Poor Pedro Gonzalez.
The Orange County serial rapist/burglar used a reliable knife to frighten and restraint his victims, but when it came time to complete his crime his other tool wouldn't work.
Oh, Gonzalez tried and tried and tried and tried over a seven-hour period.
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In April 2006, he forced one of his victims to undress in a garage, stared at her, laughed, asked questions and rambled but was unable to maintain an erection in one two-hour attempt.
In the hopes that a change of scenery might help, Gonzalez–a methamphetamine user–then moved this victim to another location–inside the back of an abandoned car parked in the backyard of an abandoned house. This time he managed to briefly penetrate the woman's vagina but, thankfully, couldn't ejaculate, according to court records.
A determined Gonzalez wouldn't give up.
For three more hours, he kept the woman, who was in the U.S. illegally, subdued in hopes that he could finish his disgusting crime.
Finally, at 5 a.m., he gave up and let his victim go. Seven months later, the woman identified him as her assailant. He had 151 milligrams of meth hidden in his shoe when police took him to jail. The OC district attorney's office won convictions for nine felonies committed from April to December 2006.
In an appeal, the 30-year-old Gonzalez claimed that Superior Court Judge Patrick Donahue had unfairly limited his intoxication defense. The justices noted evidence in his favor–limp dick syndrome–but concluded that Donahue had not erred.
This week, the appellate court upheld the conviction and punishment: 35 years to life in a California prison.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
