It was the kind of mistake anybody could make – an upstate man says he accidentally tried to kidnap the wrong woman to bring home to be his sex slave.
Roger Gudz says he thought he was kidnapping “Judith,” an S&M aficionado he’d chatted with over the Internet and who fantasized about getting abducted and forced into prostitution.
Instead, he grabbed New York City banker Lynn Zennario, who’d been out riding her bicycle near her country home in Columbia County.
Gudz was convicted of attempted kidnapping and sentenced to 15 years in the bizarre 2002 incident.
A state appeals court ruled the trial judge didn’t give Gudz’s defense a fair shake because he told jurors they should consider not only whether Gudz actually believed his victim had agreed to the abduction, but whether a reasonable person could have made the same mistake.