Eagle – A Vail man who helped a friend fake a kidnapping on the promise that it was part of a kinky sex fantasy was acquitted of menacing and false imprisonment by an Eagle County jury Wednesday.
Michael George Malovic, 49, said he agreed to play the role of the armed intruder for Michael Sean Moore in May 2005 after Moore convinced him that Moore’s wife wanted to participate in a make-believe violent escapade in which she would have sex with another woman.
Moore’s wife allegedly “did incredible lesbian parties,” Malovic testified before the jury of 10 men and one woman on Wednesday. “In hindsight, it sounded like a good idea.”
Moore, who pleaded guilty to felony menacing and was sentenced to three years in prison in March, testified this week that he staged the hoax as a ruse to get access to his wife’s bank account to fuel a drug binge, keeping both her and Malovic unaware of his true intentions.
Malovic, a towering construction contractor with his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, took the stand as the only defense witness. He testified that Moore had bragged about his wife’s wild sex life and invited him to join in as the supposed armed intruder who would direct the debauchery.
He showed up at the couple’s Vail apartment with a ski mask, duct tape and what he said was a toy gun.
“I go in the door. Mikey Moore goes backwards, takes a dive over the coffee table. I’m supposed to say, ‘Put her in the bedroom.’ He gets up, puts her in the bedroom, and I’m standing there outside asking, ‘Where’s the other girls?”‘
Moore, meanwhile, ran back and forth between the kitchen and the bedroom, where he had bound his wife with duct tape based on the instructions of the “intruder.”
While promising Malovic in one room that he would call his wife’s female friends over for a sex party, Moore told his wife in the other room that the intruder demanded that the couple perform a sex act, that the intruder would have sex with her himself, and that the intruder was demanding money.
Moore’s wife gave her husband her automated teller machine card and personal-identification number, and the men left the apartment. Malovic testified that since there was only one woman, he got mad and went to work.
“I had no intent to go over there to do anything with Mikey Moore’s (wife). I expected multiple little Russian girls.”
Moore, however, continued the ruse, withdrawing $400 at an ATM from his wife’s account and driving down to Denver, where he called his wife – who had called 911 – and his mother, who later alerted authorities that he had not been kidnapped.
Moore’s wife, a Russian immigrant, filed for divorce a week later. Sobbing in a 45-minute videotaped interview with police, Moore told a wild tale of being driven around by two Latino kidnappers whom he eventually was able to fend off. In court, he recanted that story as a drug- induced fable.
Prosecutors asserted that Malovic participated in the hoax willingly and that his role as the believable masked gunman constituted a crime.
The jury deliberated about an hour before returning the not-guilty verdict, offering Malovic visible relief after a 16-month legal ordeal.
“This has really ruined my reputation,” he said afterward. “People don’t talk to me. They go the other way when they see me. I’ve lost jobs because of this. This got way more out of hand than it should have.”
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
