BDSM MEDIA NEWS!!!!
01 july 2012
Murder trial opens for former Lennox bondage-fetish club employee
Source: Dailybreeze.com. - Dailybreeze.com - USA
USA - LENNOX - The "house slave" at a Lennox fetish club murdered the owner and set fire to the building because he had been banned from attending "swinger parties," a prosecutor alleged Tuesday.
But the defense countered that the death resulted from a botched suicide attempt.
The conflicting statements came as trial got under way for David Edward Albert, 55, of Simi Valley, who is facing charges of first-degree murder with a handgun allegation, arson and animal cruelty in the deaths of Passive Arts Studio owner John Lavine and his 5-year-old gray wolf, Koda.
According to Deputy District Attorney Marc Chomel, Albert strangled Lavine, shot him six times with a revolver, soaked the body in rubbing alcohol and then set it on fire, causing the business near Los Angeles International Airport to erupt in flames. The dog died in the fire.
"This isn't a case about role-playing," Chomel told the jury in his opening statement. "It was for keeps."
But defense attorney Winston McKesson said Albert had gone to the business the morning of July 27, 2010, armed with the gun and a plan to kill himself in front of Lavine after being fired from his janitorial job a few weeks earlier. He had also recently learned that his cancer had returned.
The suicide went awry when 62-year-old Lavine "belittled him" and "hurt him emotionally," the lawyer stated.
"There was a struggle," McKesson told jurors. "They fought and he shot him repeatedly - and then he set the place on fire."
The defense attorney said the circumstances do not amount to murder.
"What you have here is an arson to a structure and a voluntary manslaughter," McKesson said.
Passive Arts Studio offered sexually themed fetish play between male customers and female employees in rooms designed to look like classrooms, dungeons, nurseries or medical clinics, Chomel said.
It was a place where "women like to wear police outfits and men like to act like bad children and get spanked," the prosecutor said. In the parlance of such clubs, Albert was the "house slave," he said.
"He himself had a fetish - he enjoyed smelling women's behinds," Chomel said, adding that because of that particular interest, Albert had been banned from invitation-only "swinger parties," where couples swap partners on the weekends.
"He creeped them out," Chomel said.
McKesson described his client as having come from a troubled family. Albert was "socially awkward," lived with his ailing father and had few friends outside the fetish club, he said.
"His entire social life was based on him volunteering" at Passive Arts, the attorney said. "In his mind, everything had been ... ripped away from him."
Deputies found Albert hiding in some bushes across the street from the burning business, Chomel said.
The first witness, ex-club employee Alyssa Stafford, 23, described herself as a professional "switch" - able to play both the dominant and submissive roles in bondage scenarios.
She testified that she knew Koda as a gentle dog, unless its owner or someone the dog knew well was being threatened.
She recalled once playfully using a leather strap on one of her colleagues who was familiar to Koda.
"The dog thought I was attacking her - and gave me a light bite on the bottom," she said.
As for Albert, who uses a wheelchair, Stafford said she knew him well and had completed two "sessions" with him.
The defendant, she said, "is into corporal punishment, (likes) leather paddles used on him, (likes to be) verbally abused ... and he had a butt-sniffing fetish," she told the panel of mostly middle-aged jurors.
Albert faces up to life in prison if convicted of all charges, Chomel said.
