Orange County News Blog

​Ian Robert Tedeschi groomed himself as a Southern California bad boy with blond hair, blue eyes and a surgically placed silver ball in the shaft of his penis. The 5-foot-10, 200-pounder bragged that he loved "really big boobs" and belonged to the Orange County Skinheads gang. Before he was halfway through his twenties, he'd created an impressive police rap sheet that included stalking, trespassing, vandalism, possession of a deadly weapon (a nunchaku), felony graffiti, criminal threats and sex crimes. Once, he expressed his displeasure with a driver by slamming a baseball bat into a vehicle's window. At the age of 28, he was calling himself "Taildragger" on his MySpace account. He published an online "Booty Call Agreement" with lines such as "No falling asleep after sex. It's over, so get your ass up, get dressed and go the fuck home" and "Don't be offended if I don't ask if you enjoyed it. I don't care." Plus, "Doggie style is the preferred position--the reason: the less eye contact, the better." His cell-phone ring tone was a recording of his girlfriend moaning during intercourse--which may have been tacky but not entirely degenerative if the girl hadn't been a middle-school student.

​

As a Third Striker in the "Big Stanton" criminal street gang, Guillermo O. Ocampo was, according to an associate, accustomed to getting "whatever he wanted." So, to celebrate New Year's Eve 2008, Ocampo saw his teenage nephew's girlfriend at a party and decided he too wanted sex with her. Never mind that he was a 34-year-old violent convicted felon and Jane Doe was just a misguided 13-year-old. For the next five months, a time when he was on probation for other crimes, Ocampo got the girl hooked on crystal meth and used her as his sex slave.

​

On a daily basis, the car thief/heroin addict/aggravated assault artist fed the middle school student methamphetamine, fondled her, forced her to give him blowjobs, and anally or vaginally raped her. If she didn't perform sex to his satisfaction, he beat her with his fists, viciously punched her in her vagina or threw objects, likes drinking glasses, at her face, according to law enforcement documents reviewed by OC Weekly.

Ocampo had at least one positive trait. He wasn't possessive. But he managed to ruin that trait too. At various Orange County "dope houses" not far from Disneyland, he made Doe have sex with other men in exchange for drugs. She got pregnant and had an abortion.

Sadly, we've previously seen similar scenarios in OC.

But what caught our attention in this case, however, is that Ocampo, a prior "graduate" of the drug-rehab Phoenix House and the lone brother to five sisters, was so gleeful about his sick accomplishments that he kept a trophy of sorts. When Anaheim police captured him in May 2008 as he walked down a street with the minor, he possessed not just two opium pipes and about a gram of meth, but also a cell phone that contained a video clip of the girl, stoned out of her mind, smoking the incredibly addicting narcotic.

Thanks to Deputy District Attorney Drew Haughton and a jury, Ocampo was sentenced in April by Judge Kazuharu Makino to spend the next 480 years in a California prison. There, he can perfect his favorite hobby: sketching.

(Periodically at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for previous Citizen of the Week! losers.

--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Onlookers might have mistaken the 90-degree, May 2005 morning scene atop a downtown Los Angeles apartment building as an active movie set. A tall, agitated, 29-year-old man stripped nude, threw his clothes down 20 stories to South Figueroa Street and danced on the ledge--his bare feet scolding from the hot asphalt and gravel--as he threatened to jump. Above, a helicopter noisily hovered, making it difficult for anyone to communicate. Below, dozens of alarmed firefighters and police, including a SWAT team, watched knowing the airbags they'd deployed on the ground would be ineffective to cushion a fall from that height. Approaching negotiators asked the profusely sweating man what was wrong, causing him to run to the edge, leap and, at the last second, grab a pole and swing back onto the roof. "Don't get too close!" he yelled. "Don't talk to me! If I get down, I'm going to prison! I'm a psycho murderer!"

Yet Shawn Lawrence Putansu (pictured) wasn't an actor, and the only cameras present belonged not to Warner Bros. but rather to law enforcement. Amazingly, less than 12 hours earlier, Putansu had been dancing happily with friends inside the Phoenix Club near Disneyland. But now, like a wild scene from Jason Statham's 2006 Crank, the onetime chairman of an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) group on the East Coast believed he had only minutes to live. With the help of teaspoons of high-grade liquid cocaine he'd injected with a syringe, Putansu decided to make a pre-suicide confession to the gathered crowd.

He said that an hour south, Melissa Sue Mitchell, a kindhearted, 30-year-old Orange County criminal defense lawyer who'd once worked as a federal public defender in San Diego, was dead in the Jacuzzi attached to the backyard pool at her plush Laguna Niguel home. A used syringe and zip-locked plastic coke bag floated eerily next to the face-down corpse riddled with puncture marks. (Later, the coroner would rule acute cocaine intoxication as the cause of death, not drowning or blunt-force trauma.)

It must have felt like déjà vu to Putansu, who'd off-and-on since his teens abused heroin, Ecstasy (often at Club Avalon in LA), methamphetamine, alcohol and cocaine. The day after Thanksgiving 2004, the outgoing, blond-haired, blue-eyed man had left home in Portland, Maine, via bus to California determined to start life anew after one of his drug partners, another young woman, overdosed in 2002. His friends would later tell authorities that he'd worked hard to remain sober in the aftermath. In fact, he'd visited jails to share AA principles with inmates, though he was also often sleeping and using drugs with acquaintances he met in rehab.

On the LA rooftop, Putansu declared himself gay, admitted he got Mitchell hooked on cocaine and stated that he'd murdered his girlfriend of a month the previous night by purposefully injecting a lethal dose into her body. She was "filthy rich" and he, her party-hungry roommate who sold car parts when he was employed, said he felt more than jealous. "I hate her!" he declared.

The sadomasochistic onetime X-Files actor (1), who shoved a hot crack cocaine pipe inside a south Orange County woman's vagina because he believed she worked for the devil, recently placed an ad in LA Weekly:

"Busy businessman/producer needs immediate project assistance . . . Experience not necessary but helpful; will train. Industry knowledge a plus. Send resume to: Prince Maryland, F86550, Calipatria, CA, 92233."

Reply at your own risk.

