In 1981, Foster violently lured a woman named Susan whom he met at a bar to his residence and raped her for two and a half hours, while strangling her into a state of unconsciousness multiple times, gouging her body with his fingers, biting her breasts, striking her face and threatening to kill her. He was 23 years old at the time. In a negotiated disposition, he pled guilty to one count of oral copulation under former Penal Code section 288a, subd. (c). Thereafter, he was committed to Atascadero State Hospital under the former Mentally Disordered Sex Offender (MDSO) Law (former Welf. & Inst. Code, §§ 6300-6330).[1] His commitment was extended every two years thereafter, sometimes with his consent and other times on the petition of the district attorney.
Foster was released in 2004 after a jury found he no longer qualified as an MDO.[2] He soon stopped taking the medications he had been prescribed, causing an increase in auditory hallucinations. He got angry and strangled a dog that was tied to a chain. He began to drink heavily, which soothed him, and at one point drank so much he passed out. He went to the home of a man named Moss, who had been on the bunk next to him, after both were released from detox. He engaged in oral sex with Moss, his first homosexual experience, and then thought about stabbing him with knives he saw in Moss’s kitchen. He got a thrill from killing animals but had never killed a person, felt “[t]hat thrill was coming up” and “wanted to kill.” He didn’t stab Moss, in part because he was afraid of getting caught and being put in prison for the rest of his life or getting a death sentence.
After leaving Moss, Foster began to stalk a woman. A voice was telling him to rob somebody. The girl was the prettiest one he’d ever seen, and he heard the voices telling him to rape her. He knew how to rape; he had done it three times, and he followed her into a place of business and went to the top floor. He followed and saw her in the hall, but she arrived at a door, used a card to go in and “got away.” The voices “started their usual trip,” saying “you dumb motherfucker, you had a perfect opportunity and you—you fucked it up.”
[1] Under that law, following conviction of a triggering offense, sentencing was suspended and the offender was committed to a state mental hospital for treatment. (Hubbart v. Superior Court (1999) 19 Cal.4th 1138, 1143 & fn. 3.)
[2] The MDO statute (Pen. Code, § 2960 et seq.) imposed treatment at a state mental hospital on an inpatient or outpatient basis as a condition of parole. (Hubbart v. Superior Court, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 1143 & fn. 4.)
