Belmont Shore Rapist Is Sentenced
A serial rapist who attacked more than a dozen women between 1997 and 2002 was sentenced Wednesday to 1,030 years in prison plus 10 life terms.
Mark Wayne Rathbun was convicted Aug. 10 of 25 counts of forcible rape, 14 counts of residential burglary and other charges such as assault and sexual assault.
Prosecutors said the 34-year-old drifter entered houses through open windows and unlocked doors to sexually assault women in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach and in nearby Los Alamitos and Huntington Beach. He became known as the Belmont Shore rapist.
“There is a definition in Webster’s International Dictionary of a person who is so cruel, wicked and depraved as to horrify others. That is the definition for monster, and I use it accordingly,” Superior Court Judge Joan Camparet-Cassani said as she announced the sentence.
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