Langley assault prelude to bizarre videos
By Al Irwin
Times Reporter
Apr 30 2006
A man convicted Thursday in bizarre video-taped assaults in Vancouver was accused in a prolonged sexual assault of a 23-year-old woman in an Aldergrove house, in 1999.
Anthony “Big Tony” Terezakis’ recent legal problems began when his wife viewed disturbing video tapes of her husband beating and subjecting victims to a variety of indecencies. She found the tapes so disturbing she sought medication from a doctor, to help her sleep.
She destroyed one tape, but turned the rest over to police. In February, her testimony before a B.C. Supreme Court jury indicated that the destroyed tape portrayed her husband rubbing feces in the face of a man he was assaulting. Terezakis, who ran a drug ring from two Downtown Eastside hotels, had entered guilty pleas Feb. 24 on conspiracy to traffic crack cocaine and two counts of drug trafficking.
The jury Thursday found him guilty on 12 charges, including assault, assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon, related to the video-taped scenes.Jury members sat through hours of the video tapes, which apparently portrayed Terezakis, usually dressed in a white T-shirt, leather jacket, and wraparound sunglasses, beating his victims with a fish bat, or punching and kicking them, while wearing a large cross around his neck. His defence was that the videos were a “reality-based testimonial” of life on the Downtown Eastside, and he hoped to distribute his videos under the title Bible Thumpers. Terezakis, either during or after almost each beating, utters the phrase “praise the Lord.”
His estranged wife testified in February that her husband was “spiritual” but “due to his addiction to drugs, his thinking . . . is not always rational . . . toward his God.” The spiritual theme figured in the attack here more than six years ago. On Jan. 8, 1999, a young woman escaped from an Aldergrove home in the 26900-block of 26 Ave., and ran to a neighbouring house for help.
She told Langley RCMP that she had been tied up, beaten and sexually assaulted, and attacked with a Taser gun, for three days, after she accepted a ride from a Vancouver drug party to Coquitlam. Instead, her assailant brought her to Aldergrove.
She told police she believed the house was her assailant’s residence. After sleeping through most of the first day, the woman was awakened at 6 p.m., and accepted more drugs from the man. He then asked her to take a bath, and the victim reluctantly agreed. While she was in the bath the assailant entered, and scrubbed her with Comet and a scrub brush, saying that he had been told by the Lord that she needed to be clean.
The man then lead her to the bedroom, where he tied her up with nylon stockings and a black purse strap, and left her naked on the bed. Later, she was threatened, beaten and raped. At one point the power went off, and the victim tried to hide in the house. The man, armed with a stun gun with a flashlight mounted on it, sought her out, then assaulted her with the stun gun. Her attacker threatened her with a switchblade, and on several occasions threatened to bite her nose off.
Finally the woman convinced her captor to let her help search for a missing set of keys. She found a knife, cut the tape binding her arms, and escaped. Anthony (Tony) Terezakis, 39 at that time, was charged with forcible confinement sexual assault, and weapons charges, in connection with the attack.
Langley RCMP confirmed in February that Terezakis was the same man accused in the recent video-taped assaults. “He is very well known,” said Langley RCMP Cpl. Diane Blain. Later in 1999, Terezakis was convicted of knowingly possessing a prohibited weapon. Four other charges including the sexual assault and forcible confinement, were stayed. He was sentenced to one year probation, and ordered not to possess a firearm for one year. Madam Justice Heather Holmes will sentence Terezakis on the 12 video-taped assault charges on May 4 in Vancouver.