2 Get Life Terms for Kidnaping, Rampage at Beverly Hills Home

Two men who invaded a Beverly Hills home last year, beating and robbing eight people and raping one, were sentenced Tuesday in Santa Monica Superior Court to life in prison.

Judge James Albracht sentenced Altin Louis Jefferson to life plus 25 years and 4 months, and Keith Cortez Miller to life plus 17 years and 4 months.

The life terms are required under California law on convictions of kidnaping for robbery, said the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Gordon.

Jefferson, 20, and Miller, 30, were convicted July 23 of one count each kidnaping for robbery, five counts of robbery and one count of burglary. In addition, Jefferson was found guilty of one count of rape and using a firearm in the commission of a crime, and Miller of one additional count of grand theft.

Both men were identified from fingerprints left at the scene, and six of their eight victims testified against them, Gordon said.

In June, 1990, Jefferson, Miller and an accomplice staged an auto accident for the purpose of robbing the occupants of the other car, Gordon said.

Armed with a rifle, they forced their way into the car, beat its occupants, then made one of them, a domestic, take them to the Beverly Hills home where she was employed.

Inside the South Rodeo Drive home, they beat the four men and two women in the house and raped the domestic. They also forced a man in the house to open a basement safe.

Jefferson and Miller were taken into custody after a Beverly Hills detective spotted them two months later in court, where they were waiting to be set free on other, unrelated charges that had been dropped.

Their accomplice, Cohen Johnson of Los Angeles, was killed in another robbery two months after the Beverly Hills siege, the prosecutor said.