Here's even better advice: Run like hell if Prince Edward Maryland--a self-proclaimed half brother to Russell Maryland, a former Dallas Cowboys football superstar and son to an ex-Baltimore Orioles baseball player--orders you to strip, bend over, spread your cheeks and "Get your grease! (2)"

According to law enforcement files, one of Maryland's favorite methods of dominating women has been forced, condom-free anal intercourse followed immediately by oral copulation.

But that's not exactly why our "busy" 5-foot-9 and 210-pound subject who calls himself a "multi-talented" product of Catholic schools is now locked in a California desert prison.

As is traditional among Southern Californians (3), the second week of April 2005 began for then-39-year-old Maryland and his wife with a trip to the movies, dinner at a Mexican restaurant and, after smoking crack cocaine, the hiring of two female prostitutes for a homemade gay-straight porno.

Attending college isn't always easy or cheap. Far too many schools are little more than glorified profit centers. But is it too much to ask professors to refrain from bilking students, too?

I ask this question to Patrick C. Coaty, a political science associate professor at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

Coaty operated a shameless, self-enriching scheme until recently. He required his students to purchase two textbooks he'd written. That part isn't unreasonable.

But because Coaty had 516 captive consumers this semester, his books were ridiculously priced. For example, the charge for his Fundamentals and Analysis of American Government topped $96. And that's for the paperback edition!

(Evidence that the price is artificially inflated: On the open, used-books market, Coaty's work is near worthless. I recently found his books available online for a buck and change.)

Apparently, selling books at outrageous prices wasn't enough for Coaty, who didn't reply to my interview requests. He required all of his students to deface his books by tearing out pages. Failure to obey meant a failing grade.

This extra twist guaranteed that already screwed students got screwed again by Coaty. The college bookstore refused to buy back the defaced books. And the beauty of it for this prof was that each new semester, an entirely new group of students would be forced to buy his overpriced textbooks at full price.

"It's whack," one student fittingly told the Coast Report, the college paper that broke the story.

For once, this column ends with relatively good news. Orange Coast students protested and forced the college's administrators to investigate. They ordered Coaty to end his practice.

(Periodically at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for other "winners" of Citizen of the Week!

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Both chatty and oblivious that the grotesque crime mystery they would have to solve was solving itself, the makings of an Orange County jury stood this morning in the hallway outside C45, the top-floor Santa Ana courtroom for Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseño.

With an empty courtroom except for yours truly, Anaheim's Alan David Beisel made a last-minute decision to forgo a trial and formally confess to Mark Birney, a veteran prosecutor. Birney read his one-count allegation: On May 18, Beisel had "willingly and unlawfully" put his penis in Jane Doe's mouth and forced oral copulation.

Judge Briseño asked Beisel if he understood the prosecutor.

"Yes," the balding, silver-haired, 62-year-old antiques dealer quietly replied.

"And this took place?"

"Yes, sir."

It must not have been easy for Beisel. His change of plea guarantees him a 15-years-to-life prison sentence--a term that could easily end his freedom for the remainder of his days.

But his move saved the victims from the anguish of testifying.

The horrified person who caught him in the act had been his daughter.

The target of Beisel's sex crime?

His own 5-year-old granddaughter.

Beisel molested her for more than a year, according to law-enforcement officials.

(Periodically at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for other "winners" of Citizen of the Week!

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Professional pool cleaner Corey Joel Baima told people he dreamed of someday performing missionary work for the Lord or becoming an architect. But his plans got derailed because he savagely tortured his young wife on more than one occasion and she eventually found the courage to tell authorities. When the 24-year-old Baima faced punishment for his crimes in 2006, Orange County sheriff's deputies, an ex-police chief and a pastor came to his rescue as character witnesses.

You see, Baima--arrested for a shooting incident as a juvenile--projected warmth to acquaintances and often volunteered that he read the Bible daily. One deputy, Jennifer J. Wenger, even told Judge Marc Kelly in court that Baima was a good person, then asked for leniency and suggested that instead of sending the convicted wife beater to prison, he let Baima move in with her. But to grant Wenger's request, Kelly would have to ignore Baima's disgraceful criminal conduct.

Would he?

Baima met Heather in high school when they were both 14 years old. Hints of trouble arrived quickly, such as when Baima ordered her to quit the track team because he didn't want other male classmates to associate with her. Though Heather hadn't dated anyone else, she eventually agreed to marriage after her 21st birthday. There were many fights.

One of the worst incidents happened around 11 p.m. on Feb. 10, 2005. Heather, then a UC Irvine English major, asked Baima to turn down music he was playing so she could study. He rushed her, grabbed her neck, threw her to the floor, jumped on top of her, and began punching and choking her and placed her in a headlock. He unplugged the phones, turned off the lights in their apartment and pointed a 9 mm Glock at her face.

"I'll kill you before I let you leave," he told Heather as he threw her textbooks. "If the cops come, I'll kill you first. You're never getting out of here."

When Heather cried, Baima grabbed her neck with both hands, threw her to the floor again and declared, "I'll snap your neck."

Baima stood over his wife, pointed the gun at her head, repeatedly described how bullets tear apart skulls and demanded her obedience.

Gabriel Zarate didn't originally deny he taken an incestuous interest in his 7-year-old daughter for a two-year period. He admitted that he forced her to orally copulate him. He even acknowledged that on "five or six" other occasions, he stripped her and rubbed his erect penis on her vagina as masturbation when his wife wasn't home.

But the 31-year-old father of four children doesn't understand all the fuss. It especially irks him that Santa Ana police, prosecutors, a jury and a judge didn't sympathize with him. He says he's a victim of a cruel criminal-justice system.

Why?

The 6-foot, 230-pound Zarate insists he never once penetrated his 4-foot, 55-pound daughter's vagina. So he wants to know: Shouldn't that display of willpower give him some sort of credit?

Sorry, pal. His daughter told detectives that her father is a pedophile and a liar. According to her statements, Zarate regularly engaged her in painful vaginal and anal intercourse. He also threatened to beat her with a belt if she told anyone. That fear kept her mouth closed.

