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WEST JORDAN — Even as he claimed he had been set up in an elaborate plot between police, prosecutors and his ex-wife, a Sandy man with a pattern of preying upon young, addicted women was sentenced to prison.
Third District Court Judge Douglas Hogan called the details of 62-year-old Vratislav Roger Bilek's case "particularly disturbing" and his explanation of the allegations against him entirely implausible.
"I find your story to be complete and utter BS," Hogan said following Bilek's lengthy, convoluted statement. "I spent the majority of my youth shoveling manure, and there has been more of it shoveled here today than I saw in my first 20 years."
According to prosecutors, Bilek paid bail in February for a 20-year-old woman and lured her to his extended stay motel room with a promise of drugs. After three days, Bilek's probation officer found the two there, drugs and paraphernalia strewn about the room, and photos and videos of the naked and unconscious woman were found on Bilek's cellphone.
Bilek was on probation at the time after pleading no contest on a kidnapping charge — part of a rape and assault case that fell apart when both victims stopped cooperating with investigators and disappeared — and had been ordered to abstain from drugs and alcohol, and not have overnight female guests.
A jury found Bilek guilty last month of distribution of a controlled substance, a second-degree felony; two counts of voyeurism, a class A misdemeanor; and possession of drug paraphernalia, a class B misdemeanor. He was acquitted of one count of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony.
Asking the judge to run Bilek's sentence consecutively to the now-reinstated term of one to 15 years he is now serving for the kidnapping case, Salt Lake County deputy district attorney Nathan Evershed called Bilek "the ultimate predator," repeatedly seeking out victims who were desperately addicted.
"He has preyed on the vulnerable, on the weak, on the damaged. He has done that time and time again, and such a predator needs to live in a cage for a long, long time," Evershed said.
Because Bilek was arrested and charged in violation of his parole, Evershed recounted the details of the prior case to illustrate what he called an "obsession" to seek out and abuse vulnerable women.
The first victim, Evershed said, was a 26-year-old woman who was homeless and ill when Bilek lured her to his house with the promise of drugs in August 2014.
"She was weak, sick and vulnerable. Perfect for the defendant," Evershed said.
Police were called after the woman, naked and apparently injured, ran from the house to one of Bilek's neighbors and said the man had beaten her and locked her in a closet.
Just three weeks later, Evershed said Bilek was "on the prowl" again, finding a 40-year-old woman trying to get a ride. Promising her a place to stay if she would help him find drugs, Evershed said she, too, ended up a prisoner at Bilek's Sandy home, eventually escaping and running to a neighbor for help.
While the victims' unwillingness to participate in the case — something that Evershed said Bilek had counted on — led to a plea deal, it did not change Bilek's pattern, according to the prosecutor.
The same week he was released from jail, Bilek found the 20-year-old woman from his latest case standing outside a restaurant at 4 a.m., offering her drugs in exchange for sex, Evershed said.
"He couldn't stop preying on these vulnerable women. He went straight after them," Evershed said.
Speaking through an interpreter that prosecutors alleged was unnecessary and from a wheelchair they didn't believe he needed, Bilek claimed all three women had been paid by his ex-wife to seek him out and frame him, part of an ongoing dispute over "more than $1 million in assets."
Bilek called the initial evidence against him circumstantial and unproven, and claimed the witnesses in the case were manipulated by prosecutors and police. He also claimed his public defender, Heather Chesnut, did not seek out evidence that would have exonerated him, but implied he was guilty to the jury through her behavior at trial.
Hogan emphasized that the court had reviewed Chesnut's efforts in the case and ordered she remain Bilek's attorney, while Evershed praised her defense and called Bilek's treatment of her "disgusting."
"This proceeding and the whole case is a big scam," Bilek told the judge. "Your honor, if you have any decency, set this aside and call for a new trial."
Noting that he was sentencing Bilek only on the charges he was convicted of at trial, Hogan ordered the man to serve one to 15 years in prison for the drug distribution charge, with two additional terms of a year apiece for the voyeurism charges. All three terms were ordered to run consecutively to each other and to the sentence Bilek is already serving.
"I find you take no responsibility for your actions, and the pictures and videos speak for themselves," Hogan said, even as Bilek interrupted, shouting in English, "I was set up!"
As he was wheeled from the courtroom, bystanders in the court gallery applauded the sentence, unadmonished by the judge.
"This could happen to anyone, ladies and gentlemen," Bilek told them in English as he was taken away.
