Testimony begins in Rivera pre-trial

Web posted Wednesday, January 31, 2001

 Have a thought? Go to the @ugusta Forums.

By Sandy Hodson
Staff Writer

Reinaldo J. Rivera always started by asking directions, explaining to young, pretty women that he was new in town, an investigators said Mr. Rivera told him.

Reinaldo J. Rivera listens as evidence is presented in a Tuesday pre-trial hearing. JONATHAN ERNST/STAFF

He'd tell the women he was starting an escort business or a modeling agency; tell them they could be models themselves and ask if he could photograph them and offer payment; and then the questions would get personal, and sexual, Richmond County sheriff's Sgt. Wayne Bunton testified Tuesday in Richmond County Superior Court.

Mr. Rivera did it hundreds of times, Sgt. Bunton said Mr. Rivera told him in initial interviews that uncovered the Oct. 10 rape and near killing of a young south Augusta woman; the Georgia slayings of Marni M. Glista, 21, in September, and Tabatha L. Bosdell, 18, in June; and the South Carolina slayings of Tiffaney S. Wilson, 17, in December 1999, and Melissa Dingess, 17, in July 1999.

On Tuesday, Judge Albert M. Pickett began hearing evidence about reports by 29 other women who came forward after Mr. Rivera's Oct. 15 arrest to describe their encounters with Mr. Rivera. Judge Pickett will decide if prosecutors can present that evidence, called similar transactions, to juries in Richmond and Columbia counties, where Mr. Rivera faces capital murder charges.

``By the defendant's own admission, he was out fishing,'' Assistant District Attorney Ashley Wright told the judge Tuesday. She argued the other women's testimony should be allowed to show Mr. Rivera's attempted criminal acts.

Defense attorneys Peter Johnson and Jacque Hawk countered that the women's testimony would prejudice jurors against Mr. Rivera in a case in which prosecutors already have hours of taped interviews.

In those interviews, Sgt. Bunton testified Tuesday, Mr. Rivera said he used the same spiel on hundreds of women, on the four women he told the detective he raped and killed, and on the young woman he tried to kill after a sexual assault.

``He had spotted Ms. Bosdell on Washington Road,'' Sgt. Bunton testified. She got in Mr. Rivera's car willingly to drive to a site to be photographed, and June 29 along Goodrich Street in downtown Augusta she was raped, sodomized and strangled, Sgt. Bunton said.

Between Ms. Bosdell's slaying and Sept. 5 when Army Sgt. Glista was discovered barely alive in her west Augusta home, Mr. Rivera approached other women in Georgia and South Carolina, officers testified Tuesday.

Aiken police Officer Tracy Saxton stopped and questioned Mr. Rivera on July 21. Moments before, she said, she had seen Mr. Rivera talking with two young women in a red car. Mr. Rivera apologized to the officer, saying he was trying to pick up women and meant no harm, Officer Saxton testified.

Ms. Wright said the driver of the red car called police after Mr. Rivera's arrest. Her passenger that night was Jessica Carpenter, the Aiken teen-ager killed in her home Aug. 4. Mr. Rivera has denied killing Ms. Carpenter, and physical evidence excluded him as the girl's attacker.

A young woman told North Augusta Public Safety Sgt. Joseph A. Count Jr. that Mr. Rivera had stopped her in a parking lot on Washington Road a week before his arrest.

It began with directions, then got personal, and sexual, Sgt. Count testified. Before she drove off, the woman told the detective: ``She told him she would remember him in prayer. He laughed.''

Reach Sandy Hodson at (706) 823-3226.

Submit Your Opinion Name: Email: Enter your comments here:

@ugusta is a proud member of Augusta.com.