Max Factor Heir Declared a Fugitive as Rape Trial Proceeds

Federal and state authorities launched a manhunt for alleged rapist Andrew Luster after he failed to show up for his trial Monday morning and a search of his beachfront home found his dog and clothes missing.

Rejecting defense arguments that Luster may have been kidnapped or injured in a car accident, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Ken Riley declared the 39-year-old great-grandson of cosmetics magnate Max Factor a fugitive and ordered that his trial continue.

“He’s gone,” Riley told attorneys outside the presence of the jury, “and we are going ahead with the trial.”

Authorities believe that Luster, who was under house arrest, jumped his $1-million bail and bolted Friday during a two-week break in the proceedings. He faces 87 criminal counts, including sodomy and poisoning, in connection with the alleged rapes and drugging of three women. If convicted, he would face life in prison.

Luster’s disappearance is the latest and most dramatic twist in a sensational case that began 2 1/2 years ago after a 21-year-old UC Santa Barbara student alleged that Luster raped her at his beach house after they met at a downtown Santa Barbara bar.

His flight comes after several adverse court rulings and a week of powerful evidence presented by the prosecution. Before the break, jurors saw the first of two sexually explicit videotapes that allegedly show Luster raping unconscious women.

Defense attorneys maintain that their client was an aspiring porn director and that the women were acting. They said Luster had no reason to flee.

After his arrest in 2000, Luster was jailed on $10-million bail as prosecutors persuaded a judge that he was a flight risk with deep pockets and foreign contacts. An appellate court later reduced the sum to $1 million and ordered him placed under house arrest. The court also directed him to surrender his passport.

More recently, Riley modified the bail terms to allow the bachelor surfer, who lives off real estate investments and a family trust, to leave his house for up to 12 hours a day to meet with his attorneys in Los Angeles.

The terms require that Luster check in with a probation officer before he leaves, and again when he returns.

It was during that 12-hour window Friday that authorities suspect Luster packed his bags, loaded them and his German shepherd in his green Toyota SUV, and fled.

Investigators, who searched his residence Saturday, found clothes missing from his bedroom and unopened mail stacked on a living room table.

“There were drawers of clothing that were empty,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox told Riley.

In court Monday, Fox said that although Luster was wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle, the device would not indicate his whereabouts once he left the house. She also said that repeated attempts by probation officials to contact Luster have been unsuccessful.

Defense attorney Roger Jon Diamond disputed characterizations of his client as a fugitive. He said he talked to Luster a few days ago, but does not know his current whereabouts. He asked for a break in the trial to try and find Luster, suggesting he may be a victim of foul play. The judge refused.

At one point, Diamond asked to be removed from the case, arguing that he could not mount a defense without assistance from his missing client. But Riley ordered the Santa Monica attorney to stay on for the rest of the trial.

Under state law, a trial can go forward if the judge finds that the defendant has voluntarily “absented himself” with full knowledge that the proceedings are being held.

When the jury was called back into court, the judge said only that “we are proceeding today in Mr. Luster’s absence.”

As testimony resumed, law enforcement officials stepped up their search for the alleged rapist.

Prosecutors were scrambling Monday to compile information that will enable the FBI to obtain a federal arrest warrant for Luster and give them authority to investigate leads in foreign countries.

“We want him to know we will be searching every country in the world,” said Gary Auer, chief investigator for the district attorney’s office.

There are some countries that do not have extradition treaties with the United States, but Auer, a former FBI agent, said: “In this type of case, most nations are anxious to assist, particularly when it’s a U.S. citizen.”

Robert Mack, a special agent in the Ventura FBI office, said Luster’s name has already been entered into the National Crime Information Center, informing authorities across the country and at border patrols that Luster is a wanted fugitive.

Luster first came to the attention of authorities after the UCSB student filed her complaint. During a subsequent search of his home, detectives seized homemade videotapes that allegedly depict Luster raping two unconscious women.

Criminal charges were filed on behalf of the UCSB student and the women, known as Shawna and Tonja Doe, who identified themselves from the tapes.

Prosecutors went on to play one of the two videotapes Monday. During the 25-minute recording, Shawna Doe is heard snoring while Luster pinches her breasts and twice engages in sexual intercourse.

“That is exactly what I want,” Luster is heard saying on the tape recording. “A passed out beautiful girl. Look at that.”

According to court testimony, the tape was labeled: “Shawna GHBing.” Prosecutors allege that Luster drugged the then-Oxnard area high school student with a date-rape drug known as gamma hydroxybutyrate or GHB.

After playing the tape, prosecutors called Shawna Doe, now 23, as a witness.

In a voice barely above a whisper, she talked of meeting Luster in 1996 on the beach near his Mussel Shoals home. She said that she was 16 at the time and that Luster knew she was still in high school.

It was late 1997, Shawna Doe said, when she visited Luster for the final time at his home. After drinking alcohol, she said she started feeling tired and disoriented and eventually passed out on his bed. She had no idea she had been taped until detectives contacted her nearly three years later, she said.

“I was shocked, it was very disgusting to me,” she testified, crying. “It’s like seeing yourself raped in the third person, and there’s nothing you can do.”

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Times staff writers Jenifer Ragland, Fred Alvarez and Greg Krikorian contributed to this report.