Man Charged With Union City Rape Kills Self: Report

LIVERMORE, CA — A Livermore man charged with raping two East Bay women in 1997 died Thursday by suicide, Bay Area News Group reported.

The death of Gregory Vien, 61, comes days after he heard his victims — a Union City woman and a Livermore woman — testify for the prosecution in a court hearing, the paper reported.

Vien was arrested last November on suspicion of sexual penetration by a foreign object with force, forced oral copulation, false imprisonment and kidnapping.

Livermore police said at the time that they believed Vien may have had additional victims. "Three additional unsolved brutal sexual assaults" committed in the city from 1995 to 1997 had similar characteristics, police said.

In May 1997, a 41-year old woman was walking home from the Union City BART station when she was attacked by an unknown man who dragged her to a nearby field and violently sexually assaulted her, the LPD said. The man left biological fluid at the scene, which was collected and preserved by Union City Police. The suspect's DNA was then uploaded into a DNA database hoping for a suspect identification.

Then in September 1997, a 22-year-old woman was attacked and sexually assaulted while she was on an evening walk at Livermore High School, the Livermore Police Department said. The suspect — a man the woman did not know — left DNA evidence behind, which was collected and uploaded into a DNA database.

In 1998 a DNA link was made between the two cases, but identifying the person who belonged to that DNA would take more than two decades. Police eventually collected a plastic spoon that Vien had used and used that DNA to tie him to the 1997 Livermore and Union City sexual assaults.

Bay Area law enforcement officials expressed outrage when Alameda County Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon ordered in April Vien's release from Santa Rita Jail without bail to prevent him from possibly being exposed to the coronavirus. Vien's lawyer, Melissa Adams, made a motion for his release.

Livermore Mayor John Marchand published a scathing latter soon after, blasting Reardon's decision.

"As the Mayor of Livermore, I have to ask Judge Reardon, 'What about the safety and well-being on my community?'"

Inmate advocates have pressed for the release of Santa Rita Jail inmates during the pandemic, arguing they are in danger of contracting the new coronavirus and falling seriously ill in such cramped quarters.

— Toni McAllister and Bea Karnes contributed to this report

Read more at Bay Area News Group.

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