Most solved crimes have a hero, and in this case, it's Zarate's wife of nine years. One day in March 2006, she told her daughter that she was going grocery shopping and that her father would watch her. The little girl grimaced. Her mother noticed. She left the house but waited outside for several minutes before re-entering by climbing through a window. She heard her daughter cry out from inside a bathroom, "No, Papi, no!"

The door was locked, so the mother used a kitchen knife to open it, and then screamed. She discovered both of them nude in the tub. Zarate had an erection and was kneeling between the second-grader's spread legs.

Coto de Caza residential weed picker Raul Salvador Marin wanted to tell the petite 20-year-old at a June 2004 Trabuco Canyon patio party that she was "a really pretty girl, white, young," but he didn't speak English and she didn't speak Spanish. The woman wasn't interested in Marin anyway. She spurned his attempts to dance with her, to touch her and, after he chased her 100 yards down a dark, desolate path, to have sex with her.

Later, veteran Orange County Sheriff's Department detective Daniel Salcedo asked Marin why he'd beaten the woman, dragged her body 20 feet into waist-high weeds, and then repeatedly smashed the woman's face and skull with a 20-pound rock.

"Because she pushed me two times," replied the 31-year-old native of Veracruz, Mexico. And besides, he said in Spanish, he wanted "to have relations" with her.

According to law-enforcement reports, Marin strangled the woman with both hands before yanking her shorts and underwear to her ankles, fondling her vagina, and attempting intercourse. (His erection failed, he insists.) When he finished, he walked home and threw his bloody T-shirt in a Dumpster before going to sleep.

The 5-foot-3, 120-pound woman was found partially nude, face-down and near death the next morning. Her bloody head had swollen to the size of a large watermelon. She was beaten so severely that both eyes had swollen shut and her race couldn't be determined. She had a massive cranial fracture, a collapsed lung, hypothermia, a broken jaw, numerous lacerations--some so serious they required staples to close--deep bruising around her neck, facial trauma, a missing chunk of an ear, dirt lodged in her throat and a stick protruding from her anus. She spent more than a week in a coma, but eventually emerged, albeit with permanent brain damage.

"Why did you do this?" Salcedo asked Marin after reading him his Miranda warning in Spanish.

At 6-foot-5 and 275 pounds, Robert Gene Butterfield is a massive 40-year-old who likes to have sex with minors. But hold on, folks--that's not the worst of his crimes.

We know of Butterfield's predilection, in part, because on the night of Aug. 4, 2000, he and his wife, Charmaine, got a group of high-school teenagers drunk and eventually invited two of them--a 15-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy--to their bedroom for a wild night of sexual intercourse.

The couple (parents of four children) might have escaped criminal liability if not for the collision of three pesky facts:

•It is illegal in California to have sex with a minor even if the minor is a willing participant.

•Teenagers are notorious blabbermouths, especially about sex.

•Cops don't ignore lewd-conduct tales involving kids.

Yes, word of the wife-swap sex romp eventually leaked. Police made their arrests, and the Butterfields pleaded guilty. For punishment, a judge went easy. Robert got 180 days in the Orange County Jail, and Charmaine got 30 days.

Sadly, incarceration didn't rehabilitate or discourage Robert from his taste for twisted sex.

We know this thanks to Aaron Parsons, an on-the-ball Costa Mesa cop.

Robyn Renne Devereaux, a onetime Latham & Watkins paralegal, met Melissa Jo Rodriguez, a retired California Highway Patrol dispatcher, on ObesityHelp.com in 2005. The two Orange County women quickly bonded, sharing secrets and fun during nine months. But by early 2006, their friendship had collapsed into a nearly impossible-to-decipher war. Now, each claims in court filings the other is a dangerous cyber-stalker.

Devereaux calls Rodriguez a "self-serving bitch . . . a bisexual . . . a drama queen . . . pathological liar and hypocrite [who is] suffering from paranoid delusions [and is] crazed as hell and hell-bent on revenge."

For her part, Rodriguez--the mother of three--has been less inflammatory, but Devereaux insists she's being wrongly pegged as "a blackmailer, extortionist, pimp, panderer and pornographer."

Devereaux also claims the ex-CHP civilian employee has threatened her with a gun and that Rodriguez likes to give other women lap dances.

Rodriguez claims Devereaux is a "character assassin" who has posted pictures of guns in Internet chat rooms the two visit and has also left "comments on killing stupid people."

According to Devereaux, "The last time Melissa Jo Rodriguez had an original idea she left it in the toilet bowl."

According to Rodriguez, Devereaux is a snitch who told Rodriguez's mother about her secret tummy tuck and breast-implant surgeries. Devereaux also reportedly labeled Rodriguez's autistic son "a retard."

Time-out!

If these women needed anything, it was guidance from a calm, impartial person both could respect. Unfortunately, fate (or just awful luck?) placed them in front of John M. Watson.

While Angela May King liked to make people laugh, Edgar Omar Osorio loved to hurt people, and one night, less than 10 minutes from the Happiest Place on Earth, these two came face to face. It hadn't been a mutually agreed-upon meeting. Looking for guns and money and to enhance his reputation in the Malos De Wicked street gang, the armed 20-year-old Osorio had broken into the modest Anaheim apartment that King, a police traffic officer originally from Long Island, shared with her little dog "TC." Osorio's defense lawyer would later explain that the gruesome October 2000 crime that occurred was partly King's fault because she "unexpectedly came home and surprised the burglar."

It was, the defense lawyer argued, simply a burglary that "went bad."

Sounds almost justifiable, doesn't it?

But Osorio--who chose "Criminal" as his gang moniker and tattooed a gang sign in block letters across his stomach--was hardly distraught over his murderous activity. Afterward, he rode his 10-speed bicycle to a backyard beer party and entered wearing white pants and a white Hanes T-shirt spattered with King's blood. He didn't look shell-shocked. He wasn't crying. He didn't wipe the blood from his hands or hide the black handgun he held. He announced to his fellow hoodlums, "I just shot a pig in the face!"

Celebration soon turned into panic when a frightening thought entered Osorio's brain: Already on parole from the California Youth Authority for a gang drive-by shooting as a juvenile, he'd left his fingerprints throughout King's home. Even he knew this math. His fingerprints (on file) plus police detectives equaled arrest, conviction and long incarceration.

