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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A 55-year-old man convicted of the 1989 cold-case murder of a woman whose body was found in a vacant lot west of the Harbor (110) Freeway in the Westlake district was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter called the September 1989 killing of Monica Wertlieb "an absolutely atrocious crime," and noted that Orlando Dejesus Arredondo Donis did not show an "ounce of regret" when he was subsequently interviewed by Los Angeles police.
Arredondo Donis was convicted April 29 of first-degree murder, with jurors also finding true the special circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a rape.
Jurors also found the defendant guilty of raping the 39-year-old victim, but that charge was dismissed at sentencing because the judge noted that the statute of limitations on the rape charge had already expired by the time Arredondo Donis was charged in 2017.
In a statement read in court on her behalf, the victim's daughter said her mother had made the "ultimate sacrifice" by putting her up for adoption after she was born in 1981. She wrote that she has subsequently been able to connect with some of Wertlieb's family.
"But because of Orlando Arredondo Donis, I'll never be able to meet my mother. I'll never hear her voice. I'll never get to look into her eyes," Katie Hepburn wrote in the statement.
She called her biological mother "an innocent woman" who lived simply and was an "easy target for a cowardly criminal" who went on to live his life "with no care or consideration of what he did to my mother or to our family," and wrote that he "should never be allowed the hope of being set free."
Wertlieb's cousin, Mike Gale, called the victim a "gentle soul" and said she would be "no match" for anyone in any type of struggle.
"He's finally able to suffer the consequences of his actions," Gale said of the defendant.
The victim was found dead Sept. 17, 1989, in the 1300 block of West Third Street, near Bixel Street and Lucas Avenue.
Deputy District Attorney Alexander Lara told jurors during his closing argument that the evidence showed the victim was knocked unconscious and then dragged about 190 feet from the sidewalk to an area that was "completely hidden" in an elevated lot, where she was raped and her throat was cut with a broken bottle.
DNA testing done on evidence collected at the scene -- including the victim's body -- subsequently linked Arredondo Donis to the crime, according to the prosecutor.
"Everything is a match to the defendant," the deputy district attorney said.
Defense attorney Peter Chung countered that a "reasonable interpretation" of the evidence was that Arredondo Donis had sex with the victim a day or two earlier without being responsible for her murder.
"The issue is who did it," he said of the woman's killing. "Did it occur during a rape and was there a rape at all?"
He said there was "a lot of speculation," telling the jury that it was not clear where she was killed or when she died.
The defense attorney asked jurors to acquit his client of both charges.
In his rebuttal argument, the prosecutor countered that there was "no DNA of anybody else" and said that Arredondo Donis had adamantly denied having sex with the woman when he was questioned by police.
Arredondo Donis was arrested in October 2017 by detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division and has remained behind bars since then, jail records show.