Life Term for Woman in Murder of Doctor, Wife

Adriana Vasco, the Anaheim woman convicted of arranging a murder that took the life of a doctor she had had an affair with as well as his wife, was sentenced Friday to life imprisonment without hope of parole.

Vasco, a 35-year-old mother of two and former medical receptionist, wept and pleaded for forgiveness during the proceeding.

Jurors convicted her in November of taking part in an elaborate murder-for-hire scheme that took the life of Huntington Beach anesthesiologist Kenneth Stahl, 57, and his wife, Carolyn Oppy-Stahl, 44. The couple were found gunned down three years ago along a remote section of Ortega Highway.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno refused to reduce Vasco’s first-degree conviction for Oppy-Stahl’s murder. That would have made her eligible for parole after serving a percentage of the sentences for both slayings.

Prosecutors said Vasco carried on a lengthy love affair with Stahl and that together they came up with a plan to kill Oppy-Stahl because the doctor wanted out of his marriage but feared the financial consequences of divorce.

Prosecutors said Vasco then recruited her other boyfriend, Dennis Godley, to do the killing for $30,000.

Godley ended up killing the doctor too, in an apparent effort to eliminate a witness or out of jealousy, prosecutors said. Godley is scheduled for trial early this year.