From a garage at the party home, Osorio grabbed flammable liquid and a gym towel, hopped on his bike, and peddled back to the crime scene, a place where--if the winds are just right--you can hear Disneyland patrons screaming on roller-coaster rides. Just like the burglary, it was a simple plan. He'd torch King's apartment (burning his victim's corpse in the process), destroy his fingerprints and--viola!--get away with murder.

But just like the burglary, Osorio screwed up his cover-up.

You can imagine the joy 50-year-old Anaheim tamale dealer Gregorio Gomez Echeverria felt when his daughter walked up to him in March 2001 and said, "Guess what? I'm pregnant."

Well, maybe you can't.

How many of us have experienced the sensation of simultaneously becoming a grandfather and a father?

Carol Henson, an Orange County prosecutor, later asked Echeverria if he was attracted to his daughter when he began having sex with her when she was 15 years old.

"No," he replied, unconvincingly, during his 2006 trial.

Henson wanted to know why Echeverria had used his own daughter for violent sexual intercourse during at least a two-year period.

"I don't know," he replied. "I don't know how to explain it."

The deputy district attorney asked him, Did you enjoy it?

"Yes."

Echeverria, whose prior criminal record included illegal narcotics sales, had jealously punished his daughter when she talked to boys her own age and had even blocked her from taking sex-education classes at her high school. His rationale? He wanted, he said, to be the person to teach her everything she needed to know about sex.

Why the gasp?

Echeverria calmly explained to jurors that he only wanted to give his underage daughter what she wanted: him. Sure, she'd screamed and cried during intercourse that occurred at least monthly. Okay, he'd once tied an electrical cord around her neck, choked her, and, after she'd passed out, ripped off her clothes, dropped her on the garage floor and had intercourse with her body. Sure, he'd once mounted her while waiving a handgun in her face and barking threats of death if she revealed their ugly secret. Okay, his teeth had left hickeys all over her neck. And yes, he'd severely beaten her--indeed, knocked out a front tooth--as his idea of foreplay.

Henson, still in front of a jury, asked Echeverria if he liked to ejaculate inside his daughter's vagina.

"Not always," he replied.

At sentencing, the daughter, a native of Mexico who gave birth to her father's child, spoke in Spanish. "I know that day after day that he's in jail, he remembers everything that he did to me," the victim said. "And I want him to know that I am aware of all the pain that he is suffering, and I'm going to be happy because I have no sorry feelings for him. Because to me, he is dead. I never had a father."

Echeverria explained his conduct had been partially excusable because he claimed that each time after intercourse, his daughter hugged and caressed him. "I am not a rapist," he told Superior Court Judge James Stotler. His big mistake, he said, was he'd gone overboard in violently disciplining his daughter on occasion. For that, he said, "My God has forgiven me."

Stotler called Echeverria's acts of incest "inexcusable . . . worse than awful" and sentenced him to live the next 169 years in a California prison.

(Wednesdays at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for previous "Citizen of the Week!" winners.

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

As a teenager in Los Angeles using the name "DJ Tran," Daniel James Bell twice lured unsuspecting Southern California Asian women to fake modeling jobs and threatened them with weapons before robbing and sexually assaulting them.

With that in mind, it might be difficult to believe Bell's latest tale. Sure, Bell now admits he entered the home of a 50-year-old Santa Ana woman (the mother of one of his friends) and left with valuables on May 30, 2002. But he maintains that Deputy District Attorney Keith C. Bogardus wrongly elevated the matter to a sex-crime case.

Here's part of the evidence the prosecutor considered: During the incident, the then-19-year-old grabbed the Asian American woman in her family room, twisted her arm behind her back and forced her into her bedroom on the other side of the house. He shoved her onto her bed, jumped on her, chest to chest, and repeatedly demanded that she open her legs for him. He then wept when she refused.

Here's Bell's lawyer: “What we do know is that during the course of this assault, there was nothing sexual said. He didn't tear at her clothes. He didn't touch her in any sexual fashion. Bogardus would like you to just throw that out the window and disregard it.”

Guess who an Orange County jury believed.

Right.

But now, the 5-foot-11, 175-pound Bell, who got probation in his first case and 19 years in the second one, claims he's being punished too harshly in the third. Superior Court Judge John Conley dealt him a prison term of 15 years, 8 months for the Santa Ana conviction. It's not fair that Conley is making him serve that sentence after he completes the 19-year-term from the earlier case, argues Bell, now 25 and a resident of a state prison in Coalinga.

Believe it or not, the California Supreme Court is considering his complaint.

(Wednesdays at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for previous "Citizen of the Week!" winners.

— R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Don't assume that because Deep Arora won a top prize at a math competition that women wouldn't find him irresistible. On February 16, 2006, Emily, whom he'd met online that evening, invited Arora to drive from Placentia (where he lived with his parents) to her Laguna Beach apartment. The 19-year-old college student aiming for a degree in engineering at Fullerton College couldn't wait for the rendezvous. As he drove down Interstate 5 and then Laguna Canyon Road towards the Pacific Ocean, he shared his excitement via phone with his upcoming date.

“He said his dick was jumping,” Emily recalled. “He said, 'I'll lick your pussy.' I said, 'Okay.' He asked if I knew that the first time you do sex blood comes out of your pussy. I said, “Uh-huh.' He said to be prepared [because] he would kill my pussy. I said not to kill it because I want it to live. He said he'd fuck me hard. I said I couldn't wait.”

Too bad that Arora's date was 12 years old. Or, to be precise, he thought his date was 12 and her doctor father wouldn't return home for hours. Emily was actually 25-year-old Monique Bedard, a sex sting decoy working for PervertedJustice.com in conjunction with detectives from the Laguna Beach Police Department.

Imagine Arora's shock when he knocked on the door expecting youthful accolades for the gifts he brought: candy bars, fruit candy rolls and chocolate-flavored condoms. Instead, “He slumped over and began to cry,” a Laguna detective remembers. “He said he knew it was wrong and he was sorry.”

