A 39-year-old man with a history of violence with girlfriends faces 26 years to life in prison Friday for fatally stabbing a woman who was leaving him in Huntington Beach.
Craig James Charron was convicted of first-degree murder with a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a knife in April for killing 25-year-old Laura Sardinha in their apartment in the 8400 block of Jenny Drive on Sept. 2, 2020.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Janine Madera said in a sentencing brief that Charron “was callous in his treatment of the victim both physically and emotionally prior to the murder. Not only was he abusive, but he isolated her from family and friends and engaged in psychological conditioning to get her to stay with him.”
Madera characterized the attack as “vicious,” noting that the defendant stabbed “her in the head so hard he bent the knife, slashing open her face, attempting to chop off her nose, and ultimately stabbing her twice in the chest, causing her death.”
The victim had called her mother when he attacked, leaving a voicemail that captured it in a sense. Madera said the defendant was silent throughout the assault, showing “a depravity and focused cruelty that is deeply disturbing.”
The prosecutor added the “crime scene was awash in the victim’s blood and is a testament to how hard she fought for her life against a relentless attacker.”
Charron testified in his defense, and Madera said his explanations showed no remorse for the attack and was an attempt to “shrug off responsibility for any of it by lying with a relaxed demeanor that shows a comfort level with deception that is truly alarming.”
Madera said the killer used two knives because the first one was bent, and a third knife was used by Charron to cut himself.
The motive for the attack was the couple’s break-up, Madera said. Charron “tormented, harassed, tortured and murdered a woman for daring to walk away from his abuse,” Madera argued.
It wasn’t the first time Charron had a violent conflict with a girlfriend, the prosecutor said. Charron would use “his intimate relationships as a tactic to inflict severe mental and emotional abuse on the women he dated,” Madera said.
“Several protective orders were requested by women and granted against him in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2018,” Madera said.
Charron was also convicted in 2016 of aggravated assault in a “violent, unprovoked attack against two men,” Madera said.
Charron’s attorney, Michael Guisti, argued in the trial that his client was engaged in mutual combat.
The attorney said that during the final conflict with the victim in the apartment, “Things go out of control… Heat of passion… He thought he had to defend himself and he went too far.”
The two met in June 2020 and the relationship heated up quickly when they moved in together, but by August, the relationship was on rocky ground as she accused him of attacking her, according to Madera.
When Charron asked her via text where she was going on Aug. 15, 2020, she said, “locking myself in a box so you can’t beat me anymore,” according to Madera.
On Aug. 16, 2020, he demanded to know what she was texting her mother, and she said, tearfully, “You keep hitting me,” according to Madera.
Some of the evidence in the trial included smartphone video the two took of each other.
In one video taken as she was trying to do school work on a laptop, he repeatedly asked her if he could have another girlfriend come over, Madera said.
She eventually went to the leasing office to ask the property manager for help in evicting Charron.
Charron testified that he saw the locks being changed in the apartment.
He had “reconnected” with an old girlfriend and that was who he was referring to when he asked the victim repeatedly if she could come over, Madera said.
“I was just being annoying,” he said of the repeated request.
When his attorney asked him how he could be heard accusing her of hitting him when she was several feet away, he said, “I believe it was to get her attention.”
Charron said he followed Sardinha down to the leasing office “to talk to her,” and when he spotted her talking to the property manager, he said he “went for a walk” to cool down.
When Sardinha returned to the apartment and got the locks changed, she received multiple calls from the defendant but ignored them, Madera said.
When Charron texted that he wanted to get his things, she advised him to coordinate that through the leasing office, Madera said.
Sardinha called her best friend and added her mother to the call when they heard the victim say, “Oh my (expletive) God, he’s here,” according to Madera.
“They heard Laura yelling and screaming, `That hurts, please stop,”’ Madera said.
The two called 911, and while her mother was on the line with a dispatcher, a call from her daughter went to voicemail, Madera said. In the voicemail, the victim was heard saying, “He’s going to kill me. … Oh my God, get away from me,”’ Madera said.
The victim was heard “screaming until the line goes dead,” Madera said.
When police arrived, they found the victim’s body in the bathroom with two stab wounds to the chest and multiple other slashing wounds, Madera said.
Charron said when he was hospitalized after Sardinha was killed, he had to have staples in his neck and a portion of his lung removed.
“Did you want her to die?” Guisti asked him.
“No,” he said.
“You miss her?”
“Yeah. Gosh. Yes,” he said.