moves the woman’s body around like a doll, placing her in different positions for sex.

The woman’s eyes remained closed, her mouth open and her arm above her head for most of the tape.

Only once, when he sodomizes her, does she show expression, wincing and jolting sideways before falling back onto a bed.

Watching on a personal video monitor, Luster, a Mussel Shoals surfer who lives on a family trust account, showed no emotion.

Seven women and five men on the jury also sat stone-faced as the images were played.

At various points, Luster can be seen inserting objects, including a candle, a plastic sword and a lighted marijuana cigarette, into her vagina.

The woman, now 29 and identified only as Tonja Doe, was not present when the tape was played.

But she tearfully testified later in the day, telling jurors she was not aware of the tape-recording, or the sexual encounter, until a detective showed it to her after Luster’s arrest two years ago.

“I was horrified,” she said. “It was unbelievable to me. It still is ... I had no idea.”

Detectives found the tape during a July 18, 2000, search of Luster’s home after a 21-year-old college student, identified as Carey Doe, reported that he drugged and raped her there after a night of partying in Santa Barbara.

Ventura County sheriff’s deputies seized 17 homemade videotapes from Luster’s beach house and spent months trying to identify women on the tapes, a detective testified Thursday.

Eventually, rape charges were filed on behalf of Carey, Tonja and a third woman identified from the videos.

Luster, a great-grandson to cosmetics magnate Max Factor, is charged with 87 criminal counts, including rape, sodomy, sexual battery, drug possession and poisoning.

Defense attorneys maintain that Luster engaged in consensual sex with the women and that the women are lying.

As for the videos, the defense has suggested that the women shown on the tapes pretended to be asleep while filming pornographic movies with Luster in his bedroom.

But Tonja testified that she has no memory of having sex with Luster on Oct. 17, 1996, when the tape was allegedly made.

A former Arizona resident, Tonja told jurors she was visiting her younger sister, who was a UC Santa Barbara student, at that time.

During her visit, she said, they met Luster and another man at a downtown Santa Barbara bar and went to the suspect’s house.

At Luster’s suggestion, Tonja said, she agreed to try a substance known as gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, which she said he described as an herbal supplement.

Within half an hour, she testified, she began to feel numb and remembers feeling like she was going to pass out.

The next thing she recalls, she said, is waking up the next morning in Luster’s bed, her clothes askew.

“I had my clothes on, but they were shifted,” she said. “I was very confused. I felt like maybe he had done something to me.”

She told jurors that Luster explained that she had fallen asleep and he carried her to his bedroom so she could be more comfortable.

She said she believed him, and went out with him again during her visit.

They eventually struck up a romance, and she moved in with him. But within four months, she said, she broke off the relationship.

“Honestly, he just began to give me the creeps,” she said. “I didn’t trust him.”

Tonja said in the months that followed, Luster stalked her and took her to court to reclaim money he had spent on her.

It was years later, she testified, that she learned that he had taped a sexual encounter from the first night they had met.

“I detest him,” she said. “I can’t believe he would ever do this to me. He is sick. He is evil.”

Defense attorneys are expected to begin their cross-examination this morning.