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July 3, 2009

Charges dropped in alleged Smoky Mountain rape

KNOXVILLE — Tennessee prosecutors dropped charges Thursday against a Georgia man accused of kidnapping and raping a woman in a remote mountain cabin, saying they doubted her credibility after her apparent rescue by a quick-thinking pizza deliveryman.

David Jansen, 46, of Snellville, Ga., claimed that the May 26 incident was consensual. The pizza deliveryman, 32-year-old Chris Turner, drove to a nearby home and called police after he delivered the pizza and came upon what he described as a horrifying scene: a woman with her hands tied, silently begging him to “Please call 911.”

It began as a story of Turner’s heroism. Now, prosecutors aren’t sure what happened.

“It’s hard to look inside somebody’s brain to see if all this was contrived between two parties or if she really was kidnapped and raped,” Sevier County Assistant District Attorney Steven Hawkins told The Associated Press. “Who can tell?”

Jansen, whose wife filed for divorce after his arrest, wasn’t in the courtroom in Sevierville.

“This has been a difficult time for Mr. Jansen and he is happy to have this part of the ordeal behind him,” attorney Don Bosch said. Jansen has not decided whether to take legal action against the woman or anyone else involved in his arrest, Bosch said.

Tennessee authorities learned after Jansen’s arrest that the 24-year-old Atlanta woman had been convicted and sentenced to probation for lying to Georgia police about being attacked in 2005 and 2006. The AP does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault.

However, Hawkins said there were no plans to charge her in Tennessee.

“She insisted it did happen and there is a lot of evidence that it did happen,” said Hawkins, who talked to the woman by telephone Thursday.

The woman’s attorney, Alan Begner of Atlanta, said Hawkins “did not ask us what we thought about” dismissing the charges, but he said he understood the burden of proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

However, Begner noted the woman had not recanted her story. She did not immediately return an e-mail seeking comment Thursday, and a phone call to the club she worked at rang unanswered.

The woman told police she knew Jansen as a customer at a restaurant and strip club she worked at in Atlanta. She claimed he lured her into his car, tied her up, drove to Gatlinburg and raped her. Police found rope and ripped clothing in the cabin.

Turner discovered her bound on the couch while making a delivery to a remote rental cabin near Gatlinburg in the Smoky Mountains. After the man accepting the pizza signed his credit card slip, Turner rushed to another cabin and called police. Jansen was arrested, and the woman was taken to a hospital.

She later told Turner she feared she would been killed if not for him.

Bosch later found witnesses and convenience store surveillance videos that suggested the woman had chances to escape or call for help. And a polygraph test indicated Jansen was truthful when he told investigators that the sex was consensual, and that the kidnapping was part of a bondage fantasy.

While the case may not have been what it seemed, Hawkins said that takes nothing away from what Turner’s actions.

“I think he saw what appeared to him based on all the evidence to be a kidnapping and he did the right thing. I don’t think this diminished what he did a bit. Nor does it diminish what the sheriff’s department did,” he said.

“Everybody did what they felt was right based on everything right then.”

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