Richard Stanley Sandoval was scheduled to be released from the California Institution for Men in Chino today after having served his sentence for a 1985 forcible rape conviction.
Instead, the 57-year-old Santa Ana man was taken to Orange County Jail in his hometown, where he is being held without bail following his arrest for a 1984 murder in Anaheim.
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As part of his incarceration for the rape, Sandoval had to submit a sample of his DNA. This was entered into the state crime database, and authorities claim it matched DNA collected in the apartment of 84-year-old Margaret Lenney in 1984.
Lenney, who owned the complex she lived in, hired Sandoval to do some painting, but he was fired after doing a poor job. The Anaheim Police Department, which investigated the case, claims that Sandoval later came back to the complex several time to borrow money from tenants.
On the night of Sept. 23, 1984, a man entered Lenney's apartment and either raped or tried to rape her before murdering her and fleeing the scene. When police arrived, she was bleeding on her front porch with her pants pulled down and her breasts exposed.
Sandoval, who was arrested two blocks from the murder scene, was later released for lack of evidence. Police recently re-opened the investigation but the exact evidence linking the suspect to the murder has not been divulged.
Following his arrest Tuesday, Sandoval was charged with one felony count of special circumstances
murder in the commission of rape or attempted rape. He faces a sentence
of life back in state prison, this time without the possibility of parole, if
convicted.
He is
expected to be arraigned Thursday.
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.