Copyright The Mercury News
Arizona prosecutors have filed new charges against Laura Owens, the daughter of Bay Area radio icon Ronn Owens, which alleges she targeted a second man with false pregnancy claims in order to press him into a relationship. The indictment announced Thursday comes six months after Owens was charged with making similar false claims against “Bachelor” star Clayton Echard. In both cases, Owens alleged that she became pregnant by the men before the purported pregnancies ended in either an abortion or miscarriage, according to court records. In the new charges announced Thursday, Maricopa County prosecutors say Owens, an equestrian and podcaster, went on three dates with a Scottsdale man in the summer of 2021, but he decided not to pursue a relationship. Owens then told him she was pregnant, according to prosecutors. Investigators with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office found evidence that she falsified documents to bolster this claim. The 35-year-old resident of Scottsdale, Ariz. now faces seven new felony counts that include perjury, fraud, forgery, theft by extortion and taking another person’s identity. Earlier this year, Owens made national headlines when she was indicted on seven other felony counts, related to alleged false paternity claims she pursued against Echard in 2023 and 2024. Owens’ attorney, Joshua Kolsrud, who is representing her in the criminal allegations involving Echard and, now, the Scottsdale man, declined to comment, citing her pending criminal trial, which is scheduled for January 2026. He also said that Owens would not make any comment publicly. She previously pleaded not guilty to the Echard charges and stood by her claims that she became pregnant by him after a one-night stand in June 2023. She told the Daily Mail last month: “I have lots to say, but I would get in trouble. I can say I am innocent but nothing more for now.” Court records in Maricopa County show that Owens filed a lawsuit against the Scottsdale man in August 2021, alleging that he “employed false promises, and verbal and emotional abuse to coerce” her into getting an abortion. Through his attorney, the man denied any such coercion took place because she was never pregnant. He also alleged that Owens sent him sonographic images of a purported pregnancy; a reverse Google Images search revealed that the sonographic images were identical to a sonogram found on a blog post from 2014, according to court records. Owens’ civil lawsuit alleging abortion coercion, in which she sought $45,000 in damages, continued for more than two years before it was ultimately dismissed, though she succeeded in obtaining a separate protective order against the Scottsdale man. Thursday’s indictment in Arizona comes a day after Owens failed to appear in San Francisco Superior Court for a case she filed involving Michael Marraccini, an ex-boyfriend from San Francisco, who Owens took to civil court after claiming he got her pregnant with twins. In that case, Owens sought to renew a domestic violence restraining order that she had obtained against Marraccini in 2018 after they dated off-and-on for 17 months. Like Echard and the other alleged victim, Marraccini questioned Owens’ pregnancy claims, denied he was ever abusive and said he wanted nothing more to do with her after they dated, according to Marraccini’s court response to Owens’ renewal request. Two months after Owens was indicted in the Echard paternity scheme, she filed a petition in San Francisco Superior Court, seeking to make her restraining order against Marraccini permanent. In the petition, she said she feared Marraccini, who still lives in Northern California, could still harm her and had engaged in conduct that had caused “severe emotional distress,” though she lives 700 miles away in Arizona and said she had no contact with him for several years. After Superior Court Judge Carolyn Gold ordered Owens to appear in court in person for a two-day hearing last month on her renewal request, Owens filed court documents seeking to testify from Arizona or to delay the case, saying she had a “life-threatening” medical emergency. Free on her own recognizance in the Echard criminal case, Owens needed permission from the court in Arizona to travel to San Francisco. The hearing was reset for Wednesday, but Owens did not appear in person or remotely, so Gold dismissed her petition. Marraccini, 38, said he wanted to clear his name in an interview with this news organization. “It feels like the handcuffs have been taken off,” Marraccini said, referring to the lifting of a protective order that barred him from visiting friends in the San Francisco neighborhood where Owens once lived. Owens and her parents, KGO 810 radio legend Ronn Owens and former KCBS reporter Jan Black, moved to Arizona during the coronavirus pandemic, after Ronn Owens retired from KGO-810 after 46 years. Owens met up with Echard in May 2023. At the time, Echard, who starred on ABC’s “The Bachelor” in 2022, was working as a realtor in Scottsdale, and Owens contacted him about wanting to pursue some real estate investments, according to court records in the Echard paternity case. After their one and only date, Echard told her he did not want a relationship, according to records. Owens allegedly told him she was pregnant with twins, and the criminal charges against her alleged she doctored a sonogram and pregnancy video and lied under oath as she pursued her claims against him in a paternity lawsuit, according to prosecutors. She then said that she miscarried the twins at some point and said she wasn’t immediately aware of the pregnancy loss when it happened, according to testimony in a June 10, 2024, hearing for Owens’ lawsuit against Echard. Julie Mata, the Maricopa County judge who presided over the hearing, said that Owens lacked “good faith” and cited “serial fabrications” that she made in her court declarations, deposition and testimony. She referred the case to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for potential criminal prosecution. Owens’ paternity claims against Echard, Marraccini and the Scottsdale man have been extensively covered by YouTube journalists, online investigators and “Bachelor” fans. To Owens and her parents, the “Justice for Clayton” community constitutes an online mob who have relentlessly cyberbullied her. Black told the Daily Mail last month that the Maricopa County DA’s office is selectively prosecuting her daughter, calling her daughter’s ordeal emotionally and financially devastating to their family. In August, Ronn Owens and Black filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, while his daughter was granted a request to be declared indigent in Maricopa County, which means the local public defender’s office will provide taxpayer-funded assistance to aid her criminal defense.
