A California man was convicted of savagely stabbing his ex-girlfriend to death — with the woman’s final moments recorded on a chilling voicemail.
Laura Sardinha, 25, was killed by her ex-boyfriend Craig Charron, 39, in September 2020 on the same day she’d changed the locks on her doors and after finally taking out a restraining order against him — as had several other women before her, according to the Los Angeles Times.
She was on the phone with her mother and her best friend when he suddenly appeared in her Huntington Beach home, armed with several knives.
“Oh my God, he’s here,” she blurted to them before her friend hung up and called 911. Sardinha tried to call her back and left behind a disturbing 37-second voicemail in which she screams, “He’s gonna kill me!”
“Get away from me!” she can be heard yelling in the audio recording.
“If you listen to it carefully, you hear a woman narrating her own murder,” Orange County Deputy District Attorney Janine Madera said in her closing statements at Charron’s trial in Santa Ana on Tuesday, just before he was found guilty of murder, the Times reported.
Charron attacked Sardinha with multiple knives.
He nearly sliced her nose off, stabbed her twice in the chest and plunged a tomato knife into her head with such force, the blade bent.
When police arrived, they found Sardinha dead and Charron bleeding from stab wounds to his chest and neck — which Madera argued were self-inflicted to make it appear as if Sardinha had attacked him.
Charron is an Air Force veteran.
Sardinha had told a friend the morning of the day she was murdered that Charron woke her up and demanded oral sex.
She recorded a video of herself saying “please get away from me” and complaining that he never leaves.
Just before noon, she went to the apartment complex’s leasing office to request her locks be changed.
While she was there, the apartment manager let her hide inside the building after he spotted Charron approaching.
A maintenance man later changed her locks. It’s unclear how Charron got back inside, but most likely the door was left unlocked, prosecutors said.
Charron took the stand during the trial, where he said he’s a former combat medic and VA psychiatric patient.
He recalled little of that day but claimed he stabbed her in self-defense after she attacked him.
Three of Charron’s ex-girlfriends testified that they had taken out restraining orders against him over his physical abuse — including one who claimed he choked her and hit her on the head with a wine bottle.
Madera described Sardinha’s death as “cold-hearted murder” and pointed to the disturbing silence from Charron in the voicemail.
“You don’t hear the defendant on it, and his silence is absolutely deafening,” she said. “He’s enjoying taking his time killing her.”
