"You Light Up My Life" Composer Also an 82-Count Rapist

Joseph Brooks, 71, won an Oscar for the sappy, treacly 1977 hit “You Light Up My Life,” from the film of the same name.  But he wasn’t the type to rest on his laurels.  Instead, he parlayed his success into even more success.  Success at raping young women.  Including an American Idol contestant.

The details in this case are basically textbook sleazy talent scout promising to make a young girl a big star…under one condition.  He planned out his rapes methodically.  Step one: Craigslist…

He would post ads on the site saying that an

“Oscar award-winning composer” was looking for a “new face,” a “young girl between 18 and 22″ who is beautiful.

His assistant would reassure the target that the ad was legitimate, and Brooks would then fly the young women to New York.  He preferred candidates from Washington and Oregon

so they would be tired from traveling by the time they arrived in New York, authorities said. He allegedly hoped that would leave them without the energy to put up a fight.

When he met the girl, he would take his Oscar – his one solitary Oscar from his sh*tty song 32 years ago – off his shelf, put it in her hands, and tell her,

“This could be you. This could be you holding the Oscar. I could make you a star.”

You wanna be a stahhh, don’tcha?

Once Brooks had his prey inside his apartment, he used the oldest trick in the book, cops said. He allegedly told the women they were trying out for the role of a prostitute, and the scene they were depicting involved drinking glasses of wine “repeatedly and quickly.”

“The part called for them to drink the wine in a seductive manner,” Lamboy said. “He told them to be very comfortable with their bodies, to drink the wine and feel sexy about themselves as they became more and more intoxicated.”

“Great!  You’re almost there!  You’ll be a star in no time!  I just need you to do one more thing…”

Brooks’s defense lawyer says, of the 11 rapes Brooks is accused of,

“It shows nine incidents starting in March and into April of ’08. Out of his whole lifetime, in eight weeks, six weeks, he supposedly committed all these crimes.”

Huh!  Good point, agreed the police.  We should probably look into the rest of his life as well, considering how many girls he raped in that short time.

The Idol gal is Loretta Spruell.

Source: NY Post.