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Indecent exposure case gets a third trial

A woman says the defendant demanded sex but that she talked him out of it with a promise of a future date.

By MOLLY MOORHEAD
Published July 27, 2006

DADE CITY - About 8 p.m. one February night in 2005, a stranger appeared at the door of an Angus Valley woman's home. His car had broken down, he said, and he needed to use the phone.

A week later, prosecutors say, that man came back, this time forcing his way into the woman's home, holding her against her will and exposing himself.

Wednesday marked the third time Darin Salters, 37, has faced trial on accusations of terrorizing his neighbor, then 59. The first time, in July 2005, ended in a mistrial because of a judge's verbal slip. The second, last August, ended with a hung jury.

Salters was arrested on this round of charges shortly before he was scheduled to go to trial in another case. He was accused of breaking into the home of another neighbor on Angus Valley Drive and raping the 52-year-old woman at knifepoint.

But jurors won't hear a word about that case. Salters was acquitted of the rape in May, so Circuit Judge Linda Babb ruled it can't be brought up in this case.

The alleged victim in the 2005 case took the stand Wednesday. The petite woman with bleached blond hair and glasses described a bizarre encounter in which she said Salters grabbed her as she was taking out the trash and pinned her to the ground, saying the two were going to have sex.

The woman bargained with him as he sat naked on her couch, smoking crack from a pipe. At one point, he let her get into the shower to wash out the dye that was processing in her hair.

"I open my eyes, and he's standing in my shower with me, naked," the woman testified. The St. Petersburg Times is withholding her name because of the nature of the charges.

Eventually, Salters dressed and left. The woman said she talked him out of sex by promising the two could go out together and giving him a fake phone number.

But Salters' attorney, Assistant Public Defender Bob Focht, questioned the credibility of the woman's story: that Salters pushed his way into her house to have sex with her, but when he got her into the shower, did nothing.

"Did he touch you in the shower in any fashion?" Focht asked the woman.

"No, sir," she replied.

The case is scheduled to continue today in Babb's courtroom. Salters could face life in prison if convicted by jurors of the five charges of burglary with assault or battery, false imprisonment, tampering with a witness, battery and exposure of sexual organs.

[Last modified July 26, 2006, 22:31:20]