Nearly five years after a Huntington Beach woman unknowingly narrated her own murder, partially captured on voicemail, the boyfriend responsible for the killing was sentenced on Friday to 26 years to life behind bars.
Craig Charron, 39, received the maximum prison sentence available for the Sept. 2, 2020 killing of 25-year-old Laura Sardinha at an apartment the couple shared in the 8400 block of Jenny Drive.
Tired of abuse she suffered during her relationship with a “manipulative, possessive and paranoid” Charron, prosecutors say, Sardinha kicked him out out of the apartment and had the locks changed shortly before he killed her.
Charron in his own testimony said he acted in self-defense, claiming he suffered a serious cut to his neck during a struggle with Sardinha. But prosecutors argued the cut was self-inflicted in order to set up the self-defense argument.
An Orange County Superior Court jury in April took less than two hours before finding Charron guilty of murder.
At the time of her death, Sardinha was studying to become a counselor with the hope of working with women who had been abused, her mother told Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael J. Leversen. The young woman had been forced to reassess her career goals after injuries she sustained in a serious motorcycle accident made it difficult to hold a knife and ended her dreams of being a professional cook.
Sardinha “did everything she was supposed to do to end this relationship” to Charron, but “did not know the evil she was dealing with.” the mother told the judge.
Sardinha’s best friend, who received the voicemail that captured part of the killing, told the judge that her friend’s screams still haunt her.
According to testimony during the trial, Charron had a history of violence toward women, and had restraining orders taken out against him in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2018. He and Sardinha had only been dating for several months, but at one point during that time he had struck her in the head, leaving her with a perforation of her eardrum. “You keep hitting me,” Sardinha wrote to Charron in a text message shown during the trial. “Massage my calves or end this relationship,” he replied.
Video taken by Charron hours before the killing showed him appearing to try to bait Sardinha by repeatedly asking if an ex-girlfriend he had previously had sex with could come over to the apartment and then falsely claimed that Sardinha was hitting him. Sardinha, who was working on schoolwork on her laptop, appeared to be trying to ignore Charron.
When Sardinha walked over to the apartment management office to find out how to get rid of Charron, he first followed her, then apparently left for a walk, according to testimony. Sardinha had the locks to the apartment changed, texted Charron that she was done with him and ignored the texts and calls from him that followed.
Sardinha during a three-way phone call with her mother and best friend sounded “happy and free,” the prosecutor told jurors. Then, the mother and friend suddenly heard a terrified Sardinha exclaim “Oh my (expletive) God he is back here!” and yell out “Get off me!” before screaming.
It isn’t clear how Charron got into the apartment. He later claimed the door was open. The prosecution speculated he may have hopped a fence to the apartment patio, or the door may not have been entirely closed.
The mother and friend hung up to call 911. But, somehow, Sardinha’s phone called her friend back, leaving a voice message in which Sardinha is heard yelling “He is going to kill me!” between sobs and screams. Senior Deputy District Attorney Janine Madera noted in a trial brief that based on the recording and what the mother and friend overheard, Charron appeared to have remained silent while killing Sardinha, which the prosecutor argued showed “a depravity and focused cruelty that is deeply disturbing.”
According to court filings, Charron — apparently using knives from the apartment — stabbed Sardinha so hard in the head that he bent a knife, slashed her face open, attempted to chop off her nose and ultimately stabbed her twice in the chest, killing her.
Charron testified that he just wanted to talk to Sardinha but that she attacked him with a knife. He said they started to struggle or grapple over the knife. Charron testified was “hazy” after that, but agreed with his attorney that he was trying to defend himself.
Charron’s attorney, Michael Guisti, told jurors that Sardinha had tried to come up behind Charron and slice his neck. He asked the jury whether she was someone “who reached the end of her rope and she was afraid and she wasn’t going to take it anymore,” and as a result had decided to attack Charron.
Madera, the prosecutor, countered that Sardinha was terrified of Charron, who was far taller and heavier than her. Based on the voice mail recording, the prosecutor told jurors that Sardinha “fought like hell to her last dying breath.”