But after hiring a defense lawyer, Arora denied guilt and fought the charges. He pointed out that he'd been entrapped; he was a young immigrant who'd arrived from India less than two years earlier; he knew the girl told him she was 12 but that he thought it was part of the enticement for wild sex by an adult female; he'd had no prior criminal record; and, finally, that he was “not aware of some of the customs of this country.”

During a five-day trial in 2007, a jury heard the case brought by Orange County prosecutor Beth Carmichael as well as Arora's defense and sided with the government. For attempting a lewd act on a minor under the age of 14, he received a year in county jail and three years' worth of formal probation. Superior Court Judge Craig E. Robison also ordered him to stay away from porno, avoid places where minors congregate, wear a GPS unit on his leg and to register as a sex offender.

But after accepting the terms, Arora decided he was being punished too harshly. He filed an appeal, claiming that law enforcement agents should not be allowed to randomly search his residence during his probationary period. He argued that unlike a convicted bandit who could hide stolen loot or a drug addict who could store illegal narcotics, folks like him nabbed for pedophile activities don't hide their potential crime “instrumentalities” at home.

The appellate court didn't buy it.

(Wednesdays at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for previous "Citizen of the Week!" winners.

— R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Veronica Paz smoked pot with and repeatedly had public sex with Diego Gonzales, a 17-year-old high school wrestling champion, on a hillside perch overlooking Orange County. Yes, it is illegal for an adult to have sex with a minor, but that’s the least of Paz’s worries. The 26-year-old Stater Bros. grocery cashier is still trying to explain how Gonzales ended up dead—and his corpse ended up burnt—after their last rendezvous in the back seat of her Nissan Altima in November 2003.

The trouble began at a party a few months before the death. Paz came with Gonzales, with whom she’d had an on-again, off-again sexual relationship. They worked in the same store; he was a bag boy. Garden Grove’s Brandan Dante Perry, who’d known Gonzales since the 8th grade and was himself once a high school football star, showed up too.

Perry also enjoyed an on-again, off-again sexual relationship with Paz, and was none to happy to see her show up with Gonzales. The two youths puffed out their chests, exchanged nasty words and shoves, but parted without a fight. Call it a twisted sex triangle.

Fast forward to midnight on November 10, 2003, Paz drove to a 7-Eleven, purchased Trojan condoms and then met Gonzales in a parking lot. The two smoked pot and after 20 minutes she suggested they drive to their favorite sex spot: Hi Top Lane in Orange.

“I was just, like, ‘Are you ready’ [for sex],” Paz recalled for Dan Salcedo, a veteran Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) homicide detective. “He was, like, ‘Yeah!’”

At the spot, Paz and Gonzales jumped in the back seat of her car, kissed and fondled. Paz removed her blouse. Gonzales took off his shirt and began to drop his pants when another car arrived. “We heard this car pull up and we both turned around to look,” Paz claimed. “I saw Brandan and I started freaking out.”

Perry walked up pointing a .40-caliber Glock at Gonzales. He ordered Gonzales out of the car. The kid refused and was pistol-whipped in the face. A struggle ensued. Perry lost the gun, got it back and then shot Gonzales in the head and chest. A neighbor 200 yards away heard two popping sounds and then vehicles accelerating down the hill.

Paz and Perry drove their cars to a Jack in the Box on Chapman Avenue, where they fretted about forensic evidence, according to court records. They drove back to the scene of the crime. Poured lighter fluid on Gonzales’s body and flicked a Bic lighter. Unsatisfied that the corpse didn’t burn to a crisp, Perry called friends—who drove to the scene with diesel fuel. They doused the corpse again, lit a fire and left.

It didn’t take long for OCSD to solve the case. Perry confessed that he’d plotted the murder with Paz by discussing ways to lure Gonzales into a trap. He was sentenced to a prison term of 25 years to life with the possibility of parole.

Paz fought her arrest. She acknowledged plotting with Perry, but claimed the Hi Top Lane plan was only supposed to result in Gonzales “getting his ass kicked.” She insisted that she didn’t even know that Perry had a gun.

Perhaps her story would have been more believable if prosecutors hadn’t presented evidence that she had: bought the bullets Perry used; given Gonzales’ work schedule to Perry; gone with Perry to the desert to practice shooting the Glock and told Perry exactly where to find Gonzales on the night of the murder.

A jury convicted her of the murder; Superior Court Judge James Stotler sentenced her to a term of 25 years to life. But late last month, the court of appeal based in Santa Ana overturned her conviction, blaming bad jury instructions. She’ll get a second shot at avoiding a life sentence.

(Wednesdays at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for previous Citizen of the Week winners.

— R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Say, for the sake of argument, that you're a burglar. Would you strip naked once you've entered an occupied residence?

That's what I thought.

But 18-year-old Arthur David Macias Jr. thought losing his clothing was a wise move--and he was neither drunk nor high. No stimulants were necessary because, he later noted to a police detective, he was merely following instructions. Both God and the Antichrist had compelled his bizarre burglary, he said.

Macias' tale begins on April 10, 2005, when he claims supernatural messages entered his brain while he was walking by a Brea home at 3 a.m. and saw in the driveway a Ford Excursion he'd stolen and crashed a year earlier. After checking to see if the key had been left in the ignition, he says, he decided to go to the back yard, put a toy wagon under the laundry-room window, climb into the house, strip in a bathroom, and then search each room for wallets, purses and loose change. Six people were asleep in various rooms.

Suspicious of his story? Yeah, police were, too.

The first victim, Eric Wall, was sleeping in bed next to his wife. Two of his children, who'd fallen asleep while watching a rented movie, were on the floor beside his bed. Two other kids, an infant girl and a 15-year-old son, slept in two other rooms.

Wall's instincts drove him from his slumber to open his eyes. He saw a naked man standing over him. The intruder held a 10-inch butcher's knife with both hands over his head, as if ready to plunge the blade into Wall, a plumber.

There's a decent chance Alex Phu won't ask a girl in public if she wants his dick. It's not that Phu is a gentleman. Nope, the last time he asked that question, he didn't like the answer, and then things got cowardly.

