Orange County man gets 26-years-to-life sentence for murder of estranged girlfriend

Los Angeles Times

2 days ago

Craig J. Charron, who broke into his estranged girlfriend's Huntington Beach apartment and fatally stabbed her on the day she changed the locks to keep him out, was sentenced Friday to 26 years to life in prison.
Laura Sardinha, 25, had been pursuing an online psychology degree with the hope of counseling women in abusive relationships. She had been trying to escape her relationship with Charron, who had perforated her eardrum in an earlier attack, and she had taken out a restraining order against him.
On Friday, three months after a jury convicted Charron of first-degree murder for her September 2020 death, Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Cassidy called it a 'senseless and brutal' crime and gave him the maximum sentence allowed by law.
'All Laura wanted was to be free of the abuse and the torment,' the victim's mother, Marie Sardinha, told the judge. 'This man should not be out in society. He should never be let out.'
The victim's brother, Shawn Sardinha, said he had struggled to find reasons to live after his sister's death.
'I now give updates of my life to a blue vase,' he said.
At trial, Charron, 39, described himself as an Air Force veteran and former combat medic with a 100% disability rating. He was receiving psychiatric treatment at the VA.
At the sentencing, Charron wore the green camouflage scrubs afforded to inmates who served in the military, and his lawyer said Charron had been participating in veterans programs at the county jail.
The victim's father said he was a Vietnam veteran himself and hated any suggestion that Charron might get any leniency as a vet.
'It just makes me sick,' Manuel Sardinha told the judge. He recalled how she would play 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' on the piano at the family home during the holidays. He said injuries from a 2019 motorcycle accident had derailed her ambition of culinary school, but she was planning to use the financial settlement to open a therapy practice.
Charron had been dating Sardinha just a few months. She had given him nearly $100,000 of the $750,000 she won in the accident settlement.
Two weeks before he killed her, she texted him to say that she could not hear because he had broken her eardrum. She complained that he kept hitting her. He told police her injuries were the result of 'rough sex' and pressured her into dropping charges.
On the morning of her death, she recorded herself begging him to get out of her apartment, saying, 'You terrify me, because you don't leave.'
When he finally left, he bombarded her with calls and texts, which she ignored. Early that afternoon, at her request, a maintenance worker changed her locks, to keep him out.
Nevertheless, Charron somehow slipped back inside around 1:15 p.m. — it is not clear how — while she was on a three-way call with her mom and her best friend. They heard her cry, 'Oh my God, he's here.'
The friend hung up to call 911. Sardinha called her back and left a chilling 37-second voicemail, screaming, 'He's gonna kill me!'
His voice was eerily absent from the voicemail, which the prosecutor suggested was a function of his calculated, unhurried mindset in killing her.
She was dead when police arrived, with stab wounds to the chest and head. He had nearly sliced off her nose. Police found Charron with knife wounds to his chest and neck, which authorities suggested he inflicted on himself to create the fiction that she had attacked him.
Deputy District. Atty. Janine Madera said it did not matter whether he faked the wounds or she inflicted them on him in self-defense, since he was the clear aggressor, muscular and towering over her by 9 inches.
Three of Charron's ex-girlfriends, who took out restraining orders against him, testified that he had assaulted them. One said he had choked her, a second that he slapped her, a third that he pinned her to a wall.
Charron claimed that his confrontation with Sardinha was 'hazy' in his memory but that he acted in self-defense. Defense attorney Michael Guisti said his client's violent history consisted of 'non-murderous violence,' and that he may have acted in the heat of passion when he killed Sardinha.
Charron made no statement at Friday's sentencing, and gave no apology.