Ex-Skateboard Champion Pleads Guilty in Rape, Slaying

Mark (Gator) Anthony, once a nationally ranked skateboard champion, pleaded guilty Friday to charges of first-degree murder and forcible rape in a plea bargain that could bring him 33 years to life in prison for the killing of a Tucson woman last March.

Anthony surrendered to police last May and reportedly confessed to taking 22-year-old Jessica Bergsten to his Carlsbad condominium, where he reportedly hit her, tied her up and raped her over a period of three hours before stuffing her into a surfboard cover, strangling her and then burying her body in a shallow grave off Interstate 8 in the Imperial County desert.

Anthony led police investigators to the burial site, but the woman’s body had been discovered earlier by a man and his son, who notified Imperial County authorities.

John Jimenez, the public defender representing Anthony, said Friday that in entering a plea, Anthony “was saying that she died at his hands. He is taking responsibility for his actions.”

Anthony will not face a penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole, which the original charges could have brought, Jiminez said. In exchange for the guilty pleas, two counts of use of a deadly weapon and the addition of special circumstances to the murder charge--which could have brought the death penalty--were dismissed.

If the sentences for murder and rape are served concurrently, Anthony could be freed on parole in 18 years.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Greg Walden said he will seek the maximum sentences on the remaining counts of murder and rape.

In a hand-printed statement released by Jimenez, Anthony wrote: “Two months prior to the incedent, (sic) I found myself in the midst of some surprisingly strange and almost uncontrollable feelings. All at once the plague of vile visions and wicked imaginations and the daily battle to suppress them was overwhelming.