Alone, a coward keeps his mouth shut. But when part of a group he’ll exhibit misplaced bravery. This was true for Phu. On the weekdays, he appeared well-educated, soft-spoken and courteous as an Orange County escrow officer. At night with fellow members of his Vietnamese criminal gang, Viet Boys, Phu ghettoized. With all the conviction his skinny 135-pound frame could muster, he talked, walked and dressed like a street-rugged hoodlum.

Back in reality—in Little Saigon on Feb. 16, 2006, to be precise—a two-SUV caravan carried the then-22-year-old to a fast-food-restaurant parking lot. Phu saw a 20-year-old Vietnamese-American woman he'd partied with years earlier during high school.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked, before insulting her and saying, “You just want my dick.”

Phu—who'd adopted the gang moniker “Tiny Boxer”—must have felt extra-manly, barking such words to a chick in front of his pals. He smiled and strutted. His buddies beamed.

But none of them expected the woman’s retort: She told him she wasn't interested in his “small penis.” The smile evaporated from Phu's face. “You'd better shut up,” he said, cursing at the woman and hearing her fire back in kind.

A crowd of teenagers gathered. He'd been humiliated. In front of his home boys. About his dick.

Phu approached the woman and said, “I'm not going to hit you.” She relaxed slightly and Phu quickly cocked his arm and slammed his fist into her face. A witness heard the crushing impact that dropped the woman to the asphalt.

When she managed to get up, blood pouring from her nose, she called Phu an “S.O.B.” and a “woman-beater.” Another member of Viet Boys yanked her legs from under her and punched her viciously six or seven more times in the face as she lay on the ground. Then Phu pretended her head was a football and he was a kicker. His shoe slammed into her skull near her ear.

The Viet Boys, who favor Dallas Cowboy jerseys with the number 22 because “V” is the 22nd letter of the alphabet, may have continued to demonstrate their manhood indefinitely if it hadn't been for two (never identified) young Latinos who saw the fight from inside the restaurant and came to the victim's rescue. The gangsters cursed the men, jumped in their vehicles and proudly shouted, “V Boys!” as they fled. Police eventually captured Phu, who denied active gang affiliation and offered this lame excuse: The woman started the fight.

After the Orange County District Attorney's office prosecuted the case, a jury didn’t buy the defense strategy. Neither did a court of appeal in Santa Ana. It recently rejected his hopes of overturning the conviction.

For 15 minutes of testosterone-loaded stupidity, Phu won 365 days in jail and three years' worth of formal probation.

(Wednesdays at OCWeekly.com discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for previous Citizen of the Week winners.

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Proclaiming the name “Devil,” the killer acted swiftly, stabbing an unsuspecting 18-year-old musician in the jugular with a silver pocketknife, and then in the back. But instead of fleeing the Aug. 15, 2006, Huntington Beach hotel birthday party in a panic, the killer stood over Walter Rivas’ collapsed body and watched, satisfied, as blood sprayed profusely from his neck. When nearby horrified witnesses gasped, the 5-foot-tall killer voiced an opinion before walking away: “Fuck you. Get over it.”

Murder made Samantha Elizabeth Rothwell hungry. The 20-year-old jumped into her white Toyota Tundra, backed into another vehicle, sped off, entered the 405 freeway on the wrong side, corrected herself without police detection and fled north to Los Angeles at speeds that topped 80 mph. Rothwell’s destination wasn’t a hideout, but rather a McDonald’s. While Rivas underwent unsuccessful emergency surgery, Rothwell pulled into the drive-thru, ordered two double cheeseburgers (no onions), 10 McNuggets and a medium lemonade.

The next day, authorities found Rothwell in a Valencia apartment she maintained with a $4,000-per-month trust fund her dead father had established. The murder weapon, still bloody, lay inside a backpack in the kitchen. Unwashed bloody clothes sat on the washing machine. Rothwell--who had “Smile now, Cry later” tattooed on her back--was engrossed in an episode of Friends.

At the 2007 trial, veteran Orange County homicide prosecutor Sonia Balleste established the senselessness of the murder. Rothwell stabbed Rivas after he’d happily talked about visiting the ocean earlier that day and feeling the presence of God. Until that point, the party had been peaceful and relaxed, but—to the surprise of partygoers--Rivas’ words infuriated Rothwell, who’d smoked marijuana and consumed three beers and Vodka shots.

“Don’t talk about God because I am the devil,” she snapped. “Shut up, or I’ll stab you.”

Rothwell wasn’t an intimidating presence. Her threat must have seemed ridiculously hollow to Rivas, who didn’t know that 18 months earlier she’d stabbed another young man in the arm under similarly bizarre circumstances. Among Rivas’ final words were “Tell my mom I love her.”

Last Friday, deputies brought Rothwell into court for sentencing following her second-degree murder conviction. She sat seemingly comatose as Rivas’ family expressed the pain of their loss. Then Chris Hilger, her public defender, read a statement she’d written. She called her victim “beautiful” and her acts “insane.”

Superior Court Judge Daniel Barrett McNerney wasn’t swayed. “We see a lot of trauma in this court, and very rarely does it make sense,” said McNerney. “But this is one of the most senseless things that this court has ever seen. . . . Starting today, you’ll be starting a new phase of your life.”

For 10 seconds of freakish stupidity, Rothwell won a term of 16 years to life in a California prison.

(Wednesdays at OCWeekly.com discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Go HERE to see previous "Citizen of the Week" posts.

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

If Roland Myrie's girlfriend had known he'd blown his first wife's head off with a handgun during a 1990 argument in New York City, she might not have cursed at him after he made sexual advances toward her teenage sister.

But the 27-year-old Lake Forest woman didn't know. Besides, she'd shared a yearlong love affair with Myrie, who did chores around her house while she worked at an Orange County Kmart. Despite his criminal past and her addiction to vodka and orange juice, their life together had been relatively trauma-free until the evening of Nov. 14, 2005. After the couple returned home from a trip to Best Buy, the woman's 17-year-old sister, who shared an apartment with the couple, revealed that Myrie had sought sex with her earlier that day.

The woman—victim of incestuous rape as a minor—exploded in rage, cursed at him for hours, ordered him to move out the next day and went to bed intoxicated at about 1:30 a.m. Two hours later, she awoke to see a fully dressed Myrie sitting on the edge of their bed and staring at her. She fell back to sleep. Then Myrie plunged a large kitchen knife deep into her stomach, striking her spinal column, and tried to cover her head with a pillow.

