Eligibility for Parole Angers Elderly Victims : Man Guilty of Multiple Rapes Gets 44 Years

A 37-year-old Sepulveda man who raped three elderly and middle-aged women was sentenced Thursday to 44 years in prison, a term that angered victims because he could be eligible for parole in 18 years.

Lloyd Anthony Roy pleaded guilty May 10 to three counts of rape and one count of assault with intent to rape. The attacks, two of which occurred in retirement homes, took place during a three-month crime spree.

Roy was originally charged with 19 felony counts in connection with those attacks and three other incidents. Under a plea-bargain arrangement, he was allowed to plead guilty to four counts, and all others were dismissed.

At his sentencing hearing in San Fernando Superior Court, two of the rape victims testified that Roy deserves harsher punishment.

“I feel I have been raped again and society has been raped,” a 62-year-old Chatsworth widow said after Roy was sentenced by Judge John H. Major. She said Roy should have been tried on all charges.

Deputy. Dist. Atty. Robert Nishinaka said that even if there had been a trial on all the charges, Roy probably would not have been convicted of them all and that the sentence would not have been significantly lengthened.

“This was a reasonable disposition of the case,” Nishinaka said. “Forty-four years in prison is no walk in the park.”

In one of the other cases, Roy allegedly broke into Northridge Gardens Retirement Center and stole a knife from a 67-year old man. In the two others, he allegedly was lurking outside the apartments of a 79-year-old woman and a 76-year-old woman. In connection with those incidents, Roy was charged with residential burglary, attempted burglary, attempted rape, theft, prowling and other minor charges.

Nishinaka said he believed that the two victims not present in court Thursday would have had difficulty testifying in a trial. One of those was a 73-year-old woman who was raped in January, 1988, in her room at the Northridge retirement home.

The other woman, 72, a resident of Los Angeles Housing for the Elderly in Woodland Hills, was beaten until she was bloody. Roy was accused of making sexual advances but fleeing after she screamed for help. Though they both testified at Roy’s preliminary hearing, Nishinaka said he did not know if those two women could withstand a trial.

Still, the 62-year-old woman said she felt her rights had been trampled on.

“They promised that there wouldn’t be any plea bargains, and they didn’t consult with victims before they let him plead,” the Chatsworth woman said. She noted that Roy could be paroled after serving just 18 years, while in his mid-50s.

“Not everyone in their 50s is impotent,” she said. “He could still rape again.”

The woman also said police could have prevented one of the other rapes. On March 11, 1988, she said, Roy, who wanted to have an ongoing relationship with her after he raped her, contacted her at her home and asked her to meet him at the intersection of Sepulveda and Roscoe boulevards. She notified authorities, but they did not pick him up, she said.

Later that night, Roy broke into the home of a 50-year-old Burbank woman and raped her at knifepoint.

“I wish to God we could have put him away forever,” said the Burbank woman, now 52. “There is no way he is going away as long as he should have.”

The woman said that her life has been permanently altered by the attack, and that she is no longer as independent as she once was. She is terrified to stay in the house alone and is too frightened to take vacations in unfamiliar places, she said.

The Chatsworth woman also said that she is skittish and jumpy all the time.

“It is an unbelievable trauma. It is like being shellshocked in a war,” she said. “Nobody really understands the trauma until they have been through it. It leaves you a wreck for a long time.”

Roy was arrested in April, 1988, after his fingerprints were matched with those found in the Chatsworth woman’s home.

According to court documents, Roy, whose criminal history includes convictions for car theft, robbery and battery, has heard voices from the time he was an adolescent. He heard these voices, he said, before and after attacks on the women.