Max Factor heir and convicted rapist Andrew Luster has been denied early release from prison by a Ventura County judge.
Luster, 60, was found guilty of 86 counts of drugging and raping unconscious women in 2003. He was originally sentenced to 124 years, but on a 2013 appeal his jail time was reduced to 50 years.
He was expected to walk free for his heinous crimes after the DA’s office received a letter requesting he be released, but on Wednesday, a Board of Parole Hearing panel opted to reverse the decision, citing ‘significant errors of fact surrounding Luster’s offenses.’
‘Our office stands firmly against the release of Andrew Luster,’ District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said of the rapist who ‘engaged in sadistic sexual abuse’ against his victims.
‘His heinous acts, which include drugging and raping his victims, warrant a full and complete prison sentence,’ the DA added.
Nasarenko insisted that Luster does not deserve to walk free because he’s ‘continued to minimize his conduct’ while incrassated, and that if he did he ‘would be a grave injustice to the survivors and a threat to public safety.’
He was originally asked to be set free after his crimes were reclassified as ‘non-violent’ under a 2016 law change masterminded by Kamala Harris, DailyMail.com previously revealed.
The great-grandson of cosmetics giant Max Factor Sr., who would drug his victims with gamma hydroxybutyrate – a prohibited drug in the U.S.- also referred to as liquid ecstasy, was granted parole in August, having served just half his sentence.
Luster was eligible for parole thanks to Proposition 57 – a criminal law amendment written by Harris during her term as California’s Attorney General that gives offenders deemed non-violent automatic parole after serving half their sentence.
Now, the District Attorney’s office has made it clear that Luster will not be released from Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, California, because he ‘engaged in sadistic sexual abuse of their comatose bodies.’
‘In two of the attacks, Luster recorded his rape and sexual abuse of his victims,’ the DA’s office added.
One of his victims bravely came forward in an exclusive DailyMail.com interview to talk about her fears if he were released.
Tonja Balden, 51, who was just 23 when she was drugged and raped by Luster after a night out in Santa Barbara, told DailyMail.com: ‘I’m afraid that when he is released he may continue the same crimes. He just turned 60. That’s not very old.
‘It is so psychopathic to set up this type of thing where you find a woman, drug her, and then she’s an unconscious body and to do all of these things to her while you’re videotaping it. That is a real sadistic way of thinking that I don’t know if that can be fixed.’
Balden said she was hurt and angry that drugging and raping an unconscious person was ever reclassified as a ‘non-violent’ crime.
She was just 23 when she was drugged and raped by Luster one night in October, 1996 in Santa Barbara, California.
She had no idea of what had happened to her until, four years later, she was shown a horrifying video by police that showed her completely unconscious and being raped and sodomized by Luster on the night they met.
She told DailyMail.com: ‘I was completely confident it wasn’t me until I saw [the tape]. But it was me – I was laying on his bed completely unconscious.
‘I actually looked like a dead body, but I was fully clothed and I was wearing the outfit that I wore, that I was wearing the very first night that I had met him.
‘That’s how I knew when it happened. It happened within hours of meeting him. I cannot tell you how surreal it was to see yourself like that and then to have to watch the entire thing.’
With her voice cracking, she added: ‘I don’t want to go as far as saying that it was like watching yourself be murdered, but there was that feeling of watching yourself totally incapacitated and completely vulnerable.’
Balden is one of three women police were able to identify from Luster’s collection of rape tapes and she was one of the key witnesses at his January 2003 criminal trial which descended into a circus after he went on the lam.
While Luster lurked at a hotel in Puerto Vallarta writing a retaliation list that included her name, Balden had to take the stand and endure the humiliation of the video of her rape played in open court.
Although Luster was convicted in absentia, it wasn’t until June 2003 that he was finally captured by Duane, ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter,’ Chapman, and handed over to the FBI.
Chillingly, along with his retaliation list, Mexican authorities also found a camera and tripod set up in his room – strongly suggesting he would have continued his crime spree had he not been caught.
Despite having her life turned upside down by Luster, Balden says she supported his initial sentence of 124 years being reduced to 50 as he will be released at the age of 86.
She even wrote to the convicted rapist, telling DailyMail.com: ‘I had a little compassion for him and I wrote a letter in support of that reduced sentence.
‘At that time, the 50 years was going to be 50 years, but then when Prop 57 passed in 2016, it changed his crimes to non-violent, which means they’re no longer felonies at this point.’
Balden said California State Senator Marie Alvarado-Gil had told her that carjacking is considered a worse offense in California than what Andrew Luster did.
‘It just makes absolutely no sense at all,’ she said.
Although Harris never publicly declared her support for Proposition 57, the issue arose repeatedly during her 2016 Senate run with her opponent Rep. Loretta Sanchez pointing out that the now Vice-President’s definition of ‘non-violent’ crimes included the rape of an unconscious person and human trafficking.
In a statement released at the time, Sanchez, a Democrat, said: ‘The ballot title and summary, written by Attorney General Kamala Harris, calls serious violent crimes ‘non-violent,’ including crimes such as rape by intoxication of an unconscious person, human trafficking involving a sex act with minors.
‘Proposition 57 is the misleading and dangerous ballot initiative that would allow serious, violent criminals out on early release without completing their sentences.’
The Luster case was also featured in a brochure highlighting the dangers of Proposition 57 but then-Governor Jerry Brown insisted that it would not apply to him because he committed sex crimes.
Balden described Harris’s authorship of Proposition 57 as ‘disappointing’, adding that the Vice-President should have heeded the warnings and been ‘well-aware’ that drugging and raping an unconscious person is a violent crime.
She said: ‘I’m just really taken aback that she was made aware that was being omitted as a violent crime and that she was okay with that.
‘I am hurt actually.’
Since hearing that there was a possibility that her abuser could be released, Balden has now thrown her weight behind a new California Senate bill called SB268 which was brought by Senator Marie Alvarado-Gil.
Alvarado-Gil, who was elected as a Democrat but crossed the floor to join the Republicans last month, says the new legislation has cross-party support and would, once again, reclassify the rape of an unconscious person as a violent crime attracting stiff penalties and, crucially, remove their right to early release.
The bill is currently awaiting the signature of California Governor Gavin Newsom and Balden has a simple message for him: sign it.
‘I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t,’ she told DailyMail.com.