"They were all scum, working together to bilk millionaire Andre Luster, heir to the Max Factor fortune. But the money hungry women were the worst in an abominable group of humanity that included greedy and immoral lawyers, slimy private eyes, DA’s with high ambitions, prosecutorial zeal gone mad, predatory law enforcement, bounty hunters with stars in their eyes and a one-sided judge. They all had a motive in building a rock solid criminal case against Luster and sending him away to prison for a long time. The longer he was sent away, the more all of they would profit. Some would get rich, others would become famous and some would see their careers skyrocket.

They would not have gotten away with it, in fact the entire ugly mess that took apart Luster’s life probably never would have happened, had the media not taken on a herd mentality to hurry the injustice along. But the sheer salaciousness of the crimes led reporters to take on a blind assertion that Luster was guilty and they, the self-proclaimed guardians of the public trust, were determined not accurately report the true facts in the case.

In was an electronic lynching. In the late summer of 2003, the nightly news was spilling over with the Millionaire Date Rape trial, entertainer Geraldo Rivera attended the proceedings and reported daily for FOX News, and CBS’s 48 hours followed the case and still got the facts wrong. The courtroom was always packed and the docket and transcripts were requested so many times that two clerks were brought in to meet the demand.

The known facts, different from the true facts in the case were the kind that the TV media loves, sex filled and scandalous and, according to the media, simple. The way they reported Andrew Luster, a 30-something beach bum playboy and heir to the Max Factor cosmetic fortune, had cruised the college bars around Santa Barbara, California, honed in on a coed, (nameless because she was a victim of sexual assault) and spiked her drink with GHB, a date rape drug. When she passed out, he carried her to his ocean front mansion and filmed himself raping her.

The girl had come forward and accused the scion of wealth and privilege. According to the Ventura County Prosecutors office her act of courage had spurred two other women to come forward with accusations. And, added the prosecutor, at least ten other women were also willing to come forward with even more charges. In fact, the county had such a strong case against Luster that it filed 87 felony charges against him.

At the onset of the trial it was wrongly reported that Luster’s fortune was being used to hire a dream team of lawyers who were expected to hammer the local prosecutors. But the hammer never got that far because in the midst of the trial Andrew Luster, held under house arrest and acting on the advice of his lawyers, slipped off his ankle alarm and fled across the border to Mexico. He was declared a fugitive from justice by the trial judge who also decided that Luster would be tried in absentia.

And so it was. The jury found Luster guilty on 86 of 87 charges against him, deadlocking on the final charge of felony poisoning. He was sentenced to a total of 124 years in prison and fined one million dollars.

Under a very public umbrella of high drama, the media watched as Luster was hunted down in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and captured by bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman. A two-man TV crew working for Chapman caught the entire event on film.
End of story. Or so it seemed.
*
Luster’s road to ruin started on the night of July 13, 2000. That was the night that he and alleged victim number one, called Jane Doe #1 by the, went out on the town in Santa Barbara’s bar lined Isla Vista section. She was 21 years old. Luster was 33. That night the party of five included Luster, Jane Doe and her boyfriend, a second man referred to only as “David” by the court and a third man, called “associated friend” during the trial.

The media, CBS news is an example, reported that Luster had met Jane Doe for the first time that night. But the true fact was that like the other two women who would emerge in the case as victims, Jane Doe #1 had an ongoing sexual relationship with Luster and admitted that they had slept together “a couple of hundred times” before that night. Like the others, she had also lived off and on at Luster’s house on the beach. At one point she moved in for six months, worked as an actor in soft porn films that Luster made every now and then, borrowed money from him, shared narcotics with him, including liquid ecstasy and was aware that he was a trust fund baby who didn’t have to hold a regular job to get by. All three women had, in fact, been paid to act in soft porn films for Luster’s company Deep Six Films."