Rapist Gets 136 Years, 2 Life Terms in Attacks

With five of his victims and seven of the jurors who convicted him looking on, David Keith Lewis, dubbed the Automatic Teller Rapist, was sentenced Monday to 136 years and two life terms in prison for sex crimes and other offenses involving a dozen women.

Lewis, 28, of North Hollywood will not be eligible for parole until he is 107 years old, Deputy Dist. Atty. Margaret Barreto-Morehouse said outside the courtroom.

He was convicted May 5 of 64 counts committed over a seven-week period from December, 1984, to January, 1985, including rape, robbery, oral copulation and genital penetration with a foreign object. He was caught after he was videotaped at an automatic teller machine as he tried to use a bank card stolen from one of his victims.

Before imposing sentence, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dion G. Morrow said he would deal with each act as a distinct crime warranting a separate sentence, as the law requires. Most of Lewis’ victims were attacked and robbed either at gunpoint or knifepoint in supermarket or shopping center parking lots.

“Each of them (the incidents) shows great cruelty and viciousness,” Morrow said. “They show professionalism, they show an absolute disregard for the self, the dignity, the feelings of the various victims and each was separated from the other by time.”

Contending that the public needs to be protected from Lewis, who was first arrested for burglary at the age of 13, the judge added: “It is my opinion that serial kidnaper-rapists become serial killers. That seems to be the unhappy pattern. The thrill tends to go away when the victim still lives.”

Lewis’ attorney, George A. Elber, told Morrow that it was unfair for Lewis to get essentially the same punishment meted out to Hillside Strangler Angelo Buono, who is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for raping, torturing and murdering nine women.

They’ll ‘Get Over It’

Saying he did not “mean to minimize or underestimate the pain or distress the young ladies suffered” at Lewis’ hands, Elber observed: “These young ladies will get over it. The victims in the Buono case, may they rest in peace, because they will never get over it. . . .

“I don’t think it’s just, I don’t think it’s equitable and I don’t think it’s fair,” the attorney added.

But Morrow said every case needs to be judged on its own merits, without reference to mistakes that might have been made in the past.

Lewis, who wore a white T-shirt that left some of his numerous tattoos exposed, addressed the court briefly in an effort to have his attorney replaced. The judge denied the motion and also rejected Elber’s motion for a new trial.

‘I Didn’t Do It’

In a report filed with the court, Probation Officer Tom Deane said he had asked the defendant for a statement. “I didn’t do it--that’s my statement,” Deane said Lewis told him.

Court documents also show that Lewis, whose last job was as a forklift operator, has been taking paralegal courses while in custody. The father of two children, he has also worked as a gardener, carpenter, welder and painter.

As they left the courtroom, the jurors and victims embraced and expressed approval of the sentence. Lewis also faces an additional three-year sentence for an August, 1985, attempt to escape from Los Angeles County Jail.