A 76-year-old Lighthouse Point man will be released from jail to await trial on new charges of sexual assault with a weapon on a victim over 12 years of age dating back to 1995.
Millionaire developer Louis Romano Bianculli was seeking release on bond Thursday afternoon.
Broward Circuit Judge Michael Usan, who presided over Bianculli’s previous sexual assault trial, ruled he is eligible for bonds totaling $750,000 with a GPS ankle monitor among other conditions.
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The decision followed a contentious hearing that lasted more than three hours with both sides debating the evidentiary worthiness of a video purportedly showing a 17-year-old girl being drugged and sexually assaulted by a then- 49-year-old Bianculli.
The judge viewed the video alone in his chambers before returning with his decision.
At the time of the alleged sexual assault the girl was an employee of Bianculli, according to court records.
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He took her to dinner and then invited her back to his home under the pretense of showing her some of his bicycles. They talked a while and then he persuaded her to try on a medical facemask, investigators said.
The mask was laced with some chemical that he told her was helium. She resisted initially, saying she’s not into “drugs and all that stuff,” but succumbed to his persistence and became incapacitated. That’s when he sexually assaulted her, the report stated.
It allegedly happened twice in March and once in April of 1995 before she quit her job that May. She refused to take his calls afterward. He had told her not to tell anyone, but when she learned he was moving to Hawaii, she told a friend and they went to Fort Lauderdale Police.
During questioning, Bianculli said they only had sex once and he was concerned she was under 18, police said.
In 2017, Bianculli’s son sent the VHS video tape to the Broward State Attorney’s Office.
Pictures from the sex tape were sent to Daytona Beach Police. They located and met with the woman last November and she identified herself as the teenager in the video that was apparently recorded without her knowledge, investigators noted.
She was in court Thursday but left in tears upon hearing the arguments that included defense attorney Jayne Weintraub proposing it may have been consensual.
"She may have been enjoying it," Weintraub said.
"This is the Jeffrey Epstein of Broward County," said Broward assistant state attorney Taylor Hoffmann, referring to the suspected serial child rapist who died in a New York prison before his trial.
The video shows both Bianculli and the teenager naked, but she is lethargic on a sofa-bed, can barely speak or move, and cannot resist his manipulations and sexual assaults. She was tied to the bed in some scenes and frequently had a towel and chemically laced mask on her face, the report stated.
In some parts of the video, the man is seen pouring a liquid on the mask and is heard saying, “It works fast,” to which she responds, “I’m numb, everywhere, Lou,” and “I feel stupid …slow… I can’t respond to anything,” according to the court document.
The video is very graphic and at times it showed Bianculli checking the lifeless girl to make sure she was not dead, wrote a detective reviewing the video.
This was not the only time Bianculli was accused of sexual battery on a person between 12 and 18.
He was arrested by Lighthouse Point Police in 2015 and accused of molesting another juvenile girl between 2005 and 2013 using chloroform, sleeping pills and other techniques to leave her unconscious. That case has been proceeding through the courts since then, records show.
Other women have comes forward claiming similar sexual abuse dating back 50 years.
The next court date is tentatively set for Jan. 13.
