SANTA ANA, Calif. — She raised her index finger as he
was led away in handcuffs and clicked a mental picture of the man whose
actions have haunted her since that Christmas Eve night two decades
ago.
This is the last time you’ll see him, the prosecutor told her.
Joseph
Hyungmin Son, 40, kept his head bowed as an Orange County judge Friday
sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the
1990 Christmas Eve gang rape of a woman who was out walking her dog.
The
former movie actor, who had a role in an Austin Powers film, was
convicted last month of torturing a young woman he kidnapped off a
Huntington Beach street and sexually assaulted in 1990.
The
woman, then 19, flew in from out of state to tell the court how “this
sad excuse of a human … fed off the terror he inflicted to my body,
mind and spirit that night.”
Moments later outside
the 11th floor Santa Ana courtroom of Superior Court Judge Francisco
Briseno, the victim said she took a mental image of Son as a way of
“cleansing of the world.”
And, the mother of four said victims of crimes must not stay silent.
They “need to speak up, know they can live again, get up and live again,” she said.
Briseno ordered Son to register as a sex offender, finding that his crime was for “sadistic sexual gratification.”
Deputy
District Attorney Eric Scarbrough told the jury that Son is a sadist
who gained pleasure from the suffering of the 19-year-old victim he and
his crime partner abducted at gunpoint on Christmas Eve, and then
sexually assaulted in the back seat of a car while telling her
repeatedly that she was going to die.
Son, of Garden Grove, Calif., tortured her to get her to acquiesce to his desire to sexually assault her, Scarbrough said.
The
prosecutor urged the jury to convict Son, who played a shoe-throwing
bad guy in the 1997 spy-spoof film “Austin Powers: International Man of
Mystery,” to convict Son of both conspiracy to commit murder and
torture.
But defense attorney Darren Thompson convinced the jury that there was no specific intent on Son’s part to murder the victim.
Thompson
acknowledged that Son and his co-defendant sexually assaulted the
woman. But Thompson said they took several measures to conceal their
identities during the encounter more than 20 years ago, including
placing a jacket over the woman’s head and using false names.
A jury of eight men and four women, which deliberated about three hours, found Son not guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.
The
victim told the court in her impact statement Friday her memories of
the night are “rancid” and she saw herself at her own funeral then.
As
she was kidnapped and being driven off, she said she saw herself at her
own funeral with her family crying and screaming “why.”
“For
every injury he sadistically created on my skin, the more he reveled in
the moment,” she told the court. “Every time he struck with his gun,
his fist or while kicking me, the more violent he grew. … He made me
feel like I was being eaten alive when he bit me with no remorse in
sight.”
“He said he was giving me to himself as a Christmas present,” she said softly.
The
victim testified that after she was repeatedly raped and sodomized at
gunpoint, she was dragged out of the car naked and told to run.
She said one of her attackers, whom she identified as Son, told her: “It’s Christmas. This is your lucky day.”
The
woman testified that she was grabbed off a sidewalk, poked in the eyes,
her face was slammed into the ground, she was pistol whipped and
forcibly sexually assaulted for hours, during which time she was bitten,
all the while one of her attackers held a gun to her head. She added
that Son told her repeatedly that she was going to die.
Son
initially was charged with multiple sexual assaults and kidnapping
counts plus penalty enhancements, but those charges were dropped before
trial, in part because the statute of limitations had expired. Instead,
he stood trial only on conspiracy to commit murder and torture, both of
which carried potential life terms.
There were no arrests in the case in 1990, and the investigation went cold.
But
in 2008, Son was sent to prison for violating his parole on an
unrelated vandalism conviction. That arrest allowed authorities to
extract his DNA profile, which was matched to the DNA recovered during a
rape examination of the victim in 1990, prosecutors said.
Santiago
Gaitan, 40, Son’s co-defendant, was arrested in 2009 after he was
linked to the assault during a follow-up investigation after Son’s
arrest. He pleaded guilty to multiple sex crimes in January and was
sentenced to prison for 17 years and four months.
Son
had a scene in the 1997 Mike Myers “Austin Powers” film, when as
character “Random Task” he threw a shoe at Myers, who played Austin
Powers, before he was subdued by the character played by actress
Elizabeth Hurley with a bottle of champagne.
The
scene is a spoof of “Odd Job,” a similar-looking character who threw a
lethal bowler hat in the James Bond film “Goldfinger.”
The victim still is dealing with post-traumatic stress from Son’s actions.
The incident cost her a salon job and her college savings that she had to use to pay for medical bills and years of counseling.
She said she was “fragmented” but still standing and thankful to be alive to see this day.
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©2011 The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.)
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