The Emporia police detective who led the investigation into allegations of illegal sex with children testified Monday afternoon in the trial against the 32-year-old man she arrested. The trial now is in its third week.
Raul Manuel Magallanez Jr. has been charged with raping a 13-year-old girl, as well as about 60 counts of indecent liberties with minors, sodomizing minors, furnishing alcohol with illicit intent to minors, and one charge of aggravated intimidation of a witness.
Police detective Lisa Sage’s testimony included a more in-depth look at the contents of Magallanez’s cell phone, as provided on a computer disk from the Heart of America Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory in Kansas City, which studied the phone and submitted a report on its contents.
Sage said she had downloaded the Heart of America disk onto her computer to access the e-mails and video clips taken from the phone.
Assistant County Attorney Amy Aranda asked Sage to identify the girls and boys shown in photographs. At least two of the girls, both under 16, were shown in a sexual pose, with one girl’s hand on the other girl’s breast.
Sage scanned through pages of phone number lists printed from the cell phone’s address book and identified many of the approximately 380 numbers as belonging to boys and girls under 16.
Some of the photos were taken at the defendant’s home; others were taken at Emporia State University and other sites.
Cell phone records showed that in October, November and early December, sometimes more than three hours daily was spent talking with alleged victims. On one occasion, the phone was in use more than five hours in one day. Text messages also were exchanged routinely, with a high of 126 text messages in one day.
Defense attorney Julia Spainhour asked Sage if the records would show whether one of Magallanez’s male friends had used his telephone to call one of the alleged victims or their friends. Sage agreed that could be possible.
Spainhour also asked whether one of the other friends could have taken the videos that were pulled from the phone. Sage agreed.
Earlier in the day, an expert in cell phone forensics discussed records of text messages, photographs and short videos taken from Magallanez’s cell phone.
Defense witness
Kevin Ripa was brought in, out of traditional order, as a witness for the defense. The prosecution has not yet rested. Judge Lee Fowler said that because Ripa had come in from out of town, parties had agreed to let him testify in an effort to save time and money.
Ripa is director of computer forensics for Advanced Surveillance Group Inc. in Mount Clemens, Mich., president of Computer Evidence Recovery Co., in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and regularly presents seminars internationally about cell phone and computer forensics.
Ripa had recovered general records from the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card in the phone, and was able to find a number of text messages, photographs and two videos.
One of the videos showed a long-haired blond girl apparently acting out instructions from an audible voice: “Give me a sexy look, like, ‘You’re going to do it look.’”
Several voice mails also were recovered, including some with a man’s voice asking a young female to “absolutely promise” not to make up anything about him and her.
“You know we never had sex, right?” the male’s voice asked.
The female responded, “Yes.”
The male told the female, “That can get me in a lot of trouble.”
Ripa was to continue testifying this afternoon.
Early in the morning, the defense cross-examined a 17-year-old boy who had begun testifying on Friday.
The name of the young man will not be used, in order to protect the identities of the young people with whom he associated during his friendship with the accused. The young man was 15 and 16 years old when the alleged crimes were committed.
Kip Elliot, one of two attorneys for the defense, spent much of his cross-examination asking the young man to reiterate testimony given on Friday about events witnessed involving alcohol, drugs and sexual intercourse with underaged girls.
In the course of testifying, the young man talked about his own alcohol and drug use and having sexual intercourse with underaged girls, all while he associated with Magallanez.
Elliot asked the witness about the “derivative use immunity” that was granted him to testify in the case.
“You will not be prosecuted for any of your acts?” Elliot asked.
The witness said he would not face prosecution.