Man gets 25 to life for 1995 Orange County killing
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A man who spent 16 years on the run after beating to death his ex-lover in Orange County will spend 25 years to life in prison.
City News Service says 73-year-old Raymundo Pereda was sentenced Friday by a judge who called him cruel and a coward.
Pereda was convicted last fall of killing 53-year-old Mary Ann O'Neill in her Placentia home in 1995.
Prosecutors say he stuffed O'Neill's body in her car trunk and left it at a strip mall before fleeing to Las Vegas and taking a new name.
Pereda was arrested there in 2006 on suspicion of drunken driving. His fingerprints were added to a national database.
They were matched to the murder case when Placentia police reopened it in 2011.
