Tape contradicts accused officer's denials.

Byline: Rebecca Nolan The Register-Guard

Roger Eugene Magana admitted in a tape-recorded telephone conversation that he had been at the home of a woman whose call to 911 launched a criminal investigation into his activities while on duty as a Eugene police officer - contradicting earlier statements he made to investigators that he did not know the woman and had never been to her apartment.

In the conversation, Magana tells Eugene police Sgt. Scott McKee that he had been at the apartment but left after the woman started coming on to him, pulling up her own shirt to expose her breasts and trying to hug and kiss him.

"I didn't go around there with the intent to do this and touch her," he says on the tape, explaining how he had to "peel" the woman's hands off of him. "I didn't touch anything intentionally."

Lane County Deputy District Attorney Bob Lane played the tape to jurors Tuesday in Lane County Circuit Court, where Magana, 41, is being tried on charges that he sexually assaulted several women while on duty. Testimony is expected to continue at 9 a.m. today.

McKee placed the call to Magana's home last June 23, the same day the detective searched Magana's police locker and found evidence corroborating the woman's claim that the patrol officer had been to her home June 10 on a false noise complaint call and taken down her name and number in his police notebook.

The woman told police that Magana, in uniform with gun and badge, showed up at her front door around midnight, entered her apartment, groped her and told her, "I want to bend you over and do you." She said he left only after she pushed him out the door.

According to testimony, when confronted by Sgt. Kathy Flynn about the allegations, Magana denied ever being at the woman's apartment. When Flynn showed the officer a photo of the woman, Magana denied ever meeting her.

He continued to deny knowing the woman until McKee placed the taped call to his home.

In the meantime, McKee had learned that Magana and another officer had answered a call to the woman's apartment more than a year earlier, in May 2002, after she threatened suicide while drunk. McKee testified Tuesday that the woman said that when the second officer left, Magana took her into her bedroom to comfort her and the two kissed. He then led her to his patrol car, where they "made out," McKee said.

The woman's roommate happened to peer out the kitchen window and saw the two embracing, McKee said.

When questioned about that incident, Magana allegedly told police, "I have yet to kiss anyone in a patrol car."

Then, in March 2003, Magana stopped by the woman's apartment unannounced while she was out of town, McKee said. The officer allegedly questioned her roommate about the woman's whereabouts before leaving, the sergeant said.

Three months later, he showed up again. In the taped conversation, Magana says he happened to be in the neighborhood and stopped by to see how the woman was doing.

"She made a move at me," he says on the tape. "She made a motion to kiss me. ... It wasn't some mutual make-out kiss type of deal."

He said he wasn't "into it" and left. In the recording, Magana suggests the woman reported him because she felt jilted that he never returned any of the phone messages she left on his work voice mail.

"You mean you think this is going to cost me my job over this?" he asks McKee, who advises the officer to consult an attorney.