Former Brinks Armored Car guard Jose Luis Capacete was sentenced today to 75 years to life in state prison for raping three female prostitutes in Orange County on separate occasions in 2011, including one that Christmas Eve.
The Baldwin Park 40-year-old, who was convicted June 6 of multiple sexual assault charges, has relatives in law enforcement, had been applying for jobs as a police officer and wielded a stun gun before tying up the women he assaulted.
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His undoing came when he flung cash and a gas credit card receipt with his name on it at the Harbor Boulevard prostitute he raped on Christmas Eve 2011.
Jose Luis Capacete, Brinks Armored Car Guard, Guilty of Raping Three Prostitutes
The other two victims were discovered later, one coming forward after a Homeland Security agent contacted police about a prostitute who'd complained about a john who also wielded a stun gun and tied her up. Investigators later found cell phones in Capacete's van and home that belonged to the women and rope that had the DNA of one victim on it.
Capacete explained to detectives he took the phones because he did not want the women calling police.
It was later revealed Brinks has a curious system for background checking as Capacete had pleaded guilty in 2009 to misdemeanor engaging and agreeing to engage in prostitution, which brought him 10 days in jail, three years probation and an AIDS test.
The defense tried to argue at trial the woman raped Christmas Eve was a liar, because she initially did not reveal her illegal profession to police, gave officers a false name and claimed she'd been snatched from outside a party she just left rather than the boulevard of whores she walked. The main defense argument was “insufficient evidence” to convict Capacete.
The jury obviously disagreed, deliberating about a day before convicting Capacete on two counts of sodomy by force, and one count each of forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by a foreign object, and forcible rape, all felonies, and a misdemeanor count of simple battery. Jurors also found true sentence-enhancing allegations of tying and binding victims, kidnapping and for crimes against multiple victims.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
Too sad, I used to work with him..