"Austin Powers" actor Joe Son convicted of torture in rape case

(CBS/AP) - An actor who had a small part in the movie "Austin Powers" has been convicted of torture in connection with the 1990 Christmas Eve gang rape of a woman in Orange County. Joseph Hyungmin Son was found guilty Thursday of one felony count of torture in connection with the attack.

Son initially was charged with multiple sexual assault and kidnapping counts, but many of those charges were dropped in part because the statute of limitations had expired, according to Los Angeles station KTLA.

Son, who played a shoe-throwing bad guy in the film "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," was arrested in 2008 when his DNA was matched to the rape of a 19-year-old woman who was abducted off the street by two men.

Prosecutors say Son and an accomplice pulled the victim into a car on Christmas Eve in 1990 and drove her toward Huntington Beach as they beat her with a gun and raped her.

No arrests were made in the case until Son's DNA was submitted to a state database in 2008 in connection to an unrelated vandalism sentence.

He faces a maximum sentence of 15 years to life in state prison.

Santiago Gaitan, 40, Son's co-defendant, was arrested in 2009 after he was also linked to the assault. He pleaded guilty to multiple sex crimes in January 2011 and was sentenced to prison for 17 years and four months.

Son was cast as "Random Task" in the 1997 Mike Myers "Austin Powers" film.

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August 18, 2011 - "Austin Powers" actor Joe Son on trial, accused in 1990 rape, kidnapping