Sex Offender Gets 936-Year Term in Girl’s Kidnapping

Receiving one of the longest prison terms handed down in Los Angeles County, a convicted sexual predator was sentenced Tuesday to 936 years for kidnapping a 12-year-old girl from her Pomona home last Halloween and sexually assaulting her.

Pomona Superior Court Judge David S. Milton agreed with a prosecutor’s recommendation that William Robert Riley, 40, of West Covina, should receive the term under California’s three-strikes law, as well as a law targeting habitual sex offenders.

“You should never be free again,” Milton told Riley.

The sentence is believed by prosecutors to be the second-longest in the county, just short of a 995-year term assessed against a sex offender earlier this year.

A jury convicted Riley on March 8 of 18 felonies, including residential robbery, kidnapping, 13 lewd acts with a child and making terrorist threats.

Those verdicts came after a weeklong trial in which the girl and others testified that she was kidnapped and then driven to several locations. Riley sexually assaulted her numerous times during a more than seven-hour ordeal.

Riley’s conviction was his third strike. He had been convicted of rape in 1982 and robbery in 1989, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kim Santini said. At the time of the kidnapping, Riley had been out of prison on parole for a month.

Riley entered a mobile home on West Holt Avenue last Halloween where he discovered the girl and her 5-year-old sister preparing to take a bath after trick-or-treating, said Santini.

He drew a gun, bound both girls with curtains and ordered the older girl to get in his stolen car about 7:30 p.m., Santini said. At one point, Riley tried to sell the girl to another man and then placed her in the car’s trunk, Santini said.

Meanwhile, the girl’s younger sister freed herself and alerted a neighbor, who called police. After more than seven hours, Riley dropped the girl back in front of the mobile home park where she lived. By then, police had arrived.

Riley fled with patrol cars in pursuit, but crashed his vehicle and ran off. Santini said a police dog found Riley in an industrial area in the early hours of Nov. 1.

The girl’s necklace was in Riley’s pocket and his gun was nearby, the prosecutor said. “The girl was able to identify him down to his black-and-white Vans tennis shoes,” she said.