Andrew Luster

BY David Krajicek
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A Night Out

Map of California with Santa Barbara locator

Carey was cutting loose.
The lean 21-year-old coed got together with friends on July 13, 2000, for a night of partying in Santa
Barbara, Calif.
They met at Carey's apartment for beers, then went out for pizza and more drinks. The group
eventually made its way to State Street, a popular spot for clubbing among Santa Barbara's many
college students.
First stop was Madison's Sports Grill, where Carey downed several cocktailsa Cosmopolitan and two
Long Island iced teas. Carey, a waitress and a student, had a fight with her boyfriend at Madison's, and
she and a friend named David moved on to O'Malley's Bar.
Stumbling drunk, Carey and David ended up on the dance floor at O'Malley's.
A shark standing near the bar smelled blood in the water.
The man ogling the young dancers was 15 years older than most of the clubbers. But at 6 foot 1 and
nearly 200 pounds, he was fit and reasonably good-looking, with a square jaw and piercing blue-green
eyes.

Madison's Sports Grill

He approached the dancing couple and offered to get a sobering glass of water for David, who was
having trouble standing up.
Both David and Carey drank from the stranger's water.
Soon the night became more of a blur.
As Carey later put it, "After I drank the water, I don't remember doing anything."
That apparently is precisely what the mystery man with the water had in mind.
His name was Andrew Luster.

Max Factor 'Heir'

Luster, 37, had been born under that most cursed of lucky stars: wealth.
He had never had to suffer the indignity of earning a living because he was a descendant of Max
Factor, who amassed a vast fortune in the cosmetics industry.
Factor, Luster's great-grandfather, was a Polish Jew who worked as a wigmaker and makeup artist for
Russian stage productions in the late 1800s. Factor fled the east European pogroms and emigrated to
the U.S. in 1902. He found himself in California 10 years later as the motion picture industry took root
there.
Factor took work as a makeup and hair stylist for film stars, and in 1914 he invented "Supreme Grease
Paint," a face makeup that would not melt under the hot klieg lights on film sets.
After years of further experimentation with combinations of talc, mineral oil, water and chemicals,
Factor in 1937 invented Pan-Cake Makeup, which made close-ups possible for movie stars with even
the most pocked and blotchy complexions.
Max Factor's product changed the makeup industry, and screen icons such as Bette Davis, Joan
Crawford and Claudette Colbert became regular clients of Factor's Hollywood salon. Millions of
American women clamoring for the beauty secret of the stars bought his retail products, and the Max
Factor name became synonymous with beauty products.

Max Factor with Michnometer

His son ran the company after Max Sr. died, and heirs sold the firm for nearly $500 million in 1973.
The extended Factor family got rich.
Andrew Luster, known to his family as Drew, was 10 years old at the time. His mother, divorcee
Elizabeth Luster, was the adopted child of Max Factor's daughter Freda.
Grandma Freda set up a $3.1 million trust in Drew's name. And the boy was set for life.

Surf Bum
Drew Luster had a privileged upbringing, needless to say.
His father, a psychiatrist, had died of lung cancer the year before the Max Factor company sale.
Drew and a younger sister were raised by their mother and a nanny in Malibu, Calif., where his
neighbors included Barbra Streisand. He attended Windward, an exclusive West Los Angeles day
school tucked between Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.
But studying was secondary to his other pursuits: skiing, surfing and skateboarding. He later attended
Santa Barbara City College but left without earning a degree.
In 1981, his mother paid $170,000 to buy Drew a small house on the beach in Mussel Shoals, a tiny
surfside community just off the Pacific Coast Highway south of Santa Barbara.

Mussel Shoals
The house was far from ostentatiousa flat-top, one-story bungalow with a square footage not much
bigger than a double-wide trailer.
But it suited Luster, and there he became a full-time surf bum, living primarily off his trust fund
allowance of $55,000 a year. He dabbled in real estate and played the stock market, but Luster never
had to be bothered with a real job.
He could walk out of his oceanside house and be surfing in minutes at Mussel Shoals, where the
Pacific produces reliable if not spectacular waves. But Rincon Point, a California surfing Mecca, is just
minutes away, and Luster became a regular among the men and woman who gathered there to hang 10
or simply hang out.

