'He said he'd do me a favor …'

If I did him a favor'

In stark detail on Thursday, a young woman described how Kalispell businessman Dick Dasen Sr. allegedly dangled salvation before her, offering money and a chance at a better life at a time when she had no other options, in exchange for unnamed favors.

Leah Marshall, 23, testified for almost three hours during the second day of Dasen's trial in District Court. Police say the prominent businessman spent millions of dollars on sex with numerous women over a 20-year period. He is charged with 14 counts of prostitution and related crimes.

Prompted by questions from Deputy County Attorney Dan Guzynski, Marshall described a meeting with Dasen in December 2002.

"I told him my situation," Marshall said. "I'd lost my apartment. I was using a lot of drugs. My life wasn't going very well. I was a mess… desperate, sobbing.

"Mr. Dasen asked me how I'd feel about going to college, how I'd feel about him giving me money for a place to live and a car. Then he said he'd also give me a thousand dollars a week.

"I was in shock. I didn't have a car at the time. I was sleeping on a friend's couch. I thought it was too good to be true. Then I asked, 'What's the catch?'"

Marshall said Dasen told her to rent a motel room the next day and to call him with the room number.

"What did you think he meant?" Guzynski asked.

"I thought he meant trade money for sex," Marshall replied.

"Did he ever say that to you?" Guzynski asked.

"No," she said. "Mr. Dasen said he'd do me a favor if I did him a favor."

Marshall's carefully structured testimony was intended to bolster the prosecution's contention that Dasen was a calculating predator who took advantage of women who were at their lowest point.

"You may not like these women and you may not like what they did, but without the defendant, they were not prostitutes," said Deputy County Attorney Lori Adams during opening arguments on Wednesday. "Dasen made them an offer that they didn't have the strength to refuse."

However, parts of Marshall's testimony could also support Dasen's claim that he simply tried to help women who ultimately took advantage of his generosity.

Marshall said she came to Montana in 2002, looking for a father she'd only met once before and trying to escape a life of drugs.

She was 10 years old and living in Oregon when she first used marijuana, she said, but by the time she was 18, she'd tried just about everything else she could find, including methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine, LSD, mushrooms, alcohol and prescription drugs.

"I was 12 when I first used meth," Marshall said. "When I was 15, my mom lost her house and the family split up. I pretty much lived wherever I could."

Her mother was a drug addict as well, who occasionally shared meth and cocaine with her daughter. Marshall's father wasn't around at the time; she said she met him for the first time when she was 15.

Guzynski noted that she still managed to graduate from high school. He asked why she made that effort.

"I didn't want to be like my mother," Marshall said. "I wanted a different life."

The search for a different life took her to Montana when she was 19. She'd stopped using drugs by then - for the third time - and came looking for her father.

Eventually, she ended up in Kalispell, working as a nursing assistant. She wasn't making much money, but she had an apartment and a car and she said she was still off drugs.

Then Marshall left town because of a family emergency. When she got back, the job was gone and the bills were piling up.

"A friend said she knew someone who'd helped her in the past - Mr. Dasen," Marshall said. "I went to meet him. He asked what he could do for me."

She asked him to lend her enough money to help pay the rent and to cover her other bills. He wrote a check for $2,650, more money than she'd ever had in her life.

"I didn't spend it on bills," Marshall said. "I blew it. I don't even remember what I spent it on… drugs, gambling."

A month later, she went to see Dasen again. That, she said, was when he offered to do her a favor if she did him a favor.

Throughout her testimony on Thursday, Marshall's answers were clear and direct. She spoke without hesitation and without strong emotion, except on a couple of occasions.

She described how nervous she was during that first motel encounter with Dasen, how they initially sat on the bed and talked. She said Dasen told her if she was uncomfortable or wanted to stop, that he would stop. She described how she cried silently while he performed oral sex on her, and how afterwards he wrote her a check for $3,000.

"He told me if I had any friends who were having any difficulties, to bring them with me or give them his phone number," she said. "If I brought other girls, he would give money. If I continued to have sex with him, he would give money."

Marshall said she introduced several friends to Dasen over time. They were instructed to call him and tell him that they wanted the same kind of deal that she had.

From the time she blew the $2,650 check until January 2004, when she quit using drugs for the fourth time, Marshall said she was getting high on a daily basis.

"It progressed beyond anything I'd done before," she said. "I was a junkie - meth, cocaine, anything I could get. Money was available all the time."

She indicated that the money came from multiple sexual encounters with Dasen, and from payments she received for introducing him to other women.

However, Marshall also acknowledged that she had to leave town at one point because she'd been forging checks. She was later extradited back to Montana from Oregon and spent a week in the county jail before Dasen bailed her out.

Marshall's testimony ended for the day at about 5 p.m., but Guzynski said he would have further questions for her this morning. Kalispell attorney George Best, representing Dasen, will then have an opportunity to cross-examine her.

Before Marshall took the stand on Thursday, much of the testimony focused on the procedural manner in which some of the evidence in this case was collected.

The testimony revealed that Kalispell Police officers executed a search warrant on Feb. 11, 2004, recovering a computer, portable computer discs, sex toys and financial documents from Dasen's office at Peak Development.

The warrant was then found to be legally flawed, prompting the police to secure a second warrant. Most of the items collected during the February search were then taken back to Dasen's office by police on March 3. Within about an hour, they were collected and documented as evidence once again.

The exception was the computer, which was returned to Peak Development for several days in February so that the company could extract financial information for auditing purposes. The computer was then returned to Dasen's office and hooked up.

Before the computer was returned, however, it had been examined by Jimmy Weg, a computer forensics specialist with the Montana Department of Justice. It was examined by Weg again after it had been retrieved during the March 3 search.

Weg testified that he recovered multiple photographs from the computer and portable Zip discs, depicting sexual activity or nude females and taken by digital cameras.

Guzynski also introduced photos that Marshall said were taken of a sexual encounter involving her, Dasen and another woman.

Reporter Bill Spence may be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at bspence@dailyinterlake.com. Reporter Jim Mann also contributed to this story.