CROCKETT — While he was receiving accolades for his skill as a track and field coach, 39-year-old Kyle Whitmore was allegedly sexually assaulting women in his basement “dungeon,” inside a customized school bus known as the “F— Truck,” and on the Diablo Valley College campus, police revealed Friday.
Whitmore, a longtime coach at both DVC in Pleasant Hill and Hercules High School, was in court Friday for a preliminary hearing where police revealed new details about the allegations behind his nine-count felony case. Whitmore was charged in September with two counts of human trafficking, two counts of pandering, one count of pimping and four counts of forcible sexual penetration with a foreign object against two alleged victims, one of whom was his college student, court records show.
At Friday’s hearing, Judge David Goldstein upheld eight of the nine charges, save for one pandering count, and set bail at $750,000. If Whitmore does bail out, he’s ordered to stay away from any of the community college district’s campuses and both women.
Prosecutors opted to call detectives as witnesses, rather than bringing the alleged victims on the stand. The officers’ testimony revealed that the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office and Contra Costa Community College District police began investigating Whitmore roughly one month before the charges were filed.
Whitmore’s attorney argued the acts were consensual and part of the “kink community” that emphasizes “abnormal sex.”
Both women told similar stories to detectives, explaining that they came to live with Whitmore at his Crockett home, and that they later came to realize the full extent of his perverse and violent fantasies, which allegedly included using dating apps to recruit paid clients for sexual favors and non-sexual “girlfriend experiences,” according to police.
One of the women told police she met Whitmore through an ex-boyfriend who allegedly bought cocaine from him. She ended up living with Whitmore on the 200 block of Edwards Street in 2021, after she became homeless following a breakup with her ex, according to police. The other alleged victim was a former student of Whitmore’s who moved into his home on the east end of town in August 2022. In addition to coaching, Whitmore taught communications studies as a DVC faculty member.
Whitmore’s former student would later tell police he had “rape fantasies” and would sexually assault her inside the home. Both victims described how he owned a customized blue school bus that he referred to as a “F— Truck,” and that the basement of his Crockett home was known as a “sex dungeon,” equipped with condoms, sex toys and other accessories.
The former student alleged that Whitmore would frequently strangle her to the point that she lost consciousness and strike her with whips and paddles against her will, authorities said. As evidence of this, prosecutors submitted a picture of a shoulder injury the woman was treated for at a hospital.
Whitmore’s former student also claimed that he offered her a watch, purse and $300 to quit her job at a pizza parlor and work for him on a dating app that offered paid “girlfriend for hire” experiences, which included taking paid clients on dates, but not sex acts, according to police. However, both women reportedly told police that Whitmore also used the LGTBQ dating app Grindr to specifically recruit bisexual men to come to the home so he could watch them engage in sex acts.
In his testimony, Contra Costa Sheriff’s Detective Brian Sams pointed out that Whitmore was physically bigger than both victims and said that factored into the human trafficking count.
“I believe the size difference, his position as a professor, her being outside of her house and Mr. Whitmore being twice her age and size, that she was a victim of human trafficking,” Sams said.
Whitmore’s former student said he brought two to four men to the home per day, for a 30-day period, and that she was too scared to tell him she didn’t want to do it, authorities said.
DVC hired Whitmore to run its track and field program in 2014, following six seasons at Hercules High. He was named the men’s track and field coach of the year in 2022 by the California Community College Cross Country and Track Coaches Association. Whitmore was placed on administrative leave following his arrest, a college district spokesperson said in September.