Rincon Beach
He regarded surfing as a form of creative expression. "It's an artistic form, like a dance," he told the
Los Angeles Times.
Elizabeth Luster didn't get it. Luster's slacking was a longtime source of conflict with his mother, who
for years dedicated her time and money to a charitable foundation focused on animal rights.
Even fatherhood did not put a crimp in Drew's surfer-dude lifestyle.
He and a girlfriend, Valerie Balderama, had two children, a son, Connor, born in 1991, and daughter
Quinn, born three years later.
The couple broke up, but Drew Luster supported his offspring and was involved in the children's lives.
So was Luster's mother. She bought Balderama and her grandchildren a home in pricey Pacific
Palisades, where $1 million gets you two bedrooms and one bath.

On the Town

Andrew Luster
Luster never lacked female companionship. He had a number of live-in girlfriends over the years, and
he was fond of bragging about his deft touch at picking up womensome young, some wealthy.
Luster apparently preferred young to wealthy.
As middle age beckoned, he continued to pursue a rather sad romantic life.
His favorite haunts were the college bars in the Isla Vista section and on State Street in Santa Barbara,
where the clientele was not much more than half his age.
He was trawling for young hotties on that July Friday night in 2000 when he hooked up with the
sloshed Carey at O'Malley's.
Carey later said she felt "sort of like a robot" after sipping the water that Luster delivered to the
drunken dancers.
The night became a bacchanal.
Carey and her friend David left O'Malley's with Luster and a third man in Luster's SUV. They went to
a Santa Barbara strip club but were turned away at the door because Carey and David were too drunk.
Luster then drove the group 15 miles down the coast to his place at Mussel Shoals.
On the way, Carey and David apparently had sex in the back seat.
Luster said he saw Carey engage in oral sex with David. David later said he couldn't be certain because
he was drunk or drugged, but he and Carey "probably" also had intercourse when she lifted her dress
and straddled him in Luster's moving vehicle, a Toyota Forerunner.

Luster's Toyota Forerunner

When they arrived in Mussel Shoals, Carey went skinny dipping in the ocean in her thong, stripping
off her dress as David and Luster watched. The men then escorted her inside Luster's house, and she
went into the shower and had sex with Luster, she later said.
After the shower, Luster gave her another doctored drink.
"It tasted good," she said, but a "wave of heat" hit her.
"What the hell did you put in my drink?" she asked.

A Bottle of GBH
Luster replied, "Liquid Ecstasy," using the rave name for GHB, the date-rape drug gamma
hydroxybutyric acid.
She and Luster then had sex a second time on his bed.
The next morning, Carey found herself naked in Luster's bed. David was asleep elsewhere in the
house. She said she tried to leave but he had sex with her a third time. The woman said she may have
had sex with a third man, Luster's friend.
Later that morning, Luster drove Carey and David to her apartment in Santa Barbara. She gave him her
phone number.

'What I Like'
After thinking over the evening's events and talking with friends, Carey went to police a couple of
days later, on July 17, to file a criminal complaint alleging drug-induced rape. Tests found no GHB in
her system, but the drug is notoriously fleeting.

With police listening in, she telephoned Luster to draw out incriminating comments. During the call,
Luster admitted that he gave her "Liquid X."
The next day, police arrested Luster for using a narcotic to rape Carey. Police searched his home but
found no GHB. They did find circumstantial evidence: a cache of photographs and home videos that
showed Luster having sex with unconscious women.
One of them was an ex-girlfriend, Tonja, who had later married a Mussel Shoals neighbor.
Contacted by police, Tonja said she met Luster in October 1996 at a club on State Street in Santa
Barbara, just like Carey.
Tonja, 22, was visiting from Arizona. She said they had a three-month fling before an acrimonious
split. Luster sued her to recover a $4,000 loan he made to Tonja so she could have her teeth fixed.
Tonja determined that the sex video was made at Luster's home on the night they met.
The video showed Luster positioning Tonjalimp as a rag dollin various sexual positions. He is seen
inserting objects in her vagina, including a smoking marijuana cigarette, a candle and a plastic saber.
The woman winces in apparent pain as he sodomizes her.
Tonja said she had been unaware of the sex and the taping, and authorities heaped additional charges
on Luster.
A third young woman then stepped forward to say she was the victim in a Luster video labeled
"Shauna GHBing."
Shauna said she met Luster on the beach when she was 16. She said the two had "made out" but she
had never knowingly had intercourse with Luster.
The Shauna video shows Luster having sex with the unconsciousand audibly snoringyoung woman,
who by then was 17. As the camera panned Shauna's naked body, Luster adds this commentary: "I
dream about this: a strawberry blonde passed out on my bed, waiting for me to do with her what I
will."
Ventura County authorities said about 10 other women stepped forward to accuse Luster, but they
limited the prosecution to the allegations against Carey, Tonja and Shauna. When the investigation was
complete, authorities charged Luster with 88 criminal counts in those three casesmore than enough to
send him away to prison for life if convicted.
Prosecutors argued that Luster's wealth made him a high risk to flee, and a judge set bail at $10
million.

