BOULDER, Colo. - Former gay-porn performer Tim Barnett, a real estate agent
suspected in seven rapes in Colorado and Texas, died Wednesday, July 13,
after hanging himself in his jail cell, according to an Associated Press
report.
Barnett, 37, whose real name was Bradford Wagner, appeared in such early
1990s movies as Valley of the Bi Dolls, An Officer and His Gentleman,
Abduction 2, Dynastud 2 and Thriller.
He was found unconscious, hanging by his neck from a sheet in his cell,
Boulder County sheriff's spokesman Lt. Phil West said in a press release. He
was pronounced dead at Boulder Community Hospital. Coroner Thomas Faure
ruled Wagner's death a suicide. He had not been considered a suicide risk,
West said.
Wagner had been held in the jail since his arrest in June 2004 after police
said they linked him to four rapes at a Boulder apartment complex during the
1990s by surreptitiously collecting DNA samples from him. An undercover
officer posing as a homebuyer collected DNA samples from Wagner, his car,
his home, and his bicycle, the AP report said.
Wagner had been charged in a 1994 rape in Lakewood, Colo., and police also
said genetic evidence connected him to an unsolved sexual assault in
Lakewood and a 1995 assault in Austin, Texas.
According to the AP report, Wagner attorney Wilbur Smith criticized the
police department's handling of the DNA evidence in the case. Former officer
Michelle Direzza testified that the rape kit containing semen samples from
the September 1993 attacker wasn't refrigerated because there was no room in
the evidence refrigerator.
Thor Stephans, who directed Barnett in An Officer and His Gentleman and
Driven Home for Sierra Pacific's Celsius Films, remembered him as "a
'gay-for-pay' guy, but great to work with and really beautiful. From what I
knew of him I was shocked to learn that he was suspected of so many rapes
and assaults. What a juxtaposition, to be arrested for all those rapes, but
loved to get fucked by men."
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