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The great-grandson of cosmetics giant Max Factor – a convicted rapist who has been locked up for the past 19 years – has been denied parole after prosecutors said he still posed a risk to the public.
Captured and turned in by reality TV star Duane ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter’ Chapman, 59-year-old Andrew Luster was convicted of 86 criminal charges including rape of an unconscious person, sodomy, and poisoning in 2003.
Then 40, Luster’s conviction only came after a series of sensational events that at the time captivated the nation, including a highly publicized trial where California prosecutors alleged the scion took three women to his beachfront home and raped them after spiking their drinks with gamma hydroxybutyrate – or GHB.
Even more astonishing was his eventual capture by the bounty hunter, which came after Luster – supported by a trust fund of $3 million used to travel and surf Port Ventura’s many beaches – escaped to Mexico while out on $1million bail.
The great-grandson of beauty magnate Max Factor Sr., Luster was arrested in 2000 after a 21-year-old college student told cops he raped her. A search of his residence saw cops find tapes of Luster assaulting sleeping or unconscious women.
Andrew Luster – a convicted rapist who has been locked up for the past 19 years – has been denied parole after prosecutors said he still posed a risk to the public
The 59-year-old scion, pictured in June 2003 after his capture, lured women to his beachfront Mussel Shoals and raped them after spiking their drinks with gamma hydroxybutyrate – or GHB.
The makeup heir – who witnesses to his crimes described as ‘childlike’ – later paid $40million to two unnamed female victims that won civil suits against him, and has since declared bankruptcy.
He and his legal team had argued that the recorded encounters were consensual. The women awarded the $40million, who were depicted several of the sex tapes, testified at Luster’s criminal trial that they willingly took GHB-laced drinks, but never consented to the sex acts – which all occurred while they were unconscious.
Prosecutors claimed that Luster’s drug-fueled reign of terror lasted from at least 1996 and 2000, when he was in his 30s.
As proceedings drew on, and Luster was controversially granted $1 million bail, the sex fiend fled to Mexico – at which point he came under radar of Chapman, who at the time was still a year away from catapulting to superstardom with his hit show.
Receiving tips from a variety of sources including Luster’s own lawyer, Chapman, then 50, soon tracked down the disgraced scion – who was convicted in absentia while on the lam – to the the resort town of Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast.
Dog’s crew reportedly then got in a scuffle with Luster, eventually overpowering the fugitive, and were able to restrain him and whisk him into a car to California.
After skipping out to Mexico during court proceeding in 2003, Luster was captured and turned into police by reality TV star Duane ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter’ Chapman, who himself was arrested due to the fact bounty hunting is illegal in the Central American county
Chapman, pictured here after Luster’s capture with half-brother Tim and son Leland, reportedly got in a scuffle with Luster, eventually overpowering the fugitive, and were able to restrain him and whisk him into a car to California before they were stopped by Mexican cops
However, seemingly unbeknownst to the crew, bounty-hunting is outlawed in Mexico – a statute Mexican lawmen were quick to point out when they pulled over the procession before they made it to the border.
The encounter saw both Chapman and Luster arrested, with the latter extradited to the US and sentenced to 124 years in prison, to be carried out immediately.
Luster was granted the parole hearing after California voters passed the controversial Prop 57 that allows allows parole consideration for nonviolent felons
That sentence, however, was slashed in 2013 to 50, after attorneys for the then-49-year-old appealed the court’s ten-year-old decision, arguing for it to reduced to 25 years or less, citing Luster’s ‘stellar performance’ in prison.
A California judge then granted him a resentencing hearing, on the basis that the court ‘failed to state specific reasons for imposing full consecutive sentences’ as the law requires.
Then, in 2016, Luster’s case for freedom grew more pronounced, after California voters passed the controversial Prop 57 that allows allows parole consideration for supposedly nonviolent felons.
A loophole in the law also opened the door for the prison time reductions for felons already incarcerated for violent crimes, with some of the crimes Luster was convicted of now classified as ‘non-violent’ according to the guidance.
A parole hearing was subsequently set for the embattled scion in December of 2022, which was held Wednesday and saw what was likely Luster’s last bid for freedom denied before living out the rest of his days in prison.
Dog — who’s full name is Duane Chapman — faced felony kidnapping charges for capturing the affluent cosmetics heir Andrew Luster who was on the run in Mexico after posting $1million bail for multiple charges of drugging and raping three women
During an interview with Larry King in 2006, Dog – who at the time was wanted in Mexico after fleeing the country while out on his own bail – defended his decision to bring Luster to justice for his crimes, recalling how the rapist tried to offer them an alias once apprehended.
‘He said his name was David Correra. And of course I said wait a minute,’ Chapman recalled. ‘This is Andrew Stuart Luster, wanted on 86 counts of rape, got 124 hundred years in prison… of course luster spoke fluent Spanish and was telling the police officers I m not that guy, blah blah blah.’
Dog’s attorney William Bollard told Larry King: ‘Best case they dismiss, the case goes away. Worst case they have to stay on trial in Puerto Vallarta on a single charge of deprivation of liberty, it carries with it a sentence range from six months to four years.’
In 2007, Dog dodged extradition to Mexico when a judge finally dismissed the case.
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