Many Defenses
Sitting in jail, Drew Luster was incredulous.
"My life has been ruined because police and prosecutors jumped to conclusions," he told the Los
Angeles Times. "They wanted to make me their GHB poster boy. They're doing this to punish me for
my lifestyle, which doesn't fit in with their conservative values. In 20 years I haven't gotten anything
except a few speeding tickets. Had they thoroughly investigated (Carey) before charging me, they
would have discovered she lied...They allowed the case to go forward to boost their careers."

Working the media, his attorneys threw a briefcase full of defenses against the wall to see if any stuck:

Carey was suffering morning-after remorse. "She did some things she was not proud of, having
sex with two or three men," said attorney Joel Isaacson. "This is how she justified her conduct
to herself."
Luster was a victim of date-rape drug hysteria.
Luster's status as a wealthy descendant of Max Factor made him a trophy prosecution for
career-climbing Ventura County authorities. Roger Diamond, another Luster lawyer, went so
far as to declare, "Plain and simple, this is a case about prosecutorial misconduct and we plan
to get to the bottom of it."
Carey, Tonja and Shauna were golddiggers who wanted a slice of Luster's fortune. (Luster
acknowledged that, in trying to impress Carey on the night they met, he mentioned that he was
a Max Factor scion.)
Luster claimed he had had sex with Shauna and Tonja repeatedly during their
relationshipssometimes on videotape, with their knowledge and consent. Investigators found
one such recording of Tonja. Attorney Diamond said in a court filing, "Tonja enthusiastically
participated in fetish films with the defendant." Was that not implied consent to tape all their
sexual episodes?
Luster was an aspiring pornographic film producer who used his girlfriends as studies in
production technique. The women were merely pretending to be asleep.
Luster implied a sexual invitation with Carey because she had had sex with David in the
backseat of his car, had gone skinny dipping, and joined him in the shower. As proof that their
sex was consensual, he came up with a photo that showed a smiling Carey at his home
sometime after the shower.

'Ripped to Pieces'
An investigator hired by Luster focused his attention on Carey, whom Luster had described to police as
a "total nut" and a "fun-loving nymph."
Carey admitted to detectives that she liked to party and sometimes used drugs and drank too much.
Lab tests on the dress she wore to Luster's house showed traces of semen from three different men. The
defense believed the prosecution's case would fall apart without Carey.
The L.A. Times appeared to predict just that in a defense-friendly analysis by Mary A. Fischer
published as a curtain-opener to Luster's trial:
"As the pretrial debate between Ventura County prosecutors and Luster's defense team continues,
Luster's case opens a window on the persistent problems that arise when the criminal justice system is
confronted with accusations of drug-induced sexual assault. These cases often present difficult
challenges, including physical evidence that vanishes quickly from the human body and built-in
cultural biases against men and women who sometimes get caught up in a partying lifestyle. Such
cases also often hinge on the meaning of 'consensual' and the ability of a jury to sift the truth from a
subculture of sometimes easy sex, performed in a haze of drugs and alcohol, that obscures traditional
meanings of guilt and innocence."
In the story, a retired LAPD lieutenant hired by Luster's team to investigate Carey hinted that a
bruising trial lay ahead.
"We will show that over the course of 72 hours, Carey had sex with at least three men," said Bill
Pavelic. "So why would she just single out Luster? There is only one answer. She did it hoping to get
his money."

After his arrest, Luster predicted in an interview with detectives that Carey's lifestyle would not stand
up to scrutiny.
"If the DA files charges, it's going to go to a jury, and she's going to look like a fool," he said. "I'm
going to get a top-notch lawyer and she'll get cross-examined and ripped to pieces."
Maybe it was wishful thinking.
After all, under the law Carey's lifestyle was largely irrelevant. Even if she willingly had sex with 100
men that night, a 101st man would have committed a series of felonies had he slipped her a knock-out
drug and raped her while she was unconscious.

Knock-out Drugs
Knock-out drugs have been around for about as long as lust, and Drew Luster certainly was not the
first to use them to satisfy a sexual fetish.

A bottle of halothane
Perhaps most infamously, Karla Homolka and Paul BernardoCanada's Ken and Barbie sex killersused
the veterinary anesthetic Halothane to sedate Homolka's teenage sister in 1990 in a demented sexual
episode that led to the girl's death.
In spy novels, B-movies and the "Batman" TV serial, chloroform was the knock-out drug of choicea
few drops on a hanky held tight to someone's nose always sent him to la-la land after a few seconds.
In the 1950s and '60s, ads tucked in the back of boys' magazines lured adolescents to mail in $2 to
learn the secrets of hypnosisanother do-as-I-say fantasy.
But there are better alternatives to hypnosis and chloroform, as hippies, clubbers and ravers have
discovered over the years.
In the 1970s, young people used depressant Quaaludes to bring on a hypnotic altered state. The drug
was occasionally linked to sexual assaults.
In the past 10 years, several formerly obscure drugs have found favor at clubs and raves.
One is Rohypnol, known as "roofies." The drug is a powerful tranquilizer from the Valium family.
Another is Ketamine, an animal tranquilizer known as "jet" or "special K," which is said to produce an
out-of-body sensation.

A third is GHB, whose synthetic form acts as a powerful central nervous system depressant. Minute
amounts of GHB are produced naturally by the human body, although its function is not known.

A bottle of GBH
The synthetic version of the drug, first created in the 1920s, has been banned by the Food and Drug
Administration since 1990. It was used briefly as an anesthetic and later was popular with
bodybuilders as a hormone to stimulate muscle growth.
Like methamphetamine, GHB is produced in secret labs (from recipes available on the Internet) and
sold on the rave circuit, usually in liquid form. It is known by many names, including G, Liquid
Ecstasy, Liquid X and Liquid E.
In small doses, GHB produces a euphoric intoxication by depressing the central nervous system. It is
said to enhance the sexual experience, perhaps by subduing inhibition.
Publicity about the use of roofies in date rapes hit the national media when Newsweek published a
story in 1996. A few months later Congress approved the federal Drug-Induced Rape Prevention and
Punishment Act of 1996, which imposed 20-year penalties for slipping someone a sex-inducing
mickey.
In 1998, the case of the "Rohypnol Romeos," identical twin brothers in Los Angeles, brought roofies
back to the front pages. The twins were convicted in connection with roofie rapes of more than a dozen
women.
The bad press reduced the availability of roofies, and GHB ascended in popularity at raves and clubs.
Drew Luster apparently was on the ground floor of the trend.

A Sexual Fetish
What was behind Drew Luster's repeated episodes of sex with apparently unconscious women?

Dr. Judy Kuriansky

It is evidence of a sexual compulsion and personality disorder, according to Dr. Judy Kuriansky, a
clinical psychologist, certified sex therapist and expert on sex, love and psychology.
"When you have sex with an unconscious person, it means that you cannot emotionally tolerate the
exchange that it necessary with a real persondealing with feelings and needs and giving back to the
person," Kuriansky, whose practice is based in New York, told Crime Library. "It is infantile, hostile
and shows inability to respect women...You are the boss and power. Women do your bidding and
cannot complain. You can do anything you want and not suffer the consequences."
Kuriansky said somnophilia, sometimes called "Sleeping Beauty Syndrome," is not an uncommon
fetish. But it is based on domination and submission dynamics that can be unhealthy, and Kuriansky
said submissive partners should proceed with extreme caution.
In Luster's case, Kuriansky noted, the "partners" appeared to have no choice.
She said she had followed the Luster affair closely and had a number of theories about his psyche:

He needs to take control over women.

He has low self-esteem, despite his wealth and looks, and feared rejection by women.
He is spoiled and accustomed to getting what he wants from women and others.
Parental dynamics likely play a role. Perhaps he was ordered around by his mother or father.
Perhaps he was intrigued by his late psychiatrist father's ability to use drugs to change behavior
or consciousness in his clients.

Kuriansky said there is an important distinction between people like Luster and ravers or others who
occasionally experiment with fetish sex and narcotics that have a reputation as sexual enhancers.
Luster's repeated behavior was compulsive to the point of being out of controlindicative of "a real
personality disorder," she said.
"The fetish does not just go away because it is so seductive and feels so powerful for the man,"
Kuriansky said. "Something drastic has to happen where he is confronted and caught and made to face
up to the unacceptability of his actions. Otherwise he wouldn't stop on his own as it is too seductive
and a thrill for him."
She added that Luster's background of privilege "would condition him to think he can act above the
law."

Bond Reduced

After Luster spent five months in jail, an appeals court ruled that his $10 million bail was unreasonably
high. Bail was reduced to $1 million, and he was freed four days before Christmas 2000. He put up
$700,000, his mother $300,000.

GPS ankle tracker

The terms of his release amounted to house arrest. A GPS device was attached to his ankle, and he was
confined to his home except for essential trips.
Two months later, a long-delayed preliminary hearing finally began.
Each of Luster's three alleged victims testified against him. During the proceeding, both Tonja and
Shauna viewed for the first time portions of the 30-minute sex videos that Luster made while they
were unconscious.
Tonja blurted out that Luster was a "big asshole...I just can't believe he did this."
Shauna added, "I'm disgusted."

Detective with videos in court

Defense attorney Joel Isaacson argued that the women willingly took GHB with Luster as part of the
"rave lifestyle." He said the sex was consensual and Tonja, in particular, often took GHB as a sexual
stimulant.
"At some point, she becomes unconscious," Isaacson said. "He continues his sexual efforts. We're
saying [the sex] was consented to."
But Prosecutor John Blair said, "We see a defendant who enjoys raping and sexually assaulting young
helpless women who are unconscious."

At the close of the three-day hearing, Judge James Cloninger, "What I think occurred [to Carey] is best
understood in the light of what occurred to Shauna and Tonja."
It was an ominous comment for Luster and his case.
Cloninger ruled there was adequate evidence to send the case on to district court for trial.

On Trial/On the Run

Andrew Luster in court

The official courtroom face-off between Luster and his accusers finally was set to begin in the fall of
2002.
The stringent terms of Luster's house arrest had been a sore point for nearly two years, and as the trial
approached the defense team petitioned Ventura County Superior Court Judge Ken Riley to allow more
freedom of movement to allow Luster to prepare his defense.
Prosecutors argued vehemently against any relaxation of the terms. They reiterated that Luster's wealth
made him liable to flee. But Judge Riley granted Luster full freedom of movement from 8 a.m. to 8
p.m. each day. Luster's electronic ankle monitor would alert authorities only if he was not physically
present in his home outside those hours.
If he had a mind to run, he could get in his car at 8:01 a.m. and drive for a full half-day before anyone
would know he was missing.
The trial began Dec. 16, and a jury of seven women and five men viewed the sex tapes and heard from
each of the three alleged victims during the first week of testimony. Just before Christmas, Judge Riley
declared a two-week holiday recess.

Judge Ken Riley

But when the trial resumed in January, the marquee figure was absent from the courtroom. Authorities
revealed that Andrew Luster had skipped bail and disappeared on Jan. 3.

Judge Riley admitted he screwed up. He had given Luster a half-day lead on authorities when he
decided to flee.
"At the time I thought it was a legitimate request," Riley later said. "As it turns out, I made a
mistake."
The trial went on without him.

'She Dug It'

On Jan. 10, jurors watched a three-hour video recording of Luster's conversation with a woman
detective on the day of his arrest in 2000. Luster, barefoot and wearing shorts and a muscle shirt, was
so confident that he waived his right to consult an attorney.
"We did have consensual sex, completely consensual," Luster said of Carey. "I don't know where she
gets assault. There was no struggling, no saying, 'No, no, no,' nothing like that...She totally dug it.
There was no negativity at all. She was loving it."
Luster insisted again and again that he had done nothing wrong, and jurors heard his characterization
of Carey as a "fun-loving nymph."
But Luster's flight was a devastating blow to his attorneys, who apparently had intended to put him on
the witness stand as the centerpiece of their case.

