Murderer is given 25 to life

Victor Manuel Garcia choked up with emotion as he talked about that night in September 2001 when he celebrated his daughter’s birth and then murdered a 16-year-old Costa Mesa girl.

“It’s a tragedy,” Garcia, 26, said, just before a judge sentenced him Friday to 25 years to life in prison. “If I could go back in time and change things, I would. But I can’t.”

In his last words to Orange County Superior Court Judge William Froeberg before being sentenced, Garcia said he was sorry. He said he was sorry for his daughter whom he barely knows. He said he was sorry for his victim’s family and his own. He added that while he’s in prison, he’ll have no memories to share with his daughter. At least Ceceline Godsoe’s parents have memories of her, he said.

In September 2001, Garcia beat Godsoe, a petite, adventurous teenage girl, to death at Costa Mesa’s Fairview Park in the middle of the night.

In the courtroom Friday, he spoke softly and held back tears. But he never touched on why he killed her. For Godsoe’s parents, the circumstances around their daughter’s death will forever remain shrouded in mystery.

“Ceceline’s young life was ended by a series of blows of killing force, one after the other; hatred kicked into [a] pretty young girl’s face and the mortal target of her throat. What provocation could justify this?” said Bill Godsoe, Ceceline’s father, during the victim impact statement portion of Friday’s sentencing. “I worry that the killing of Ceceline Godsoe was not the result of an unlikely-to-be-repeated assembly of causes occurring only on that night very nearly eight years ago.”

Garcia was extradited from Mexico in 2004 after being arrested there for allegedly beating his wife.

Witnesses testified that the night of Godsoe’s death Garcia had been at Fairview Park in Costa Mesa with two friends celebrating the birth of his daughter. Later, Godsoe and a friend showed up at the park to drink, too. The two groups had never met. But they hit it off and started to hang out.

Godsoe’s friend testified that Garcia and Ceceline Godsoe seemed to get along very well and eventually walked off together. It was the last time she was seen alive. Her friend found her body a couple of hours later on the western edge of the park near a cliff. The corpse was severely beaten and covered in ants.

“I didn’t know something like that could happen,” Garcia said Friday, without elaborating on how or why he killed Ceceline Godsoe.

“There are many victims in this courtroom today but only one who isn’t here,” said Ceceline Godsoe’s sobbing mother, Martha. “I’ll never get over this, and I’ll never be the same way again.”

“The night she died, when she had stopped off at our home to put on something warmer, I looked at her after we had hugged goodbye and thought, ‘What a lovely young woman you’ve become.’ But I only said, ‘I love you,’” Bill Godsoe said. “And then she was gone.”

Garcia will get credit for about 6 1/2 years of jail time served and be required to serve at least 85% of his remaining sentence before being eligible for parole in about 2024.