In another room, the woman's sister heard a loud thump, a scream, and then, “Please stop, Roland!” She entered the room, saw the bloody mess and demanded that Roland give her the cell phone he was holding so she could call an ambulance. He refused. She used another phone.

When an Orange County sheriff's deputy arrived, the victim expressed relief and asked him not to leave her side. Later, she underwent surgery for a perforated colon. During her recovery, she told a detective that Myrie had stabbed her.

From jail, Myrie—who served a decade in prison for the New York killing—wrote her a love letter: “I am so sorry with all my heart. I love you so much that my heart is crying out. Roland love you. Roland love you with all my heart. Do not think that I cheated on you. But you hurt me . . . Roland love you. Love you. Love Roland. Please come to see me.”

Afterward, the woman recanted her story by telling prosecutors that she'd stabbed herself. At trial, she refused to budge. But a jury didn't believe her. Perhaps jurors were impressed by a surgeon’s testimony that he believed the angle and force of the stab wound proved it hadn't been self-inflicted.

For less than a minute's worth of stupidity, Myrie will spend at least the next 25 years in a California prison.

(Wednesday at OCWeekly.com discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

On Dec. 17, 2005, Gi Jeon Moon thought it would be cool to pull down his pants and masturbate next to a sleeping young woman. Though just friends who’d met at DUI classes several years earlier, she’d come to his Buena Park apartment that night for dinner. They drank beer, and after she’d become intoxicated, she asked to sleep over because she didn’t want to drive home drunk. Moon suggested more drinks. She declined, noting the late hour and her tired condition. Still being a gentleman, he suggested she sleep in his bed while he take the sofa. The woman—whom we’re not identifying because she’s a sex-crime victim—quickly fell asleep fully dressed. Moon continued to drink booze. Eventually, he convinced himself of the merits of sneaking back into the bedroom to quietly jack off without waking his guest. That plan might have worked, but temptation proved too much.

Moon entered the bedroom, stripped, worked up an erection, climbed into bed next to the sleeping woman, placed his penis on her thigh and began to grope her breasts. She awoke and told him to stop. Rejection didn’t suit Moon. He attempted to undress her, breaking the zipper on her blue jeans. They struggled. She bit his forearm. He repeatedly punched her in the face before grabbing her hair and yanking her off the bed. She crashed onto the floor, where Moon kicked her, wrapped his hands around her throat, squeezed and ordered her to “stop being a bitch.” His final act of violence included throwing a lamp and a clock at her. He demanded sex again and noted that she was “lucky” because his friends routinely gave their dates worse beatings if they resisted intercourse.

Injured and terrified, the woman devised a plan. She told him she sympathized and asked him to go to a drug store for medicine because she was bleeding profusely from the head, mouth and nose. Moon fell for it. As soon as he left, she fled and called police. They found a blood-soaked bed and bloody bedroom floor, even a clump of the woman’s hair.

After his arrest, Moon admitted his temper but argued that her presence in his bed meant she’d consented to sex. He also volunteered this equally ridiculous logic: It is “impossible” to rape a woman unless she’s been tied up with rope or wire. For 15 minutes of stupidity, the 5-foot-5, 130-pound man branded himself a registered sex offender for the rest of his life. Moon awaits sentencing.

(Discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California, Wednesdays at ocweekly.com.)

To read about previous Citizen of the Week winners, click here.

—R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

You’re a man who discovers your wife is having sex behind your back with another man. Would you kidnap him and have sex with him in public? This isn’t a hypothetical for 22-year-old Orange County resident Santiago Rivas Huerta. But I’ve jumped ahead of myself.

In early 2004, Maria Jose Cruz obtained the phone number for a 17-year-old guy we’ll call Adrian, because that’s his first name. He didn’t know her from, well, Adam. Nor did he know she was married. Adrian couldn’t resist when 14 days later Maria, 19, offered to take him to a Santa Ana motel. Six weeks into the relationship, a startled Adrian saw Maria out with another man. She told Adrian the guy was Huerta, her “significant other.” Adrian ended the affair, which prompted Maria to quip, “You’re going to be sorry.”

The next night, Maria called Adrian, explained that Huerta had left her and she wanted to see him. He agreed to meet outside a taco restaurant. Maria drove up in a white Nissan. Adrian jumped in—and heard the doors lock as Maria sped off. “Are you carrying a weapon?” she asked.

“Why would I be armed?” he said.

Maria drove to an alley, where a knife-and-stun-gun-wielding Huerta and another man jumped out of bushes and into the back seat of the car. The men attacked Adrian as Maria drove east for 56 miles. In the Moreno Valley, they pulled off Highway 60. According to testimony, Huerta’s friend suggested that Adrian kiss Huerta’s penis. Huerta considered the idea but voiced fear that Adrian might bite.

Instead, Huerta and his pal forced Adrian to his knees inside the vehicle. They then ordered him to face Maria as they yanked off his pants and underwear. “Now you’re going to know what my wife felt,” Huerta said before digitally penetrating Adrian’s anus. Next, Huerta removed his own pants and sodomized Adrian.

During the rape, Huerta threatened to cut off Adrian’s tongue if he didn’t stop crying. When he finished, he kept Adrian’s wallet and threw him to the street dressed only in boxer shorts and socks. A truck driver found Adrian at about 3 a.m. near a landfill. He’d suffered head and neck abrasions and deep tears to his anus which, according to a forensic nurse, caused bleeding from “blunt force trauma.”

After his arrest, Huerta offered no defense at trial. A jury convicted him of 13 felonies. The 5-foot-6-inch, 140-pound man appealed, claiming that while he might have inserted “something” into Adrian’s ass, an Orange County prosecutor didn’t prove it had been a penis.

A California appellate court considered Huerta’s argument but recently rejected it. “The evidence demonstrated that Huerta penetrated Adrian’s anus twice, the first time with what he believed was Huerta’s finger, and a second time with something larger,” wrote Justice Kathleen O’Leary. “There was sufficient circumstantial evidence for the jury to conclude Huerta inserted his penis into Adrian’s anus.”

