Don Haidl—once an assistant sheriff, still a multimillionaire—promised his son he'd never serve a minute in prison. But almost four years after Greg Haidl and two buddies raped an unconscious minor in his father's Newport Beach garage, the Haidl Three have a new home: Wasco State Prison.
On Wednesday, a law-enforcement source said, the California Department of Corrections loaded Haidl, Keith Spann and Kyle Nachreiner onto a bus headed for Wasco, which sits on 634 acres of flat, treeless farmland north of Bakersfield and has more than 6,000 inmates in cells built for half that number. Haidl, Spann and Nachreiner will be limited to such hobbies as crop farming, dry cleaning and furniture upholstery. Videotaping is presumably not allowed.
Although prison officials won't discuss the status of individual inmates, they say newcomers may be moved on to other prisons. Like all new inmates, the Haidl Three will undergo a security and health evaluation; because of his father's ties to the Orange County Sheriff's Department, Haidl may present an interesting challenge.
The Haidl Three are nationally infamous. On July 6, 2002, the trio videotaped themselves sexually assaulting an unconscious 16-year-old girl at a Newport Beach high school party. After the girl passed out, they laughed and danced as they repeatedly shoved a Snapple bottle, apple juice can, lit cigarette and pool cue into the victim's vagina and anus. As a defense, the men claimed the girl had faked incapacitation and enticed them into a sexual frenzy in hopes of shooting a necrophilia-themed porno.
A jury convicted the men in March 2005. Earlier this month, Superior Court Judge Frank Briseo ignored their late apologies and appeal for probation. Briseo could have sentenced them to more than 14 years, but chose milder punishments because they were teenagers at the time of the crime. Each was given a six-year sentence. But because of time already served in the Orange County Jail and sentencing calculations based on potential good behavior, Haidl could be free in 21 months; Spann and Nachreiner in 30. Each man will have to register as a sex offender.
READ THE HAIDL GANG RAPE ARCHIVE
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.