Kansas City News Blog

Gordon Reabe Jr.

Two people accused of staging a sexual assault to up the ante in a sexual harassment lawsuit against a Kansas City luxury car dealer are now facing federal conspiracy charges.

KCTV-5 caught the man in the sexual-assault-for-hire plot, Gordon Reabe Jr. (pictured on the right), on video outside the federal courthouse yesterday. They say Reabe, 51, is married with children. He's an accountant "with an apparent gambling problem." He's also free on bond, although a federal magistrate judge has apparently taken away Reabe's favorite vice and imposed a curfew and electronic monitoring.

The latest charges are in addition to federal wire fraud charges announced in January.

The case is a bizarre one. Unhappy with a settlement offer from their former employer, a Kansas City Mercedes-Benz dealership, 39-year-old Julie Bernet of Bucyrus, Kansas, and 23-year-old Lindsey Crawford of Kansas City offered Reabe $100,000 to assault them in an effort to force a higher settlement from the car dealer, prosecutors allege.

The deal was for Reabe to physically assault Bernet and sexually assault Crawford on November 25. Crawford agreed to the sexual assault -- but only if she was knocked out. Bernet and Crawford would then claim two masked men attacked them in Crawford's garage in the Waldo area.

The three hammered out the details at Loose Park. Then Bernet and Crawford returned to Crawford's house so that Crawford could change into a skirt. You know, to make the sexual assault go more smoothly. Bernet and Crawford then knocked back a couple of beers and left the empty bottles in the garage so Reabe could use them during the assault. Then Bernet and Crawford went shopping. Then they met Reabe for dinner at Tower Park restaurant to smooth out the final details.

The three returned to Crawford's place. Crawford let Reabe duct-tape her mouth and hands and then Reabe smacked her in the head with a tool. But it didn't knock her out. So he hit her again. But she was still conscious. Bernet then told Reabe to sexually assault Crawford with a beer bottle.

Then Reabe duct-taped Bernet's mouth and hit her with a beer bottle, knocking her out.

Bernet woke up to see Reabe sexually assaulting Crawford with the stem of a rose and a metal object. He stopped to go over to Bernet and kick her in the legs. Then he turned on Crawford's car, turned out the light and left the garage.

The scheme apparently fell apart when Reabe tried to hire a neighbor for $20,000 to go to the dealership and make a threatening call to Bernet. But the neighbor didn't use a phone at the dealership. He used his personal cell phone. Bernet reported the call to the Kansas City Police Department, and the FBI traced the call to the neighbor. Whoops.

Not sure if this is the same Gordon Reabe, but I found these profiles on various poker Web sites -- here, here and here -- for a man with the same name from Kansas City. The World Series of Poker Web site says Gordon Reabe finished 27th in a no-limit Texas hold'em event at the Horseshoe in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in February 2007. Reabe won $821.