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Woman pleads no-contest to rape-blackmail attempt
By Mareva Brown -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Tuesday, April 22, 2003
A North Sacramento woman who tried to blackmail eight men into paying her so she wouldn't report that they raped her -- an allegation she made up -- pleaded no-contest to multiple counts of extortion, filing false police reports and sending threatening letters, prosecutors announced Monday.
Jessica Langshaw, 20, accused each of the men of sexually assaulting her in separate incidents over 18 months in which she either knew them as friends or was romantically involved with them, according to prosecutor Michael Blazina.
Then she had demanded specific amounts of blackmail from each man, ranging from $8,000 to $150,000, for a total of about $500,000, Blazina said. In some cases, Langshaw also demanded they give her their motorcycles, in exchange for her agreement not to press criminal sexual-assault charges, he added.
The men ranged from a 71-year-old college professor to a 25-year-old shock disc jockey to a group of men that Langshaw met in an Internet chat room. In five cases, she delivered letters of demand to the men. In two cases, she mailed letters to the men's parents. In the eighth case, she read a demand letter over the telephone.
"Just the sheer volume of her claims tended to erode her credibility," Blazina said.
Langshaw's claims began to fall apart when rape investigators from several different regional law-enforcement agencies met for a routine meeting and discovered that Langshaw had made reports in unrelated cases.
At about the same time, arson investigators looking at burned cars outside the homes of two of the men were told the men had received demand letters from Langshaw a short time earlier.
Langshaw's boyfriend, Raul Umana, 28, also pleaded no-contest to three felony counts of attempted extortion and three felony counts of sending threatening letters. As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors agreed that Umana would receive no more than two years in state prison.
Langshaw pleaded no-contest to six felony counts of extortion, five felony counts of sending threatening letters and three misdemeanor counts of falsely reporting crimes to law enforcement. She will be sentenced to no more than one year in Sacramento County jail, according to the plea agreement. Both defendants will be sentenced June 13.