I thought he was attractive at that time, but I don't now.
I never, never, in a million years thought that
he was capable of doing the things that he did.
That picture, it's -- it's in my mind.
I can never get rid of it.
That part, it hurts.
It hurts that
he would be smiling during it.
Yeah.
Ugh.
I guess it's just hard to, you know,
relive it.
So. Yep. I'm done.
[sniffles]
REPORTER: The so-called Millionaire Playboy,
convicted of multiple rape charges, captured by
a bounty hunter south of the border,
now serving life in prison -- just who is Andrew Luster?
If he hadn't have recorded his crimes,
nobody would know what he's done.
And then it was in the papers, it was in the news.
It was one thing after the next.
It got to be so much for me to handle.
I used to get stopped all the time or, "Oh, my gosh.
"Are you that lady from, you know, the -- are you
the person that that happened to?"
It was such a hard time in my life.
It was so hard.
I hate to even, um, think about that part.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
-[knock at door] -[creaking]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[water dripping]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
So this is obviously a picture of Andrew Luster here,
and that is his dog, who was a really sweet dog.
I loved her.
He was a lot of fun to be around.
You know, he was easy to have a conversation with and had
a good personality.
It was kind of easy, breezy
as far as, you know, he didn't have a job to go to,
he just got to play all the time.
This is, like, how I met him, and you would never, ever
think in a million years that this guy is
a serial rapist.
So in October 1996,
I was living in Phoenix, Arizona.
My sister was, um, a new student at
UC Santa Barbara.
I ended up flying out from Arizona to go and visit her,
and we decided to go out that night,
and, uh, while we were waiting for our drinks at the bar,
I just hear this male voice saying, "Hey,
can I buy you a drink?"
And I looked over, good-looking guy,
and I kind of looked at my sister,
and he introduced himself, "I'm Andrew,"
and extended his hand.
When he offered to buy me a drink, I had said no.
I wasn't gonna have him buy me a drink. I don't even know him.
Anyway, he was persistent and said he
and his friend had a table outside and that we
should come out there and sit at a table.
So we agreed to go sit outside with our drinks and kind of get
to know them.
And, um, you know,
we got to talking, and he, I hate to even admit it now,
because knowing
the kind of person that he is now that I know --
he was so charming,
dazzling smile, just really witty and bright,
and so kind of after some time passed,
he told us that he has a beach house that's nearby,
said it's really close, it's right on
the beach, and that he makes a great margarita, and...
and so I wanted to go.
So my sister, she's like, "No way, we're not going there.
That's crazy, super dangerous."
And she was right.
At the time, I just couldn't see that at all.
And, um,
ultimately, she agreed -- I should have never even gone to
that table and talked to him,
but I just was so unsuspecting.
But at the time, with my 23-year-old brain, I didn't see
the danger in it.
I just feel like such a fool now.
We went inside of his house.
He made all four of us, um, a margarita.
After you.
I was not feeling intoxicated at all at the time.
When we got to the house -- no, we were completely sober.
Andrew and I, with margaritas in hand,
we were sitting on his couch in his living room, talking.
And so he says, "Oh, well, have you ever heard of GHB?"
He says, oh, well, it's a natural supplement that he
uses it all the time, and did I wanna try it?
And... you know, I said yes,
which is not like me.
I didn't -- I wasn't
a person to use drugs or anything like that.
And so he has two shot glasses, one for him and one for myself,
and he's like, okay, just chase it down,
and then he took it, too.
I mean, you know, we -- we both did it,
and I became very talkative
and happy feeling.
It was a euphoric feeling, just like he said.
And, um,
and then I kind of felt like I needed to lay down.
And I just remember looking up at his ceiling, and I was
talking about my cat from childhood, and that is
the last thing that I remember.
And the next thing that I remember, I...
it was morning, and I -- I open my eyes, and I'm in
a room that was unfamiliar to me, I'm in a bed.
I have all my clothes on. Even my pantyhose are still on.
So everything was intact.
And then just very shortly afterwards,
he -- Andrew came walking in,
and he says, "Oh my gosh, good.
Are you okay?" And he says, um, "Gosh,
"you passed out last night.
I had to -- I had to carry you in here."
And I just remember thinking how -- I passed out?
How could I possibly pass out?
I've never passed out in my life,
and certainly I didn't have
enough alcohol to make me pass out or black out.
And it felt very eerie, very eerie.
I just didn't know why I was missing
all that time, but he made me feel
very comfortable in the way that he --
he seemed to be very concerned about me, you know, he was --
he was concerned that I passed out, and he was, like,
trying to take care of me, you know.
[voice breaking] That part is just so disturbing,
that he, you know,
made it seem like
everything was okay, you know?
Of course, there's that little voice in your head that's
like saying, um, something is wrong here in
this situation.
When I found out what he did,
it was unbelievable.
So that next morning when I ended up leaving,
Andrew said he wanted to take me flying the next day,
and, you know, he wants to make plans to get
together to see me again.
Even though I want to say that in the -- in my mind though,
I just felt like this isn't adding up, like this is --
something is off here, but at the time,
it just seemed so exciting to me, you know, I just --
I'm gonna go flying tomorrow.
I've never been in a private plane before.
I'll call you.
TONJA: And I -- I believed him.
So we went on dates for the next several days.
He was so gentlemanly and charming
and very nice and considerate.
Always opened my door for me,
always pulled out my chair for me.
He ended up revealing that he comes from a major fortune.
His great-grandfather was a big time cosmetics mogul,
a well known name.
Um, and he inherited a huge trust fund.
That's what he lived off of.
There was never any, um, sign
that he could be dangerous at all.
So I made the leap.
I was young, and I wanted to see what was out there in the world,
and, um, you know, he was good to me,
but shortly after I moved in with him, and of course I was
sharing his room with him,
he had a kind of a walk-in closet,
but I did notice he had some weapons.
He had, um, an AK-47, believe it or not.
And he had a couple of other guns.
Why would somebody have so many weapons?
What is that all about?
And there were several videotapes in there, you know,
um, VHS tapes, like dozens.
And I thought, oh my gosh, look at all of this.
Why did he have all that?
Oh, you scared me?
TONJA: I asked him about it,
what those were all about, and he kind of flippantly said that,
well, he was a surfer, you know,
and so he likes to watch surf videos, and he likes to make
surf videos. -Do you want to watch one?
Okay.
But they also had women in bikinis in it -- he called it,
um, what were they -- waves and babes.
Corny name, so corny.
But he thought it was great.
And I watched part of one of them,
and it wasn't just girls in bikinis
and then guys surfing -- it was more sexualized than...
it wasn't innocent.
And I felt really uncomfortable with it.
So I didn't really like it.
Even at the time, was red -- red flag to me.
What made me uncomfortable about it was that
I guess his fascination with the women and
creating a film.
He always had a camera, and had I had any idea
at that time, I would have been terrified.
I went to take a shower one day.
I didn't see anything out of the ordinary when I got in
the shower.
But when I got out of the shower, I saw
a video camera there on the back of the toilet,
facing towards the shower,
and I felt like,
you know, it wasn't there before.
It really creeped me out.
So I confronted him about it.
Andrew!
TONJA: You know, what were you doing?
Are you recording me when I'm taking a shower?
What is that?
And he was very like, "No, of course not."
He told me that he had just set it down in there,
and he just left it there.
I second-guessed myself.
And even though I knew
logically in my mind, well,
when I was undressing to get in the shower,
wouldn't I have seen the camera sitting there?
Yes, I would have. But he seemed innocent.
I just kind of like put that on the back burner for, well,
if there's anything else, then, you know,
I really need to be careful.
I didn't see the signs.
In retrospect, of course, now I can look at it and go,
oh, well, what about this? What about that?
He's really likable. I mean...
you'd be surprised -- it's, you know, you think, wow,
somebody like that is a psychopath, and you can
definitely tell -- no, you cannot tell.
So the way his house is set up,
there is a long kind of hallway that goes
out to a garage where you can do your
laundry, where the washer and dryer is.
And I had gone that way to do my laundry, and I --
I just never had looked around, and I didn't ever pay much
attention to it, but this one particular time,
I noticed on the wall on the right-hand side, he had
a collage of pictures of -- of various women
in -- most in bathing suits, you know, like at a beach,
and right away, when I looked at it,
something inside me felt -- it felt weird.
It didn't seem normal to me that anybody would have that.
You know, you'll see at people's houses,
they'll have collages of their friends
or their family members.
But this was only women, and they were not facing
the camera, like, smiling for the photo.
You could tell that they were all candid shots.
It was creepy and, you know, your intuition does tell you
when something is off, and it did feel a bit off to me.
And I caught a glimpse of my photo that was
added to the -- his collage there.
At the time,
I thought it was just sort of like
a notch on his belt type of thing.
And I did not appreciate that at all, being kind of like one
of his trophies on his wall or whatever that's supposed to be.
And so I immediately pulled it off of there, and I threw it
out in the trash.
And he noticed right away that it wasn't there,
and he got really upset with me.
Did you take down my picture?
TONJA: He was really pissed off.
He asked, "Well, where is it?"
And I said, "I threw it in the trash."
And he was very threatening.
He was right in my face.
Never touch my things again!
All of a sudden, he was this very angry
person who felt violated or felt that I had touched
something special of his.
And so that right away let me know that there was
something sinister, something not right.
AS ANDREW: Do you understand me?!
TONJA: And that, to me, in that moment
told me that that was something that he was hiding.
Well, now I know not only was I right,
but I was far from right,
actually, because it was so much worse than --
than what I even could have ever dreamed.
And...
in retrospect, I really think those women may
have been the women that he raped.
TONJA: After some time, after I'd been living there
for some time, it was a lot of little things about him
that I didn't like.
When he knew that I had removed my picture
from his prized collage there,
that was kind of the final straw.
I didn't trust him.
I just kind of had a building feeling
in my gut that
I didn't like him, and I didn't trust him anymore.
And it's like one of those things, you --
you just can't put your finger on it at the time.
But, you know, your -- your gut tells you,
your intuition tells you about people.
And so I was ending things with him and trying to figure out
where I was gonna go live.
And it was just a matter of days before I moved out.
And so it was pretty quick, and he wasn't expecting it.
When I was trying to get my things to go,
he did not want me to leave,
and he came in the room,
and he just had me by my wrist,
and he...
actually pinned me down on the ground.
And I -- at first, I thought he was just
kind of playing around.
I've never had a man be physical with me like
that before, so it was -- didn't seem real to me,
but then he wouldn't let me up.
[As Tonja grunting] Andrew! Get off me!
And then that's when it got -- I did get scared at that point.
And I thought if I yell,
is anybody gonna be able to hear me?
And I was telling him to let me up, and he wouldn't.
And then that is when I was afraid of him.
I didn't really know what he was gonna do.
I mean, he was begging me to stay.
He didn't want me to go.
And I remember telling him,
"Let me up. I gotta go. I gotta go."
Which he did eventually let me up.
I was done.
So Jon was a neighbor who lived
about 4, 5 houses down the street,
and, um, Andrew and he used to surf together.
They weren't really friends, they were acquaintances,
I guess you could say.
Jon and I liked each other right away -- of course,
neither one of us said anything. We were both in relationships.
It wasn't until things were ending with Andrew that I
finally, I asked Jon one day if he wanted to go out,
downtown Santa Barbara with me.
He said yes right away.
Andrew was very upset, uh, very upset,
and he took it as a, how could you do this to me?
And he -- he made it like
I was this item that was, you know, taken from him
and now Jon had it kind of thing.
I think he thought of me as a possession, not as a person.
There was one night, I was at Jon's house,
and we were in his bedroom,
and we were talking, and we were sitting on his bed,
but I remember feeling, I don't know, you get
a feeling, you know, like if somebody is staring at
you from behind,
and when I looked over, I saw a figure,
a silhouette of somebody in the window.
Jon!
It moved out of the way instantly, and I just
knew it could only be Andrew.
And it really creeped me out.
Why would you do something like that, you know?
That just seemed -- it was -- it was crossing a line,
definitely crossing a line.
It did seem to be getting pretty desperate at that point.
I was concerned that he would hurt Jon.
He had made some threats before.
He had said something about
burning Jon's house down, maybe like
an idea of to get rid of Jon so that we could run
away together.
It did worry me a little bit that he might do
something just out of sheer desperation
to try to get me back.
It's an obsessive type of thinking.
So the next day, Jon had left to go
to work and, you know, within minutes,
Andrew came down and knocked on the door.
[knocking noises]
And he's there, and he's begging me to come back to him.
You know, "Baby, you're killing me, you know,
you -- you've got to come back to me."
And, as a matter of fact, he admitted to spying in
the window, and he told me that he saw me and Jon in the room.
He was saying, "What do I have to do to prove
how much I love you?" And...
And so he wanted to cut his finger off with a knife.
And I could tell then that he was feeling desperate, I guess,
to try and get me back.
It's so ridiculous -- to me, it just seems so ridiculous.
It just seems, um... psycho.
I never felt like he truly ever loved me, you know.
I told him I wasn't coming back to him,
and I asked him to leave, and he did.
