‘Animalistic’ Rapist-Robber Gets Prison

A 19-year-old Pacoima man was sentenced to 12 years to life in state prison Friday for his part in the kidnaping of a 31-year-old Sylmar woman, who was forced to withdraw money from five automatic tellers at bank branches throughout the mid-Valley before she was raped in a junior high school parking lot.

John David Martinez, an unemployed construction worker, pleaded guilty last Oct. 2 to charges of kidnap for robbery with the use of a firearm and forcible rape. By law he will be eligible for parole in six years.

Martinez’s accomplice, Robert Ralph Ruiz, 22, was convicted of the same crimes and an additional count of forced oral copulation and was sentenced last Oct. 6 to 30 years to life in prison. Ruiz will be eligible for parole in 15 years.

San Fernando Superior Court Judge Dana Senit Henry sentenced Martinez in accordance with a county deputy probation officer’s report that characterized Martinez’s crimes as “manic” and “animalistic” and said the victim still lives in fear.

According to court testimony, Martinez and Ruiz approached the woman at 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 8, 1983, in the parking lot of a Vons market in Mission Hills. The two men pushed the woman into her car at gunpoint and told her they wanted her money. In her purse the men found $35 in cash and automatic teller cards for Crocker Bank and California Federal Savings & Loan.

For the next two hours, the assailants drove the woman around the Valley, withdrawing a total of $300 in cash from automatic tellers at five banks in Mission Hills, Granada Hills and Reseda, according to court testimony.

The three then went to an Alpha Beta supermarket in Reseda, where the victim was forced to cash two $25 checks.

At about 6 p.m. the assailants drove the victim to the parking lot at Patrick Henry Junior High School in Granada Hills and each raped her once, according to testimony. The three then drove to Pacoima. The assailants left the victim on the street after giving her directions about where they would leave her car, which they abandoned less than a mile away.

The victim immediately contacted police, who recovered fingerprints from the car and began a search that led to the arrest of both men, according to testimony.