Testimony from 7 women key to Banas conviction

Jacob Banas, who law enforcement officials said had terrorized women in Cedarburg for more than a decade, was convicted last week of drugging a woman in his restaurant in 2014.

After hearing testimony from seven women who said they also had been drugged by Banas, it took a jury of five men and seven women less than two hours to find Banas guilty of administering a dangerous or stupefying drug to Stephanie Hayes at his restaurant, the August Weber Haus. 

Banas could be sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, followed by five and a half years of extended supervision, and fined $25,000.

Cedarburg Police Chief Tom Frank, who oversaw the investigation into Banas for many years, said he intends to ask that Banas be given the maximum sentence.

“The maximum would be warranted with all the victims we had contact with, even though we could only bring one charge,” he said. “I’m hopeful that the judge will see it that way.”

Washington County Circuit Court Judge Todd Martens, who took the case after three Ozaukee County judges recused themselves for various reasons, set sentencing for March 13.

Ozaukee County District Attorney Adam Gerol said the testimony of the seven women, which was allowed as “other acts evidence,” was critical to the case.

Each of them described being disoriented, losing their memory and being sick after they had a drink with Banas.

“Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice,” Gerol told the Ozaukee County jury in his closing argument. 

“It only happened after they came in contact with the defendant. Jacob Banas is the link,” he said.

Hayes testified she went to the August Weber Haus with a friend to celebrate being hired as executive director of the Cedarburg Cultural Center.

Over a four-hour period, she said, the two women shared two bottles of wine over appetizers and entrees and drank one shot, containing what Hayes believed to be whiskey, provided to them by Banas. Hayes also took a sip from a vodka and Red Bull mixed drink, she said.

Banas left the restaurant shortly after he served the shots. 

Afterward, Hayes became disoriented, manic, cried uncontrollably and, after she got home, could not walk, passed out and vomited twice.

Hayes did not suspect that she had been drugged until she attended a party a few days later, held in her honor to welcome her to her new job, and told a friend what had happened. 

The friend informed her that Banas had a reputation for drugging women.

Banas, 39, has been accused by as many as 20 women of drugging them, although he has not been criminally charged in those other instances.

To convict Banas, the prosecution had to prove that Banas administered a drug, that the drug overpowered Hayes or altered her consciousness and that he did so to facilitate the commission of a crime.

With the jury absent from the courtroom, Gerol argued that the administration of a drug itself was the commission of a crime. 

“By drugging them, he essentially imprisoned them,” Gerol said.

Martens overruled Gerol, however, saying the law clearly required that it be proven that Banas intended to commit a crime, for instance a sexual assault or robbery.

“I don’t think that’s a sensible reading of the statute,” Martens said to Gerol.

Banas’ attorney Brent Nistler argued that Gerol failed to establish intent or motive and moved that the case should be dismissed.

Martens denied the motion, saying Gerol could argue that Banas intended to commit a crime when he administered the drug but later changed his mind.

After the trial, Gerol said he had intended to call an expert witness from Arizona who would have testified that some perpetrators who surreptitiously administer drugs are motivated by the idea of dominating and controlling somebody, even if it does not involve sexual assault or robbery.

Nistler successfully argued in pre-trial sessions, however, against allowing the testimony.

Gerol said that the statute doesn’t require the state to prove motive, only intent.

“It was kind of the subtle argument bouncing through the trial,” he said. “Why would somebody do it?”

Gerol said he hopes to see the statute changed, calling it “odd.”

“I’m speaking with people I know and am writing down my thoughts on what would make a better statute,” he said. “It should be enough that someone (drugs another person) without their consent, without having to prove they intended to commit some other crime.”

The seven women who testified all described having experienced symptoms similar to Hayes after having drinks with Banas. Some woke up naked or in Banas’ apartment, unsure whether they had been assaulted. One woman testified that she saw Banas grab some pills from the floor behind the August Weber Haus bar and take them to the upstairs apartment.

Banas became one of Cedarburg’s most notorious citizens.

Frank, the Cedarburg police chief, said he heard from many residents wanting something to be done.

“We obviously couldn’t disclose a lot of what we were doing,” he said last week. “I can assure people we were working very hard for a number of years to continue the investigation. We were as concerned as many of them about the crimes Mr. Banas was accused of being involved in. 

“We can’t always comment on what we’re doing and how things are going. It’s just part of police work.”

What made the case particularly difficult to prosecute, Frank and Gerol said, was the lack of physical evidence and the loss of memory the victims suffered.

“You can only work with the evidence you have,” Gerol said. “You cannot prove a case like this without other acts evidence. A woman standing alone cannot convince a jury of 12 people. 

That’s the reason we jumped into this case; we were able to develop the anecdotal evidence of all these other women.”  

In 2015, women who said they had been victimized by Banas banded together with others to boycott the restaurant and form a group called Citizens for a Safer Cedarburg.

Banas, who currently lives in Clearwater, Fla., sued several of them for defamation.

Hayes is one of the defendants in the civil case.

Christian Ramirez was also sued but later settled out of court.

She was cited for disorderly conduct in 2016 for warning a woman who was with Banas of his suspected history.

She attended the trial last week, even though she does not know Hayes.

Hearing the guilty verdict read “was the best feeling in the world,” she said. “Thank God for justice being done.”

Also testifying was Pascal Kintz, a professor of legal medicine and head of the laboratory of toxicology at the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University of Strasbourg in France.

In court documents, Gerol called Kintz “possibly the world’s foremost authority on the use of hair analysis in drug-facilitated crimes.”

Kintz found the presence of doxylamine, an ingredient in sleep aids, and diphenhydramine, which is used for motion sickness. Both are found in cold medicines.

When they are combined with alcohol,  their effect is intensified, producing symptoms similar to those Hayes and the other women experienced, Kintz said.

Kintz said he found large enough quantities of the drugs in Hayes’ hair to incapacitate an adult, roughly equal to three normal doses.

Kintz also tested the hair of another women from Florida who worked with Banas there and had an experience similar to Hayes. Her hair also showed the presence of the two drugs, even though she never took them herself.
Complicating matters, however, was that Hayes admitted she was taking an over-the-counter medication containing doxylamine and diphenhydramine in the spring of 2014 to treat allergy and cold symptoms.

Nistler suggested Hayes’ condition was due to her having taken cold medications herself for weeks, combined with her drinking that night. 

“She got drunk, got sick and had a hangover. That’s it,” he said.

A search warrant executed after Hayes filed a complaint with Cedarburg Police discovered empty bottles of both drugs in Banas’ apartment.

Nistler also seized on Hayes’ admission she only went to police after she heard about Banas’ reputation “through the rumor mill.”

“We shouldn’t convict people on speculation based on a lot of emotional testimony,” Nistler told the jury in his closing argument. In the end, however, Gerol said the testimony of Hayes and the other women could not be ignored by the jury.

“The science of hair is new and we were going to play it for all it was worth,” he said after the trial. “But from the beginning we thought about what the other women (victims) would say.”

After the verdict was read, Gerol asked that Banas be taken into custody, noting that he has sparred with victims and others on social media, continued to frequent dating websites and that he lives in Florida, posing a flight risk.

Martens denied the motion, saying the $25,000 bail posted by Banas was enough to guarantee that he appears for sentencing.