Teen’s killer gets life in prison
Family members tearfully demand Garcia-Torres say where he hid body
SAN JOSE >> In an emotional final chapter to a case that gripped the Bay Area, the mother of missing teen Sierra LaMar confronted the girl’s convicted killer in court Tuesday, clutching photos of her smiling daughter and tearfully demanding he reveal her final resting place before a judge sentenced him to life in prison.
“It is incomprehensible to me that you would commit such a heinous crime — rape and murder of a child,” Sierra’s mother, Marlene LaMar, said to Antolin Garcia-Torres. “You could end this and repent, and tell us where she is. What if she was your child?”
Garcia-Torres stared straight ahead as the girl’s parents, aunt and uncle spoke to him. He did not testify in the trial, which ended with a guilty verdict in May. His lawyer, Al Lo-
pez, said he will appeal the conviction.
The jury’s June decision to reject the death penalty for 26-year-old Garcia-Torres had already determined the life-without-parole sentence that Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Vanessa A. Zecher handed down Tuesday afternoon. He took a deep breath, looked down, then steeled his face and stared straight ahead as the judge sentenced him.
But for family and friends of 15-year-old Sierra, whose disappearance in March 2012 on her way to school near Morgan Hill touched off a futile search that drew more than 750 people from across the Bay Area, it was a chance to make him hear their anguish.
“It’s still difficult to grasp the reality we will never hear her laughter or see her smile,” Sierra’s aunt Connie LaMar said through tears in court, calling Garcia-Torres “a weak coward with no moral fiber.”
Sierra was on her way to her school bus stop in a semi-rural neighborhood in March when she vanished — almost, but not quite, without a trace.
In the end, Garcia-Torres’ lawyers could not explain to the jury’s satisfaction how her DNA wound up in his car, including a single strand of her hair on a rope discovered in his trunk. His DNA was also found on the black pants and sweatshirt she had been wearing that Friday, which were discovered in a nearby field.
The jury also convicted Garcia-Torres, an amateur arborist and former Safeway bag boy, of attempting to kidnap three women
late at night from Safeway parking lots in Morgan Hill three years before Sierra disappeared. His fingerprint was on the battery of a stun gun the attacker tried to use and dropped in one of the attacks.
Prosecutors David Boyd and Dana Veazey characterized those attacks as practice runs for the abduction of Sierra, and urged the death penalty for Garcia-Torres, but the jury in the “missing body” case rejected the ultimate punishment.
Before the family could speak Tuesday, the judge spent the morning hearing
Garcia-Torres’ motion for a new trial. His lawyers argued jurors should have heard questions about the lead investigator’s truthfulness that had surfaced in another case.
But Zecher denied the motion, stating that “these are issues that could have and should have been litigated at trial” and noting there was other evidence of Garcia-Torres’ guilt. The judge also declared GarciaTorres a sex offender during the hearing, noting that Sierra’s clothes, including her bra, were taken off her body and found in a nearby field.
“I believe that given the opportunity, Mr. Garcia would reoffend,” the judge said.
Tuesday’s sentencing hearing came after GarciaTorres’ lawyers lost a bid to block judge Zecher from imposing the mandatory sentence on grounds she had represented the lead investigator in the case more than 25 years ago as an attorney for the county.
Outside the courthouse Tuesday afternoon, District Attorney Jeff Rosen commended Boyd and Veazey, as well as Sheriff’s deputies, for their diligent work on the case.