Judge Sentences Serial Rapist to 5 Life Terms and 279 Years : Courts: Penalty against man convicted in assaults on 13 women assures he will die behind bars. Defendant proclaims innocence.

A man convicted of 41 felony counts stemming from the serial rapes of 13 Central City women was sentenced Tuesday to 279 years and eight months in prison plus five consecutive life sentences, making it almost certain he will die behind bars.

Jose Romeo Fuentes, who is 33, would have to serve 140 years of his sentences before he is eligible for parole, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Geltz.

“We wanted to ensure he spent the rest of his life in prison,” said Geltz, who as Fuentes’ prosecutor had sought the harshest sentence possible.

Fuentes, Geltz said, “engaged in random violent acts and essentially terrorized an entire community.”

In handing down the stiff terms, Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor acknowledged that “the numbers are going to be beyond anything Mr. Fuentes can serve.” But she contended that they were appropriate.

The message she wanted to convey, she said, was that sexual assault is second only to murder in seriousness and that Fuentes had “murdered the spirits of these women,” most of them poor immigrants.

Fuentes, whose trial was delayed a week last month after he was stabbed and beaten by other County Jail inmates, proclaimed his innocence at the sentencing, as he has since his May, 1992, arrest.

“I did not commit any of the crimes I was accused of,” the onetime day laborer, husband and father told Connor.

Fuentes’ lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Steven Jay Schoenfield, who during the trial tried to show that the crimes could not have been committed by one person, said the convictions and sentences will be appealed.

The rapes for which Fuentes was convicted occurred during a six-month period in and around the Westlake area near MacArthur Park west of Downtown, where Fuentes lived.

In addition to the attacks on the 13 women--each involving multiple counts--he was convicted of five counts of burglary, seven counts of robbery and five counts of kidnaping for robbery, which require mandatory life sentences.

Police have contended that Fuentes was the leading suspect in 27 other rapes, but charges were not filed in those cases. In the cases in which he was charged, all the women involved identified him as their attacker in lineups or through photographs.