For 90 minutes of gross stupidity and cruelty, Huerta—whose record had been clean except for an unsafe lane-change ticket—surrendered the next 21 years of his life to prison. Cruz got a three-year-sentence. The third assailant was never identified.

(Wednesdays at OCWeekly.com discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

To read about previous Citizen of the Week winners, click here.

—R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

In August 2006, two Orange County men—James McGuinn and Paul Tu—drove together in the carpool lane of the southbound Interstate 405 when a habitual criminal driving a Chevy Blazer rear-ended them at 35 mph. Though damage was minimal to McGuinn’s Ford Explorer, Jamar Wendell Rivers—the Chevy driver—fled, weaving through dense, morning traffic. McGuinn tailed Rivers from the scene while Tu, the passenger, called the California Highway Patrol. A shirtless, heavily tattooed Rivers eventually took the Magnolia Street exit, turned into a BJ’s Pizza parking lot, jumped out of his car, ran up to McGuinn’s window, yanked on the locked door, pounded his fist and yelled, “You motherfucking asshole. What the fuck are you doing? I’m going to fucking kill you.” A startled McGuinn turned to Tu and said, “We’ve got to get out of here!” He quickly backed his car away and Rivers made his second escape attempt. Cops immediately nabbed him. Rivers explained that he’d been in a hurry to get his nagging girlfriend to her work.

At trial, the 25-year-old Los Angeles County man admitted that he’d been upset because McGuinn tailed him but tried this argument: the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed his free speech rights to utter his words. He also said his threats were obviously empty because he hadn’t been carrying weapons. After a five-day trial, a jury convicted Rivers for making criminal threats, attempting to dissuade witnesses from reporting a crime, hit-and-run and driving on a suspended license. Unrepentant, he took his First Amendment argument to a California Court of Appeal in Santa Ana. Led by Acting Presiding Justice William W. Bedsworth, the court recently issued a terse rejection of the defense theory. Bedsworth determined that the two victims had indeed been terrorized. For a less than a minute of stupidity, Rivers won a free trip to a California prison. It’ll be his home for six years and four months.

(Wednesdays at OCWeekly.com discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

To read about previous winners, click here.

-- R. Scott Moxley/ OC Weekly

Believing his girlfriend of five months engaged in affairs with other men, Rodney Lyn Oglesby worked himself into an October 2005 tizzy. It didn't help that one night after Karen Corbin's shift at Wal-Mart she refused to return to the couple's home, a room at the Crest Motel on seedy West Lincoln in Anaheim. Corbin's act of defiance was understandable. A calm Oglesby had called her at work to say that her gray and white striped, three-month-old kitten had hissed at him and, in retaliation, he'd broken the kitten's neck.

(Later, the killing would lead to the following priceless exchange in court between a prosecutor and Anaheim police officer Cheryl Lynn Murphy: Prosecutor: Did you find the cat inside the Dumpster? Murphy: Yes. Prosecutor: Can you describe what the cat looked like? Murphy: It looked dead.)

When Corbin arrived home the next morning by bus, Oglesby decided he knew the reason for her absence. She'd stayed away to sleep with another man, he insisted. He also described how he'd shaken her kitten to death and left its corpse to grow cold on the floor before tossing it, and its toys, in the trash.

"He was angry," Corbin testified. "He was mad. He tore up the room."

A frightened Corbin went to the motel manager's office hoping he'd call police. He said no. That's when 5-foot-6, 181-pound Oglesby showed up, ordered her back to their room and began pulling her by the arm in the parking lot. She sat down on the ground. Oglesby pretended to walk away, spun around and kicked her in her left eye. The blow was so powerful it fractured her face bone and caused severe bleeding. He then dragged her by her hair, tearing out huge clumps, repeatedly punched her face and called her a bitch.

The lunchtime scene prompted several bystanders to call 911. One, a neighbor named Cisco, ran to Corbin's rescue and said, "That's enough!" Oglesby responded by accusing Cisco of sleeping with his girlfriend too, cursed more and attempted to flee responding police on a bicycle.

During court proceedings, Oglesby--sent to Alabama prisons twice in the 1990s for committing felonies, including burglary--employed the insanity defense. He has a "a significant and severe organic impairment in his brain," declared his court-appointed lawyer. But after multiple psychiatric evaluations (at public expense), Judge Gary Paer ruled the 42-year-old competent enough to face charges. Oglesby accepted a plea deal. For multiple acts of stupidity including domestic violence and cruelty to an animal, he's spending six years in a California prison.

(Periodically at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for other "winners" of Citizen of the Week!

-- R. Scott Moxley

What 5-foot-3, 180-pound Gustavo Palmas Reyes of Anaheim lacks in English-speaking skills he makes up for in nerve. The construction worker arrived home drunk one night in July 2005 and beat his live-in girlfriend. She had made the mistake of cooking him dinner when he wasn't hungry. Annoyed, the 42-year-old then left to drink alcohol and eat fried chicken with friends. Later that night, he came home to the couple's one-bedroom apartment near Disneyland, where he stripped, molested and raped his girlfriend's mute, developmentally disabled 12-year-old daughter.

Caught in the act by the little girl's horrified uncle, Reyes declared he'd gotten "vengeance" against his girlfriend. When police arrived, Reyes tried to blame the consumption of 13 beers and, perhaps sensing he wasn't winning sympathy, finally suggested that he'd mounted the girl only to save her from an alleged epileptic seizure. The tale might have had a slight chance if his DNA hadn't been found in the girl's vagina. "Well, I've touched her," he told a police detective the next day. "I'm not saying that I haven't. But she likes me like you wouldn't believe, that's why I regret this."

He also declared himself "a normal person," cried, noted his otherwise-clean criminal record, begged for "forgiveness" and suggested counseling as punishment. Police and prosecutors weren't impressed. Based on their work, an Orange County jury convicted Reyes, who has a wife and kids in Mexico, on three felony counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor. For an hour's worth of stupidity, he won a free trip to a California prison. It'll be his home for a decade.

(Periodically at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

Click HERE for other "winners" of Citizen of the Week!

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly