Man Gets Life Term in Slaying at ATM : Court: Robert Glen Jones is sentenced for killing pregnant woman during robbery outside Sherman Oaks bank.

A prison parolee who admitted killing a pregnant Toluca Lake woman during a botched robbery at an ATM machine was sentenced Tuesday to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Robert Glen Jones, 43, was sentenced to the life term in the death of Sheri Foreman, the young woman in a baseball cap who was killed March 30 after withdrawing $40 from an automated teller machine in Sherman Oaks.

Foreman’s 13-week-old fetus was also killed when Jones plunged a knife about two inches into Foreman’s abdomen.

Moments before the attack, an ATM security camera captured an image of Foreman in a Houston Oilers cap looking over her left shoulder toward a parking lot where her BMW was parked. Police said Jones attacked her as she made the short walk from the ATM to her car at the Great Western Bank at Woodman Avenue and Riverside Drive.

The seemingly senseless killing horrified people across the San Fernando Valley, where the crime was initially investigated as one in a series of fatal carjackings. Police later concluded that Foreman’s killer wanted only her money and not her car.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Sandy Kriegler sentenced Jones to life in prison without the possibility of parole as part of a plea bargain agreement that prevented prosecutors from seeking the death penalty.

“The defendant has committed an especially heinous murder that has shocked and angered the community,” deputy probation officer Bill McCarthy said in a report prepared for Tuesday’s sentencing hearing.

“The probation officer can only hope that this sentence means just what it says, and that the defendant leads a very long life.”

“We’re glad it’s over, and maybe we’ll all just get on with our lives,” said Rosie Mundt, Foreman’s stepsister.

Authorities determined that Jones, who was armed with a small knife, stabbed Foreman during a struggle over her purse and probably had no intention of killing her. Jones confessed to his girlfriend, Libert J. Ellis, and to investigators, but he maintained that Foreman was accidentally stabbed.

Jones apologized to Foreman’s family and boyfriend through his attorney, H. Elizabeth Harris of Los Angeles.

At the time of the incident, Jones was on parole for a bank robbery conviction and had been released from federal prison in October, 1992.

Bobby Brock, a rock musician who had lived with Foreman for about a year and was the father of her unborn child, did not address the court during the sentencing, but he told the Probation Department that “his life was devastated” by the slaying.

Jones pleaded guilty in September to first-degree murder and robbery. He also admitted the special circumstance allegation that he committed a murder during the course of a robbery.

A special circumstance conviction carries only two possible sentences--the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

When Jones pleaded guilty, the district attorney’s office had not made a decision about seeking the death penalty and agreed to the life sentence with the consent of the Foreman family.

Foreman’s parents, Carl and Sharon, have filed a civil lawsuit seeking unspecified damages against Great Western Bank, the owner of the building where the bank is located, and several other defendants. The suit alleges negligence and wrongful death because the defendants “failed or refused to protect their customers and patrons from violent criminal attack.”