It was just the obsession with
the idea of that he couldn't have that.
And I think he's always been used to getting everything that
he wants, everything that he wants.
And it wasn't happening in this case, and it was like
he was willing, I guess, to do whatever it
took to...
you know, to get what he wanted.
And then now knowing what I know, that would have
changed everything, I mean -- I would have --
I would have been really afraid.
Okay. So...
This is a -- one of the many letters from Andrew.
[laughs shortly]
Oh, dear.
Okay, so he writes, "I swear as God is my witness,
"and may I fry in hell if I'm not being totally honest,
"I will never want or need anyone else
"if I'm with you, for you
"are my goddess, and I will always worship you,
"and there is no one else that gives me
the connection to God as you do."
So full of it.
"My dream is to marry you, move to Hawaii, raise a family."
Oh, my God. Can you imagine?
"I love you more than I've ever loved anything else,
"even my own life.
"You're the most important thing to me in the world.
Please be with me forever, eternally yours, Andrew."
That's crazy, and that's [bleep] and that, um, no.
The first time I read it, I knew that it was
manipulation, and...
he just wanted me back.
He wanted to win over Jon, and he just wanted me back.
That's how I feel about it.
I don't feel that he loved me at all.
There were so many letters like this.
The reason why I even saved them to begin with was I was saving
them to prove to the police
that he's bothering me -- I felt like he was stalking me.
But then it turned out to be evidence, you know,
later on when I actually found out what happened to me.
So I got a call from a good friend of ours,
and he was saying, "Did you see today's paper?"
And he's like, "You have to get the paper.
Andrew is in the paper."
And sure enough, there it was, you know,
in black and white print.
Andrew Luster was being charged with rape.
I think a college-aged woman,
he had drugged her, but she remembered
being attacked, and she especially remembers
that he raped her in a shower.
And it just seemed so surreal, I thought, oh, my gosh,
like, he's actually going to these lengths now?
Like, this is unbelievable, you know, that he would do this
to somebody.
And then it just said at the end, you know,
if you have any information about this person, contact
the investigations bureau, and there was a phone number there.
And for me, that was a no-brainer.
I called them that very day.
This detective, um, told me that when I walked in,
he recognized me.
I was not putting two and two together at all.
I had no -- no foresight of what I was gonna be told.
They said that they had raided his home and that they had, um,
discovered some videotapes.
They said, "We have a videotape with you on it,
"and -- or we think it's you, we just want you to identify
that that is you."
I had no suspicion that I was
on a videotape of any kind.
So they set up the TV,
put the VHS tape in there, and there I was,
laid out on his bed, unconscious,
and I had my clothes on at this time, and I was wearing
the outfit that I was wearing
the very first night that I wore --
that I met him, passed out on his bed.
And when I saw that, it was like...
total disbelief, I mean, yes, that was me.
But I -- it was like a rush of everything came back
at one time, because I thought, oh, my God, you know,
here -- this is the first night that I met him.
It was horrifying.
It was really horrifying to, um,
to see that, and, um, you know, ultimately,
I did have to watch the whole thing.
[As Tonja sobbing]
But, um,
it wasn't just a rape, you know.
Not that there is such thing as "just a rape," but it wasn't
just sex -- he, um, he had a sword, you know,
and, um, he burned me,
and, um, with the sword...
he pretended he was gonna gut me with it, you know,
like taking it all the way from the top to the bottom
and...just the things that he did,
and he narrated the entire video
like it was, um, like a show.
I mean, it was just...
horrifying, and,
you know, he -- he did,
like, torturous things.
You know, it's the craziest --
um, I wouldn't have known about any of it,
but he recorded it.
So, like...
I don't know, I guess thank God in
a way that he recorded it?
If he hadn't have recorded his crimes,
nobody would know what he's done.
Even though it's kind of a blessing in
a way that I don't remember,
to find out about it years later,
it doesn't really lessen the blow.
It kind of makes it worse in some ways, because...
You just feel so tricked.
It's hard to explain it.
And I had to watch myself not be able to defend myself.
It's like a bad dream,
you know, it's like,
um, it's like watching a movie.
He is smiling through the entire thing.
He -- he was having fun.
And...
that's the part that, like, really stands
out to me.
And they did end up telling me, detectives got
a search warrant, and they seized all of
these tapes, and they were tapes of him
raping many, many, many different women that
were unconscious.