Attorney Roger Diamond

Instead, attorney Roger Diamond was forced to repeat his earlier assertions that the sex was
consensual, the women were merely pretending to be asleep, and each of the accusers willingly took
GHB as part of "hot and heavy" lovemaking that was part of the rave lifestyle.
Diamond's best courtroom prop was a blown-up version of Carey smiling on Luster's sofa on the night
they metproof, Diamond said, that she was enjoying the evening.
But his assertions seemed hollow without a client sitting beside him at the defense table.
The old bromide hung in the air throughout the proceedings: Innocent men don't run.
Diamond attempted to broach the awkward subject. He likened Luster to the title character in the TV
serial and film "The Fugitive": innocent and wrongly convicted, he sets out to seek justice.
Several jurors seemed to suppress smiles at the absurd comparison.

Guilty
Jurors took two days to reach a verdict. On Jan. 21, they declared Luster guilty of an astounding 86 of
87 charges against him, deadlocking on a single, insignificant poisoning charge.
Many of the counts had been added to California state law in the wake of the 1996 federal druginduced sexual assault law. Luster was convicted of 20 counts of drug-induced rape, 17 counts of
raping an unconscious victim, and multiple counts of sodomy and oral copulation by use of drugs.
A month later, the three victims were invited back into court before sentencing.
"Mr. Luster should be here today," said Carey. "He should have to face his victims so our voices haunt
his dreams."
"How can I possibly begin to outline all of the ways in which Andrew Luster has damaged my life?"
said Tonja. "I am still afraid of falling asleep at night."
"I'm only 23 and I'm going to live with this for the rest of my life," said Shauna. "He didn't have any
regard when he raped me. He didn't have any remorse during his trial. He should be sentenced to the
maximum for his crimes."
Defense attorneys tried to delay sentencing until Luster could be located, but Judge Riley said, "The
bottom line is Mr. Luster could be here today if he wanted to be, and he is not."
Riley, perhaps still embarrassed and angry, lowered the boom.
He gave Luster consecutive six-year sentences on each of the 20 rape counts, plus four years for
poisoninga total of 124 years in prison. Luster would have little hope of anything but a mercy parole in
his lifetime. Riley added a $1 million fine, which Luster was to pay to the California crime victims'
restitution fund.

Nabbed in Mexico
Luster's decision to flee was not made on the spur of the moment.
He forwarded his mail, withdrew funds from stock accounts, arranged for care of his dog and packed
like a man planning an around-the-world trip.
But freedom proved fleeting.
Authorities suspected that he had gone to Mexico, where he once owned a beach house and often spent
time on surfing vacations.
Less than six months after he vanished, on June 18, 2003, professional bounty hunter Duane "Dog"
Chapman seized Luster in the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta.

Duane 'Dog' Chapman

He was hustled back to the United States the next day and soon found himself in California's Wasco
State Prison.

Wasco State Prison

Chapman was tipped by an American tourist couple that Luster was living in Mexico under the David
Carrera.
His life on the lam wasn't so different from the way he lived in California.
He slept near the ocean, staying at cheap hotels. He surfed during the day and spent his nights cruising
clubs.

Puerto Vallarta
After Luster was apprehended, reporters snooping around Puerto Vallarta discovered that he had left
behind in his hotel room a journal with several disturbing entries. Under the bold, underlined heading
"PAYBACK," Luster had carefully etched in ink the names of the three victims of his attacks.
The journal indicated Luster was still in a state of deep denial about his fault and culpability in the
rapes.

Andrew Luster arrest photo

The Ventura County Star reported that Luster wrote this creepy passagereferring to himself in the third
personunder the "Payback" rubric, apparently referring to police and prosecutors:
"They were trying to do him in for having sex with two of his past girlfriends, lock him up forever for
being with two girls he had slept with over 100 times each. Yes they were in an extreme state of
inebriation and a vid(eo). But this, as any actively sexual person (player) knows, is not outside the
grounds of ethical play."
Elsewhere, the journal gave graphic evidence that Luster's twisted libido was still raging. He had jotted
down pickup linesin Spanish.

Appeals Moot

Andrew Luster in custody

He may not have known it at the time, but his decision to take flight from justice would have vast legal
ramifications.
The Luster case might have been an appellant lawyer's dream, with three complicated victims,
questions about the police seizure of the sex video, conflicts with Judge Riley over admissibility of
evidence and concerns over whether police and prosecutors had primed or prompted Tonja and Shauna
to help them shape their case.
But under California law, Luster forfeited all rights to appeal when he skipped out on his bail.
Appeals court Judge Kenneth Yegan wrote, "An appellate court may employ dismissal as a sanction
when a defendant's flight operates as an affront to the dignity of the court's proceedings. It is often said
that a fugitive 'flouts' the authority of the court by escaping, and that dismissal is an appropriate
sanction for this act of disrespect...Had petitioner voluntarily reappeared, he would have a much
stronger argument for reinstatement of the appeal."

