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25-year-old Erinn Orcutt’s life changed in an instant in April 2010. She headed to work that day in the early afternoon where she covered the lunch shift at Dave & Busters in Ontario Mills Mall in Ontario, California which is 35 miles (56 km) east of downtown LA.
As the Saturday lunch crowds began to thin out, Erin’s manager told her that she was free to clock out for the day which was earlier than she was scheduled. She was more than happy to head out & looked forward to extra time off with her young son. Erinn arranged her schedule around her son & worked Thursday night to Sunday afternoon, while keeping the majority of her weekdays off.
As Erinn made her way through the mall parking lot toward her car, she instinctively double clicked her key fob to unlock the doors of her SUV & as she got closer to her car, two men appeared seemingly out of nowhere. As she was trying to process what was going on, she initially thought it might just be a prank, but when she caught sight of a gun, she knew this was very real.
Erinn’s mind was spinning as she quickly looked around the parking lot for help, but sadly, there wasn’t a soul in sight, a rarity for the mall. The man held the gun down low near his waist & his friend stood behind him. Fearing he would shoot if she ran, Erinn did as the man told her & climbed into the driver’s seat of her car. With his gun still trained on her, he climbed into the passenger seat & told her to drive while his accomplice stayed behind.
Erinn wasn’t told where to drive & initially found herself driving aimlessly around. Having grown up in the area, she was well aware of where police tended to congregate & drove by those locations. She also contemplated driving her car off the road, running into another car or stopping the car & jumping out to run to safety.
When the man told her to pull over, she stopped at a restaurant in Fontana, about fourteen miles away from Ontario, another place police officers were known to hang out, but there were no officers there at the time. He told her to drive around to the back of the building, but she wasn’t able to since there was a storage facility that had a gate that blocked the drive. Surveillance video later depicted Erinn’s white SUV driving by the gate before she was told to park at the storage facility.
At first, Erinn didn’t think anything terrible was going to happen because of the location where they stopped. Her car faced the windows of the storage facility & there was a nearby gas station, a Denny’s & a liquor store right near her car. However, as soon as they put the car in park, the gunman ordered her to climb into the backseat. She was sobbing by this point as the man climbed into the backseat with her, wedging himself near her son’s car seat.
Erinn begged the man to just allow her to leave; she told him he could have all of her money & take her car & she wouldn’t report him to the police. The man completely ignored her pleas & ordered her to remove her clothing. He placed the barrel of his gun to her head, told her he was not going to let her go & demanded that she stop crying. At this point, he racked the gun & a bullet popped out, landing in her son’s car seat; now she was fully aware that the gun was loaded.
By this point, she was crying hysterically & shaking uncontrollably as the man forced the barrel of the gun into her mouth. He screamed for her to shut up & instructed her to sit on his lap as he attempted to rape her, but was unable to perform.
Now angered by his lack of performance, he began punching Erinn in the face & stomach. Erinn was hoping with everything that she had that someone would notice them & call for help, but sadly, if there was a witness, they likely wouldn’t have been able to see into the car because of the dark tinting.
Over the next hour, Erinn endured hell as she was assaulted & beaten in various ways & when her assailant was unable to perform, he would begin to choke her. During one of his sexual assaults, he forced himself orally onto Erinn & instructed her to smile for the photos that he began to snap. It was later discovered that he sent the photos to his accomplice with the caption, Guess what I’m doing right now? In the midst of the attack, the man called his friend to touch base in terms of his whereabouts & the two laughed & chatted.
The laughter quickly came to an end & Erinn described the man’s eyes as dead as the beatings ramped back up again. During the breaks in torture, the man threatened that when he was done with her, he planned to kill her. When he was satisfied after an hour of constant abuse & attacks, he told Erinn to get dressed & instructed her to drive in the direction of the desert as he said, I think we’ll continue this in the desert. It was clear that if she allowed him to take her to an isolated area, she was sure to die. With this thought, Erinn’s survival instincts kicked in & her mind went into full gear.
As she continued to put her clothes back on, she noticed that he had set his gun down & it was partially under the passenger seat. She knew that the child locks had been engaged in her car at the area where her son’s car seat was located, the very side that her attacker was sitting. This allowed her to quickly flee through the back door that was situated behind the driver’s seat.
As Erinn ran through the empty parking lot, she screamed at the top of her lungs. Unaware, a security camera that monitored the parking lot captured the image of her daring escape. Little did she know, the owner of the nearby liquor store had been monitoring her SUV, finding the location where it stopped suspicious. When the SUV initially pulled in, he noted two people in the front as it parked next to the dumpster. The man had a gut instinct that something wasn’t right about the situation & prepared to call the police if need be. Now seeing the young woman running for her life through the parking lot, he grabbed the phone & dialed 911.
The owner pulled Erinn into his store & placed her safely behind the register to wait for authorities to arrive as bewildered customers watched the scene play out. In the meantime, the abductor remained inside Erinn’s car, frantically trying to get it to start. It turned out that as she was ordered to pull into the parking lot, Erinn had the forethought to press the kill switch on the ignition rendering the car useless. It was clear that the man didn’t know how to disable the sensor. Knowing that time was running out, the man fled the SUV on foot.
As police arrived at the scene, they found the man’s gun lying on the floorboard of the car. The officer was stunned when he noticed that the gun’s owner’s name had been taped to the bottom of the weapon. Being an officer himself, he was aware that many police officers labeled their guns in a similar manner in case someone else utilized their magazine. As the car was processed, a pair of sunglasses were found as well as DNA evidence in the form of bodily fluids.
In the meantime, 33-year-old police officer Anthony Orban, a detective in the sex crimes unit of the Westminster Police Department was busy filling out paperwork thirty miles away, indicating that his service revolver had been stolen in the Ontario area. Police were now aware of one of two things: Either Anthony Orban was Erinn’s attacker, or the person who stole his gun was her attacker.
Detectives investigating Erinn’s case tracked him down to a nearby parking lot & found him in the company of a fellow officer, a corrections officer at the California Institution for Men in Chino, Jeffery Jelinek. Orban was actively trying to help Jelinek locate his truck at the time officers arrived. Erinn gave the officers in her case a description of the men involved in her abduction & lo & behold, they matched the descriptions of Orban & Jelinek.
With Erinn safe inside the back of the patrol car, officers drove her to this location where she was able to quickly positively identify both men. When the men were patted down to be taken into custody, they found Erinn’s car keys in Jelinek’s pocket. Within a matter of hours, both of the suspects were placed in police custody. Erinn was stunned when she learned that both men were officers & worried that justice wouldn’t be served & feared they would somehow be protected. Fortunately, she was wrong.
In the meantime, Erinn was taken to the hospital where a rape kit was performed & she was treated for the injuries she sustained during her violent sexual assault.
As Orban & Jelinek were brought in for questioning, they indicated that they could recall little from the day & answered I don’t know to questions asked about the attack. Orban claimed that he blacked out after drinking too many margaritas during lunch & was unable to recall what he’d done. He claimed that he hadn’t consumed alcohol in a very long time. He also said that he’d been taking antidepressants, Zoloft specifically, that completely diminished his sex drive & resulted in impotence. This statement was consistent with what Erinn told investigators about her attacker’s inability to perform.
Orban remained firm on the fact that he recalled nothing of Erinn’s attack & insisted that his gun had only been stolen. He maintained this stance even when the DNA evidence from Errin’s car was processed that proved his guilt. On the other hand, once in custody, Jelinek quickly became a source of solid information & referred to the evidence on his phone.
As the evidence stacked up, Jelinek willingly handed his cell phone over to investigators & as they scrolled through his photos, they saw the horrifying images taken as Orban assaulted Errin. They also read the text messages he sent during his assault that detailed what he was doing. They were sickened by what the young mother had gone through that afternoon.
As they asked Jelinek to detail his actions from that day, he said that he & Orban were out drinking & made the decision to go out looking for cute girls. They noticed Erinn walking in the direction of her car & agreed that she was exactly what they were looking for.
Jelinek indicated that he had no desire to take part in the actual abduction or sexual assault, he only wanted to live vicariously through his friend. It was obvious by the way that Orban snapped photos during his attack & shared them with his friend so they could laugh over what he had done, they saw Erinn as nothing more than a subhuman plaything for their amusement.
Orban was indicted on charges of kidnapping, rape & sexual assault, waiting behind bars for his day in court. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming the Zoloft paired with the alcohol left him unconscious during the attack. Erinn was furious & knew this was nothing more than an excuse that made him the victim in this case.
During phone calls with friends behind bars, he could be heard making vague threats against Erinn. In one particular call, he said that things would be far easier if the witness would simply disappear.
This conversation just so happened to coincide with creepy phone calls Erinn began receiving from an unknown caller. She was also followed while driving on the freeway & was unsure if it had something to do with her case. By this point, she was living in terror of retaliation & in order to protect Erinn, she remained in seclusion during the trial. Because of this, she was only allowed to attend the trial on the day that she was set to testify & the day of the verdict.
The trial began in the summer of 2012 & Orban maintained that it was the antidepressant, Zoloft, he had been taking that was to blame for his actions. His defense painted the picture of a drug-induced, alcohol-fueled blackout that led him to kidnap & attack Erinn.
A psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Breggin, who is a controversial critic of psychiatric drugs was the defense’s sole medical expert & testified that Orban stopped taking the prescribed drug & then resumed at full-dose which provoked a psychotic break during which he was said to be delirious & not fully aware of his actions.
However, the prosecution argued that this was bogus & the doctor’s opinion was in contrast to medical consensus on the drug’s effects. Their expert, Dr. Douglas Jacobs, an associate clinical professor at Harvard, testified that Zoloft has been prescribed to millions of people & proved safe. He attributed Orban’s actions to his consumption of alcohol as during their time out, Orban & Jelinek shared eight margaritas & two pitchers of beer. As they drank, Orban discussed his sexual desires before they set out in search of their victim.
When Orban took the stand, he spoke of his financial, marital & work-related issues that caused his mental health to take a downward spiral over the recent years. He was a veteran of the Marine Corps who served overseas in Iraq, the Persian Gulf & Afghanistan & claimed to be haunted by the brutality that he witnessed during his time on active duty. He said that things had gotten so dark in his life that he had even contemplated killing his wife, their dog & himself. He even mentioned that it was like he was possessed by demons, which the prosecution viewed as a likely attempt at the insanity defense.
Tracy, Orban’s wife, was actually the biggest supporter of Orban & backed up his claims that at the time of his assault on Erinn, he had not been in his right frame of mind. She also backed the idea that it was the fault of the two antidepressants he had been taking & said, There’s no denying what happened. Something happened to his brain. Sources indicate that after the assault, Orban called his wife & asked her to meet him in Ontario. She indicated that when she did show up, he looked absolutely drugged & had no recollection of calling her. According to Tracy, her biggest concern is that what happened to her husband doesn’t happen to someone else.
Prosecutors pointed out a magazine that was found in Orban’s home that detailed a story of an Iraqi War veteran who gunned down his wife & their dogs before ending his own life as a result of his tormented memories from war. They questioned if he was trying to pass off someone else’s suffering as his own.
Erinn testified & bravely provided an unflinching, graphic account of the sexual assault she had been subjected to at the hands of Orban.
In exchange for a reduced sentence, Jelinek pleaded no contest & testified against his friend & former partner-in-crime. It was thanks to his detailed version of events that Orban’s intentions on the day of Erinn’s attack were laid out for all to see. By the time he finished testifying, it was clear that Erinn was never meant to make it out of the situation alive.
In June 2012, after a month-long trial, the jury that consisted of eight women & four men deliberated for two hours & found Orban guilty on eight felony accounts that included kidnapping & rape. His lawyers continued to utilize every legal maneuver to have their client deemed temporarily insane during the penalty phase. He was faced with the potential sentence of life plus 95 years & all of their efforts were proving to be unsuccessful.
Erinn looked forward to the day of Orban’s sentencing when she would face her attacker in court. However, she would never get the chance to do this. When Orban learned that his insanity defense had been rejected, he made the coward’s decision of taking his own life when he was found hanged in his jail cell In October 2012, hours before he was set to be sentenced. Erinn felt robbed of her chance at closure. She said by that point, she was willing to forgive him & after he’d taken his own life, she was finding it a challenge to cling to that forgiveness. The judge made the decision to allow Erinn to read her victim impact statement in court while Orban’s family was present. Erinn felt that in order for her to move on with her life, she had to forgive Anthony Orban & that’s exactly what she did.
Jeffrey Jelinek was sentenced to 5 years & four months, but was released after serving only three years. His mother was present when word of his early release was announced in 2013 & said, I’m very happy. He should have never been here in the first place. Despite the fact that Jelinek was present at the time of Erinn’s abduction, he did not contact police & later tried to erase messages from his phone that implicated Orban. After his release, he moved out east to live with his parents.
Erinn has continued to move forward with her life & healing & in the process, she was diagnosed with PTSD & has suffered from panic attacks & depression. Being a strong survivor, she’s refused to cling to the day of her attack & will not allow herself to be identified as a victim.
Had Orban faced his sentencing, the judge indicated he would have been given 82 years to life in prison, followed by a 95 year sentence.
References:
- Daily Bulletin: Former corrections officer released from custody in Ontario Mills kidnapping, rape case
- Los Angeles Daily News: Wife of officer accused of rape speaks out
- Los Angeles Times: Jury rejects ‘Zoloft’ defense, finds ex-detective guilty of rape
- YouTube – True Crime News: Pt 1: Erinn Orcutt describes kidnapping by detective – Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen
- YouTube – True Crime News: Pt 2: Erinn Orcutt describes kidnapping by detective – Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen
- YouTube – True Crime News: Pt 3: Erinn Orcutt describes kidnapping by detective – Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen
- Medium: The terrifying abduction of Erinn Orcutt