In the criminal trial,
I was known as Jane Doe Number 3 and others were,
you know, Jane Doe Number 1 and 2, obviously.
That was kind of a creepy thing, to be referred
to as a Jane Doe.
There was no opportunity to talk to each other,
and...
God, I just really --
my heart goes out to them, too.
I would love to talk to one of them on
the phone or something or... I don't even know why,
but I guess there's kind of a bond there that's been created,
just because we've all been through
a similar horrific experience.
I'm so grateful, I really am, and I'm proud of both of them
for coming forward and -- and testifying in court.
That was really hard.
It was such a hard time in my life,
and they put me on, um,
antidepressants for, like, my increasing anxiety during
the whole criminal trial -- it just dragged on forever.
But the worst part ever was during
the criminal trial,
the courtroom was open to the public,
and you can imagine,
this was a very, very high-profile case, I mean,
it was nationwide, if not worldwide,
and they played the rape tape, you know, for the jury,
but anybody who was in the courtroom could see it.
I looked like a dead body, you know, I mean, except for
the sounds that I was making with my throat,
trying to breathe.
There were a couple of doctors that were
expert witnesses during the criminal trial who,
when they watched it, they said that my airway was,
you know, obstructed because I was so,
so, so heavily sedated.
And, um, one of them said that I was
lucky to have survived it.
That was really hard
to just have all these people in there, you know,
watching that happen to me.
I just hate him so much now.
He didn't care at all.
It was like one of the worst parts.
He just sat there and just looked at me with, like,
a blank look.
He didn't seem to have
any, um, remorse or feelings of guilt
whatsoever about hurting me or anything.
The bail was initially set, I believe,
only for a million dollars,
and I fought against that so much, because I said, well,
he can just post that in a heartbeat.
So he posted bail,
and he ended up with a ankle monitor.
So he was able to be at home on house arrest during the trial,
which, right away, I had said he's gonna take off.
I mean, I just knew he was gonna
take off -- he did.
Mid-trial, he's gone.
And that was so scary, because now he's gone.
He's on the run. What's he gonna do?
I was very afraid, because I thought, what if he gets away?
What if he wants to kill anybody
who's gonna testify against him?
You know, what if he just wants to get rid of the witnesses?
Every time I hear the trees rustle outside
my window or anything move outside, I'm --
I'm worried that it's him and that he's coming for me.
And I -- and I was scared.
When that sentence was handed down, it was like,
wow.
It gave me so much faith in the justice system,
because I felt like he will never get out.
He will never be able to do this to anybody ever again.
Like this is done, finished.
But I was in touch recently with the Attorney General's office.
He was the one who informed me about
Proposition 57, and when he explained it
to me that, well, there's this loophole in
there that -- that the rape of an unconscious person is
not deemed a violent crime.
And so I was blindsided by that, and now he's gonna get out in
a couple of years, so it's just unbelievable to me.
Unbelievable.
It's a really scary feeling.
I really want to stop it, but I don't think
that's possible, so I think the next best thing is to use
my voice.
What I hope for is to raise awareness about
the loophole in Prop 57.
I really feel that the people of
the State of California, if they knew, I mean,
nobody would be okay with that.
Pretty mind-blowing,
you know, this whole entire time I thought
he was gonna be in for the rest of my life,
the rest of my children's lives...
and ju -- just, I'm so sorry, I --
[clears throat]
Just knowing he's gonna be getting out
in less than three years is --
it's scary.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, that's him now, obviously.
[sniffles]
Yeah.
It's shocking, I mean, we're both older.
It's been a long time. It's been a really long time.
I wonder if he really did want to hurt people
or if he just wanted to make himself happy.
I think he was probably very used to getting
anything he wanted his whole life.
But yeah,
he didn't take no for an answer, that's for sure.
I hope that
me having the courage to speak up would
maybe help somebody else have the courage to speak up.
I know I've come out stronger for it, I know that, I mean,
you can't go through something like that and not unless you
decide to crumble instead and then just become like
a shell of yourself, you know, which there is no way I was
gonna let that happen, so, um, you know, and I've got
a wonderful support in my husband.
You know how they say, every cloud has a silver lining.
Had I never moved in with Andrew Luster,
I would have never met him, and we'll be married 25 years in
June, and I wouldn't have my two beautiful children who I have.
So...that's the good part in all of it.
♪
There's nothing I can do to protect myself and my kids.
I'm begging him "Please don't kill me in front of my kids."
I was shot point blank range.
Pow!
[gunshot blasts]
And then I went out.