Man guilty in case of two-hour sex attack
She pushed his hands away, fended off his advances and even told him she was on her period.
But that didn’t stop Ricky Marsters, 38, from biting her neck, feeling her breasts and forcing her to touch his genitals.
The woman had been lured into his car under the promise of a safe ride after the pair met at the Oxford Hotel in Levin last year on April 8.
In the Palmerston North District Court yesterday, a jury found Marsters guilty on charges of indecent assault for driving the woman to two separate locations and forcing himself on her.
He left hickeys on her neck, which he explained was his way of ‘‘marking’’ her as his next drug dealer.
The woman was scared, disgusted and distraught when he finally dropped her near her mother’s Horowhenua home about two hours later.
When the police came knocking, Marsters denied any wrongdoing. Instead, he fabricated a story of a heated argument between the pair outside the pub, saying she had made up the allegations as revenge.
He denied driving the woman in his silver station wagon to the Levin netball courts and Lake Horowhenua, where the assaults occurred.
Earlier in the trial, Marsters gave evidence that the supposed altercation happened when he returned to his vehicle to check on a drunk mate.
‘‘There was a woman leaning over the car. I approached her and said: ‘Why are you in our car? Why are you helping yourself to our alcohol?’ ’’
He claimed it was at this point the woman threw a bottle of Steinlager at him, which he dodged. In retaliation, Marsters spat and pushed her away. ‘‘That was the last time I spoke to her.’’
In his closing address, Crown lawyer Guy Carter raised inaccuracies in Marsters’ story, such as the unexplained time it took him to get home after the bar’s closure at 1am. Despite saying he had only driven friends to a nearby park, it took Marsters more than 90 minutes to get home.
Security footage had shown no altercation between Marsters and the woman, and witnesses had supported that.
Marsters hadn’t disclosed he spat at the woman until detective Michael Skates later requested a DNA sample, and there was no other explanation for how his DNA was found on her breasts.
He left hickeys on her neck, which he explained was his way of ‘‘marking’’ her as his next drug dealer.