Woman testifies in Denison slaying case

<p>RENO -- A woman sobbed on the witness stand Wednesday as she identified her alleged attacker as the same Reno man accused of rape, murder and kidnapping in a series of assaults that terrorized a university campus a year ago.</p><p>Described by police as a serial rapist who stole his victims' panties, James Michael Biela is accused of raping and killing 19-year-old former Mendocino resident Brianna Denison, sexually assaulting two other college students and trying to rape a third.</p><p>Biela, a 27-year-old pipefitter with broad shoulders, wore a bulletproof vest in a heavily secured Reno Justice Court courtroom during a preliminary hearing Wednesday afternoon that was to resume today at 8:30 a.m.</p><p>Justice of the Peace Patricia Lynch was expected to decide by the end of the day whether there is enough evidence to transfer him to Washoe County District Court on three counts of sexual assault and one count each of attempted sexual assault, kidnapping and murder.</p><p>Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick said prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty.</p><p>The lead witness Wednesday identified Biela as the man who grabbed her from behind, held a gun to her head and raped her the night of Oct. 22, 2007, in a parking garage next door to the campus police station at the University of Nevada, Reno.</p><p>"In a calm voice, he said, 'Don't say anything or the safety comes off,' " said the woman in her 20s, who said she knew what he meant by the "safety" because she grew up around guns and was on her high school rifle team.</p><p>She said she didn't report the attack to police until she was contacted by a detective at the end of January, between the time Denison was last seen alive Jan. 20 and her body was discovered in a vacant field in a south Reno business park Feb. 15.</p><p>"I didn't want my body to be a crime scene. I'd already been through enough. I wanted to forget about it," she said.</p><p>Biela mostly stared down at the defense table except for occasionally turning to answer questions from one of his public defenders as at least six uniformed officers looked on in a case that had the community on edge for nearly a year.</p><p>Based partly on DNA evidence, he was arrested Nov. 25 and charged with strangling Denison, who disappeared while sleeping on the couch at girlfriend's home on the edge of the UNR campus in the early morning hours of Jan. 20.</p><p>Earlier this month, Biela also was charged with the three additional attacks that occurred nearby between Oct. 22 and Dec. 16 of last year.</p><p>A second former student at UNR who said she was assaulted Dec. 16 described her attacker as a white male whose body looked like a "football player" but said she never saw his face because he had pulled the hood of her winter coat down over her eyes.</p><p>An Asian woman in her 20s who now lives in Taiwan, she said he grabbed her outside her apartment after 1 a.m., put his hand over her mouth and nose, lifted her into the air and then threw her to the ground, breaking her glasses. He took her to another location and sexually assaulted her, she said.</p><p>After the attack, "He asked me if I'm going to tell the police? I ask him if he will come to me again? And I said if he won't come to me again, no," she said. But she did.</p><p>Police said the case was cracked after Biela's girlfriend told a friend she had found women's thong underwear in Biela's new truck in September.</p><p>After receiving a tip from the friend Nov. 1, police said they used DNA evidence to link Biela to the killing of Denison, who grew up in Mendocino and was a sophomore at Santa Barbara City College., as well as the December 2007 sexual assault and abduction. They said DNA also linked the Denison killing with the November attempted sexual assault of a third woman.</p><p>AP-WS-12-10-08 2148EST</p>