Defense attorney Roger Diamond was deflated.

"The Court of Appeal was obviously upset with the fact that Luster took advantage of the bail
reduction that it made," he said. "The court might have taken it personally."
Luster has tried to claim that he was coerced into fleeing by another of his defense attorneys, Richard
Sherman. Luster filed a $6 million lawsuit against Sherman in 2004, alleging he was part of a
conspiracy to defraud him of his house, antiques and money.
The complaint alleges, "During several meetings at Sherman's office and in court, Sherman...told
Luster to flee to Mexico or otherwise he would end up a 'dead man' as a result of the criminal trial."
"The charges are absurd," Sherman told reporters. He said Luster was angling to get his right to appeal
reinstated by trying to prove that someone else counseled him to run.
The strategy is no surprise.
Drew Luster continues to blame everyone but himself for the wreck that his life has become.

Andrew Luster
Victims Tonja and Shauna each won civil lawsuits against Luster, who was ordered to pay a total of
$39 million. The women's attorneys have been busy ever since trying to untangle the Luster/Factor
family investments.
Separately, a judge ordered $430,000 of Luster's bail money paid to the three victims to compensate
for lost wages, attorneys' fees, counseling and medical expenses. Elizabeth Luster, meanwhile, has
filed her own lawsuit seeking recovery of Drew's bail money. The suit alleges that her attorney's
ineptitude cost her the $1 million. The attorney, Joan Lavine, said she was "amazed and shocked" by
the suit.
Luster has sold his Mussel Shoals pad and declared bankruptcy. Lawsuits from the Luster affair likely
will slog through California courts for years to come.

Resources
''Luster Denies Charges, Adding His Life is Now a 'Nightmare,'" by Tina Dirmann, Los Angeles Times,
Sept. 3, 2000
"The Thin Blurred Line: A Ventura County Rape Case Shows How Difficult It Can Be to Judge the
Truth When Sex Takes Place in a Hard-Partying Haze," by Mary A. Fischer, Los Angeles Times
Magazine, Dec. 1, 2002

"Sex, Lies and Videotape," by Matthew Heller, London Independent, Oct. 14, 2001
"County Jury Views Videos of Alleged Rapes," by Tracy Wilson, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 17, 2002
"Luster 'Sick, Evil,' Witness Testifies," by Rachel Uranga, Los Angeles Daily News, Dec. 20, 2002
"Woman Testifies She Was Encouraged by Luster to Take GHB," Associated Press, Dec. 20, 2002
"Luster on Tape Denies Raping Student," by Fred Alvarez, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11, 2003
"Jurors Told Defendant in Rape Case Fled," by Tracy Wilson, Los Angeles Times, Jan 14, 2003
"California Max Factor Heir Guilty of Rapes," by Tracy Wilson, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 22, 2003
"Luster Gets 124 Years in Rapes," by Tracy Wilson, Los Angeles Times, Feb 19, 2003
"Fugitive Rapist Is Captured in Mexico," by Tracy Wilson, Richard Boudreaux and Jennifer Mena, Los
Angeles Times, June 19, 2003
"Luster's Journal Has 'Payback' List, by Aron Miller, Ventura County Star, June 21, 2003
"In Mexico, Luster Hid in Plain Sight," by Jennifer Mena and Megan Garvey, Los Angeles Times, June
22, 2003
"Luster's Wild Nights on the Lam," by Aron Miller, Ventura County Star, June 26, 2003
"Luster's Second Appeal Denied," by Aron Miller, Ventura County Star, July 2, 2003
"Max Factor heir Andrew Luster must pay $19 million to rape victim," Associated Press, Aug. 16,
2003
"Luster's Mother Feared for Grandchildren," by Grace Lee, Los Angeles Daily News, Aug. 20, 2003
"Max Factor Heir Andrew Luster must pay more than $20 million to victim," Associated Press, Oct. 3,
2003
"Luster Escape Is Called Coerced," by Holly J. Wolcott, Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2004