3 Arrested in Motel Row Crime Spree : Police: Investigators say the robbers preyed on tourists in the Disneyland area, including one who was raped. Hoteliers were warned but the public wasn’t.

ANAHEIM —  Police announced Thursday that they arrested three young men who allegedly preyed on tourists at motels in the Disneyland area, tying them up, robbing them at gunpoint and raping at least one woman.

While the crime spree spurred alarm and extra security among local hoteliers, it was not disclosed to the public because police said it could have jeopardized their investigation. Some local residents said Thursday that they were bothered by the lack of notice.

As many as 19 times in the past six weeks, the three suspects allegedly entered open doors at the many inns surrounding Disneyland to steal thousands of dollars, along with video equipment, jewelry and even a Disneyland cap and other tourist memorabilia.

Sometimes, motel managers said in interviews, the suspects posed as guests at poolside before striking. Other times, they allegedly followed tourists home from Disneyland. In each case, police say the men wound up entering guests’ rooms after nightfall and terrorizing the occupants with guns and knives for up to 30 minutes before fleeing with their loot.

“We’ve been going at this thing day and night for the last two weeks--just because of the number of cases and the number of people and the propensity for violence,” said Capt. Stan Kantor of the Anaheim Police Department.

Police say the robberies turned violent when one of the suspects raped an 18-year-old woman in her motel room as her friends were bound with rope nearby.

The three men are also suspected in an apartment robbery Tuesday night in Cerritos that resulted in the rape of a 14-year-old girl, Kantor said.

Arrested Wednesday in the Disneyland crimes were John Richard Broussard, 20, of Anaheim; Charles Matthew Henry, 21, of Anaheim, and Eric Vestal Hall, 24, of Los Angeles. They are each being held in the Anaheim City Detention Facility on $50,000 bond on suspicion of rape, robbery, aggravated assault and other charges, authorities said.

Broussard is a private security guard in the Orange County area, according to Kantor. Henry had recently sought work in that field as well, he said. Hall’s occupation was not known.

According to police, the bandits hit the Cosmic Age Motel, the Pennysleeper, the Saga Inn, the Sands Motel, the Apollo Inn and the Disneyland Hotel, all within an area bordered by Ball Road, Harbor Boulevard, Katella Avenue, and West Street. But police said this is only a partial list and that the total number of robberies is as high as 19 since July.

The string of attacks prompted police to put out a bulletin this week warning hoteliers to take added security measures.

Police said victims usually made the intruders’ job easier by leaving doors open and said visitors should be more aware of the need for security.

Anaheim Police Chief Joseph T. Molloy said at a press conference that visitors to the city should not “get into the attitude . . . (that) they’re on vacation and nothing is going to happen to them.”

Nonetheless, during the six-week run of attacks, police never released information or warnings on the attacks to the media or the general public.

Molloy said that to do so could have impeded the investigation and risked “scaring these individuals off.” In addition, he maintained the potential benefit was negligible since “tourists don’t read newspapers or listen to things” in the local media.

But Curtis Stricker, president of a local civic group called Anaheim Homeowners Maintaining Their Environment, said he was “bothered” to learn of the lack of publicity.

While he understood investigators’ need to pursue leads in some secrecy, he said: “I think people in this city would want to know about this. . . . We spend a lot of time walking through, driving through, going to restaurants (in the Disneyland area). . . .

Greg Badalian, general manager of the Sands Motel, said he believes talks in recent weeks between local police and the hoteliers during the investigation were intentionally kept “low-key” and confidential.

Asked why, he responded simply: “Disneyland.”

“This is a family-oriented place,” Badalian said. “It’s summertime and people aren’t going to want to come here with talk of these robbers out. . . . There’s no reason to cause fear.”

Still, Badalian said his employees were put on security alert and told to make extra nighttime rounds.

But Monty Maynerd, front-desk manager for the Saga Inn, which was hit about a month ago, said he’s not sure there’s much that small motels like his could do.

“They were so quick about it,” he said of the burglars. All the rooms “are in the back, so it’s kinda hard to keep track,” he added.

When the burglars struck a room occupied by Japanese exchange students at the the Saga last month, Maynerd said, “they hogtied them and robbed them. They took everything--bracelets, jewelry, everything.”

At the press conference at the Anaheim Police Department, authorities displayed the weapons police say were used to get the valuables--a knife, a .357-magnum revolver and a pellet gun. After binding their victims with twine or nylon rope, the assailants would verbally threaten the tourists to get their valuables, police said.

The suspects apparently were not masked. But hotel managers said descriptions on the intruders were often sketchy, and the break in the case came only when a fingerprint taken from a motel room matched a print in the state’s identification system.

The match on the first suspect led investigators to the other two men arrested, although police would not say just how that happened. “It was just good police work,” Kantor said.