Sebastopol sex offender, jailed for 13 years, is back behind bars on similar charges

A former Sebastopol man convicted in 1996 of drugging and sexually assaulting five women at his home - crimes he videotaped himself that became crucial evidence against him in court - is back in jail accused of committing similar crimes, Sonoma County Superior Court records show.

Lonnie William Victory, 54, is being held on $2.7 million bail at the Sonoma County Jail on suspicion of sexually molesting a girl younger than 14 years old and possessing child pornography, both felony crimes, according to county jail records.

Victory also is suspected of invading someone’s privacy by using a concealed camera to secretly make recordings and is facing two counts of attempting to invade someone’s privacy by taking secret video recordings, all misdemeanor charges, according to court records.

The criminal complaint shows a pattern of crimes over a five-year period. Detectives suspect Victory sexually abused the child sometime between February and October in 2013 - a period that includes the final months of his parole supervision, which ended in April 2013.

The criminal complaint indicates Victory is suspected of making the secret recordings on Oct. 29, 2017 and then was allegedly found with child pornography on June 28 of this year. He was arrested Oct. 23 by deputies working as Windsor police officers on the 5400 block of Old Redwood Highway in Penngrove, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Crum said.

Sonoma County sheriff’s officials remained tight-lipped about what led detectives to suspect Victory committed the crimes and arrest him last month - nine years after he was released from prison. Crum said domestic violence sexual assault detectives declined to provide details now about the allegations because they were still interviewing people and investigating Victory’s activities.

Victory, who lived in Sebastopol before he was sent to prison in 1996, was listed as homeless on booking records when he was recently jailed again, Crum said. Victory is scheduled to enter a plea Friday in Sonoma County Superior Court.

A public defender representing Victory declined to comment Thursday.

In the previous case, Victory came under investigation in the summer of 1995 after a girlfriend of his found some of his homemade sex videos and reported him to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, according to Press Democrat stories published after his arrest.

Victory was working as a used-car salesman and living at his family’s property south of Sebastopol off Bloomfield Road, according to the news reports. Court records filed at the time said Victory was back in Sonoma County after spending about three years in Los Angeles working as a set-up man, or “roadie,” for rock bands, including Guns N’ Roses.

Detectives seized nearly 200 videotapes containing hours of footage of Victory drugging women and at points binding and gagging them, putting hoods over their heads and rendering them unconscious by using drugs and suffocating them before sexually abusing them, according to police. An 80-minute portion of the videos were played in open court and described in news reports.

Also at his house, detectives found prescription drugs and syringes, including one containing a powerful drug cocktail consisting of heroin, morphine and other painkillers and tranquilizers, officials said.

Before detectives had identified the women, detectives dug up his yard looking for bodies - finding none - because some of the acts depicted on the video appeared dangerous and potentially life-threatening, sheriff’s officials said.

Detectives eventually identified at least five of the women in the videos - and they were Victory’s friends or acquaintances, according to news reports. The women told detectives they had drank alcohol or taken drugs with Victory then woke up days later with no memory of what had occurred, according to news reports.

Victory’s attorney defended him by claiming he was on drugs, too, and the women had consented to bondage and sexual acts.

But sheriff’s officials said the women didn’t know what he had done to them while they were unconscious until detectives showed them the videos.

On the eve of trial in 1996, Victory pleaded no contest to committing 11 felony crimes against five women including raping an unconscious person, drugging women with intent to commit a felony, assault with intent to commit rape and other crimes.

He was sentenced to 28 years in state prison and served 13, state corrections officials said. Victory was released in November 2009 in Sonoma County.

Since then, Victory was arrested at least twice for suspected parole violations, but none of those violations sent him back to prison, Crum said.

In 2011, the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office filed a petition to have him committed to a state hospital under a provision of the law for sexually violent predators considered dangerous to the public because of a mental disorder.

But notes in the court records indicate multiple state mental health evaluators couldn’t agree on a diagnosis, and a judge dismissed the district attorney’s petition on a technicality. He was arrested again in 2012 on a “parole hold” but released, Crum said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.