Costa Mesa gang investigation leads to 5 facing charges in kidnap, torture and robbery of man

Four men and a woman are facing charges in connection with a kidnapping in February in which a man was forced to don a long blond wig and put on a red dress before being tortured and robbed in a Costa Mesa motel, according to Orange County Superior Court records.

Kaiewa Haoletanno, 25, of San Juan Capistrano and Michael Camardi, 27, of Santa Ana are facing charges including assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, torture, kidnapping, kidnapping to commit robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and car theft, all felonies, as well as false imprisonment, a misdemeanor. They have not entered pleas but are due in court for arraignments April 20, court records show.

Katherine Dudley, 22, of Huntington Beach, Joseph Spellman, 29, of Costa Mesa and Jason Sacdalan, 47, of Costa Mesa are charged with the same felonies but also face possible sentencing enhancements on allegations of criminal street gang activity. They pleaded not guilty to all charges March 23, according to court records.

The charges are the culmination of Costa Mesa gang investigators’ roughly monthlong probe into the Feb. 11 attack, according to police.

Authorities launched their investigation at about 9:15 p.m. after they received a report from a manager at the Albertsons supermarket at 2300 Harbor Blvd. that a man with blood on his head was requesting help, according to an affidavit attached to an arrest warrant filed in Superior Court.

The 38-year-old victim, who was not identified, told officers that the situation began earlier that day when he and a friend stole Dudley’s cellphone, which she had left in the victim’s car. Sacdalan and Dudley confronted the pair about the theft shortly after in the parking lot of the Goodwill at 620 W. 19th St., the affidavit states.

Officers wrote that the man said Dudley and Sacdalan forced him and his friend to drive to the New Harbor Inn at 2205 Harbor Blvd. to “get to the bottom” of the situation. The victim’s friend, a 30-year-old man, exited the car at a gas station on Harbor Boulevard and refused to get back in, so the rest of the group continued to the motel.

After parking at the New Harbor Inn, three men — who authorities say were Spellman, Camardi and Haoletanno — approached the vehicle and took the man to a room on the second floor.

Authorities allege Spellman is a member of an Orange County-based “skinhead” gang and that Haoletanno claimed to be from the gang Public Enemy Number One, also known as PEN1, according to the affidavit.

In the motel room, the victim was forced to strip to his boxers and put on a blond wig, police wrote.

Spellman is accused of drawing on the man’s face with a red marker to resemble makeup and writing a derogatory term for a woman across his chest. Eventually, the man was forced to put on a red dress, police wrote.

Authorities allege in the affidavit that Spellman, Camardi and Haoletanno punched and kicked the man multiple times. Investigators also allege that Haoletanno Tased him on the neck and head and then waved a lit butane torch by his face but did not burn him.

Spellman is accused of using a pair of pliers to rip out the man’s left earring, tearing his earlobe, according to the affidavit.

The man told police the men pinned him down and Haoletanno stabbed him in his left thigh with a knife, the document states.

“While Haoletanno was holding the knife, he began telling [the victim] that he needed to pay taxes to the local gang for selling and using drugs in Costa Mesa,” police wrote.

Haoletanno also thanked him for helping him earn his “bolts” by “spilling his blood for his Aryan/white brothers,” the affidavit states.

During the assault, police allege, the group took the man’s cellphone, wallet and car key. After the beating, he was forced to write a bill of sale for his car for “zero dollars,” according to the document.

“During this time, [the victim] felt terrified, humiliated and angry,” police wrote. “He did not fight back or show emotion because he did not want to show weakness and just wanted to take his beating and be done with it.”

The man told authorities he was allowed to leave after he apologized to Dudley for stealing her phone.

During an interview with police, Sacdalan told detectives that he and Dudley didn’t witness the beating and only went into the room to gather belongings before they left. He also denied that they forced the man to drive to the motel, according to the affidavit.

Sacdalan was arrested in February, while Dudley, Camardi and Spellman were taken into custody over several days in March. Haoletanno turned himself in at Orange County Jail in Santa Ana on March 24, police said.

Spellman is being held without bail at Orange County’s Theo Lacy jail in Orange. Camardi and Sacdalan are being held without bail at the county jail in Santa Ana. Dudley and Haoletanno are being held in county jail in Santa Ana with bail set at $1 million.

Fry writes for Times Community News.