Trending
YOUNGSTOWN -- One of two males accusing Alex C. Bugno of giving them pills and money to engage in sex acts with him testified Tuesday what he did felt like selling his soul.
The male, now 23, testified in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that he was embarassed when he realized people would find out he and two friends undressed and allowed Bugno to engage in sexual acts with them in early 2014. The boys were 16 and 17 at the time.
"Well, you just let somebody manipulate you to sell your soul," he said when Assistant Mahoning County Prosecutor Steve Yacovone asked him why it embarassed him.
The male said one of the other boys first brought up the idea, which was to "let Alex Bugno have his way with us, in layman's terms," he said.
"We really didn't like the idea," he said. "We weren't gay, so we didn't want another guy touching us."
Later, "Alex approached us and asked if we wanted to go hang out at the Garland shop," he said of a building Bugno's towing company used on North Garland Avenue. They were "just to hang out," he said. But Bugno gave them pills that made them high. The boys "knew what was going on, but didn't know what was going on," he testified.
Bugno paid each one $500 the first time. It happened 10 to 15 more times in the coming months, not always with all three present at one time. Bugno paid less and less as time went on, he testified.
Bugno had pills "all around" his business, the male said. "We would ask for pills or if we were having a bad day, he would just give us pills."
Bugno, 31 of Clingan Road in Poland, is charged with 14 counts of compelling prostitution and one of pandering obscenity. If convicted, he could get more than 10 years in prison.
Another witness Monday was the father of another of the males, who went to police in June of 2014 to report what the boys and Bugno were doing after an incident in which the boys fired a BB gun at Bugno's towing business on Indianola Avenue.
They were angry because Bugno owed them "money for sex," the father testified.
Bugno watched surveillance video showing the boys damaging property at the business and called the boy's father, who then confronted his son about it.
The man testified Monday that when he woke up his son and confronted him over the vandalism, his son became irate and his face got "beet red." He said his son asked how he would feel if "some (deleted) was (deleted) and owed you money."
"He was so irate. He had grabbed my shotgun and literally put it under his chin and was about to pull the trigger. That's how sick he was." The father "knocked the gun away," he said.
The boy spent time at a local juvenile mental health facility after that. The father called police.
Under cross examination by attorney Thomas Pavlinic, one of Bugno's attorneys, the father said his son was smoking marijuana a few years before the allegations surfaced regarding Bugno, but he didn't realize his son was using pills until about 2014.
The first witness Tuesday was Christine Ross, a former investigator with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation who testified regarding cellphone call and text messaging information coming from the cell phones for Bugno and two of the boys.
Ross testified the digital records AT&T provided in 2014 for the phones was no longer available at BCI for this trial, so she went through hard-copy records held by the Mahoning County Prosecutor's Office at home on Sunday to substantiate the validity of her testmony from Friday.
Under questioning by attorney Lynn Maro, one of Bugno's attorneys, Ross acknowledged she had not had time to review about 400 of the approximately 4,000 pages, but she was able to verify hundreds of calls and texts between Bugno and the boys over several months starting early in 2014, most of them initiated by Bugno.