See the update at the end of this post on the sentence James Michael Camp received today.
ORIGINAL POST, JUNE 18, 2:11 P.M.: James Michael Camp, who was serving a five-year federal sentence in an Arizona prison for issuing bomb threats to Disneyland when he was extradited to Orange County in April to answer to allegations involving rapes in the 1980s, agreed to a plea deal that would tack on six more years of prison time. Formal sentencing is scheduled for June 27 so statements can be collected from victims of the 59-year-old former Anaheim resident.
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Under the deal reached Monday, Camp pleaded guilty to two counts of rape and one count of grand theft. He'd met his two victims through Pennysaver ads for an apartment rental and patio furniture for sale.
A woman was showing Camp the Santa Ana apartment on July 23, 1980, when he tied her up with an electrical cord at knifepoint before raping her and burglarizing the apartment. He raped the second woman at knifepoint when he showed up at her Anaheim home on July 22, 1981, in response to the patio furniture ad. He left with her jewelry box and other valuables from her purse.
Camp, who looks a lot like Jonathan Banks' Breaking Bad hitman Mike Ehrmantraut, was charged with the rapes in 1982 but left the state, later turning up in Louisiana, where he pleaded guilty to rapes there and spent close to three decades behind bars.
He began serving the sentence for the Disneyland bomb threats in June 2011, and he will have to complete his federal stretch before beginning to serve time for the rapes.
UPDATE, JUNE 27, 2:01 P.M.: James Michael Camp, who pleaded guilty June 17 to two felony counts of rape by force or violence and one felony count of grand theft, was sentenced today to six years and eight months in state prison.
He must also register as a sex offender for life for sexually assaulting, raping, and robbing two women whom he met through PennySaver advertisements for apartment rental and furniture sales in the 1980s.
One victim delivered an emotional impact statement to the court describing how the attack took a toll on her marriage, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office.
She added that she feels as if she has been suffering in her own prison since the attack and will serve a longer emotional sentence than Camp will.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.