OXNARD : Man Gets 35-Year Term in Rape of 2

An Oxnard man who pleaded no contest to raping an Oxnard woman and her mother 15 months apart in the same house was sentenced to serve more than 35 years in prison.

Samuel Cornell Chester, 28, was sentenced Friday by Judge Charles R. McGrath to 35 years, eight months in state prison for the two sexual assaults, as well as separate charges of burglary and robbery that occurred on the same day as the rape of the younger woman.

Law enforcement authorities had not been able to tie Chester to the rape of the elderly Oxnard woman in 1992 until he returned to the same house 15 months later and raped the daughter, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth.

In the intervening time, he had served a state prison sentence on an unrelated burglary conviction and was paroled weeks before the second rape.

Chester pleaded no contest to the two rape charges, a plea that is equivalent to a guilty plea for sentencing purposes, but which cannot be used as evidence of guilt in any civil case stemming from the conviction.

Henke-Dobroth said evidence against Chester included fingerprints at the scene that linked Chester to both the April rape of a 42-year-old woman and the January, 1992, sexual assault of her 68-year-old mother.

Chester faced a maximum sentence of 38 years in prison, but received a lighter sentence because his plea spared the victim and her family from testifying in court, Henke-Dobroth said.

Deputy Public Defender Todd W. Howeth said Chester expressed sorrow for his acts in a letter to McGrath. “He told me he hopes to get help for drug and psychological problems in prison,” Howeth said.

“It was a horrifying crime, and obviously he is someone with a lot of problems,” Howeth said.