View Single Post
Old June 6th, 2006 #2
JimInCO
Meinungsverbrecher
 
JimInCO's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: The Big Rock
Posts: 2,965
Default

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/69663.htm

STAR'S RAPIST FACES '96 SEX RAP

By LAURA ITALIANO

June 6, 2006 -- Leroy Johnson's first knifepoint rape was at age 13. Only two years later, he turned his knife on a young Kelly McGillis - savagely raping the then-aspiring actress and her roommate in their Upper West Side apartment.

Tomorrow, Johnson will go on trial for a 1996 double rape at knifepoint in Greenwich Village that is almost a mirror of the 1982 attack on McGillis - from the push-in at the victims' door, to the terrifying death threats, to the opportunistic attack on a roommate who happened to be home.

The heinous attack involving McGillis began when Johnson and his accomplice first threatened her roommate with a knife as the woman entered the apartment where McGillis was already at home.

Spotting the men assaulting her roomie, the soon-to-be star tried frantically to call the police but stopped when she also was threatened with a knife. Johnson then raped both women.

He would later be apprehended through fingerprint evidence and sent to juvenile jail.

By law, prosecutors cannot tell jurors in the latest case that one of Johnson's previous victims is McGillis, among five of his alleged targets by a man who, at age 39, has spent 20 of the past 26 years in prison.

McGillis would recover from her ordeal enough to star in such '80s films as "Witness" and "Top Gun" - but still spoke openly about never quite getting over the horror of the attack.

"Legally, I suppose justice has been done," the actress said in a 1988 interview after playing a sex-crimes prosecutor in "The Accused." "Psychologically, I don't think so.

"Believe me," she added, when asked if the movie was a form of revenge against her attacker, "I have my fantasies."

McGillis, 48, is on location in Hawaii, her manager, David Williams, said yesterday. She's starring in Roger Corman's latest action-adventure movie, "Primevil." She was not available for comment.

While jurors at the upcoming trial won't be told of her rape, the panel will still learn about what is nonetheless a compelling, true-crime story involving the other sex assault.

It's a case in which modern DNA technology combined with dogged, cold-case work to catch a suspect who eluded authorities for nine years.

Had another year passed, the Village rapes would have been too old to prosecute under the 10-year statute of limitations.

Johnson is accused of pushing his way, at knifepoint, into the victims' Waverly Place apartment and raping both women.

He allegedly tried to take with him any property that might contain biological evidence.

Cops did collect some evidence on the women's bodies, but 1996 DNA technology was not up to the task of developing a profile.

Only when the Manhattan DA's cold-case squad retested the evidence last year, using modern technology, could a match be made to Johnson.

According to records made public during previous criminal cases, Johnson, of The Bronx, has reportedly suffered psychiatric problems his whole life.

At age 3, his father died of a drug overdose. At about the same time, his mother developed schizophrenia, spending much of her life in psych hospitals.

Yesterday, in a pretrial proceeding in Manhattan Supreme Court, Assistant District Attorney Michele Bayer detailed a life of depravity and violence that started in 1979, when Johnson was only 12. For example:

* In 1979, Johnson was convicted of two knifepoint robberies.

* In 1980, at age 13, he was convicted of raping, sodomizing and robbing a woman and is sent to a state juvenile jail.

* In 1982, at age 15, he escaped and committed the rape against McGillis and her roommate.

* While in prison in 1993, he was convicted of threatening to kill President George Bush and claiming that he was under orders by Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy to drive a tank full of explosives into the White House.
__________________
.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A careful study of anti-semitism prejudice and accusations might be of great value to many jews,
who do not adequately realize the irritations they inflict."
- H.G. Wells (November 11, 1933)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------