Thursday, April 18, 2002 | 8:39 a.m.
A Las Vegas judge, after watching a videotape prosecutors allege shows a man sexually assaulting a 14-year-old relative, increased the bail for the man accused of raping several women.
Justice of the Peace Ann Zimmerman sharply rebuked Deputy Public Defender Steve Immerman Wednesday when he said Steven Newberg's bail should be reduced, suggesting that the girl's moans were "moans of pleasure."
"Maybe you and I weren't watching the same videotape," Zimmerman told Immerman before increasing Newberg's bail from $430,000 to $715,000.
New details about the events leading up to Newberg's arrest last month are contained within court documents unsealed Wednesday.
According to the documents, Newberg's former girlfriend grew suspicious about his activities when she came across a list of women's names and numbers in his wallet.
The woman told police that when she called two of the numbers, she spoke to two women who said they were sexually assaulted by a man matching Newberg's description and driving a red pickup like Newberg's.
The woman provided police the names and numbers and the women corroborated her story.
The former girlfriend also provided police with a videotape she had come across in Newberg's home that depicted him having sexual relations with an unknown woman she believed to be a prostitute.
Unbeknownst to her, the tape also showed what appeared to be a sexual assault of another woman further along the tape.
Police were able to get a search warrant for Newberg's home and pickup truck based on the information provided by the woman. They seized more than 100 videotapes during the search and some of the videotapes reportedly show dozens of women being beaten, choked and brutally sexually assaulted by Newberg.
Two of the women the former girlfriend spoke to on the phone were found on the tapes, as was the 14-year-old distant relative.
Newberg was charged with 36 sex-related charges, and on Wednesday, Zimmerman conducted a preliminary hearing pertaining to those charges involving the girl, who is now 15.
Zimmerman will hear evidence on June 3 concerning the two prostitutes and will decide at that time if Newberg should face trial on any of the 36 counts.
Roughly half of the charges stem from the videotape Zimmerman watched Wednesday.
On the 31-minute tape, the girl can be heard repeatedly begging Newberg to stop, telling him he was hurting her.
Although Newberg's voice could not be heard by those in the back of the courtroom, police records indicate Newberg told the girl that if she resisted, he would force her to submit anyway.
In addition to watching the tape, Zimmerman listened as attorneys for both sides question the girl.
The girl told Zimmerman Newberg had forced her to engage in sexual acts previously, but she agreed to come to Las Vegas from San Diego to visit him anyway. He had offered to take her to a Jessica Simpson concert, she said.
"I thought that now that he had a girlfriend that he would leave me alone," the girl said. "I thought that he would just do it to his girlfriend and not me anymore."
Metro Detective Todd Hendrix said after the hearing that police still have hundreds of hours of videotapes left to watch. So far, 10 of the tapes have been determined to be homemade.
Most of those tapes appear to contain the sexual assaults of women in Newberg's pickup truck, which he purchased after moving to Las Vegas from California two years ago, Hendrix said.
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