LOS ANGELES -- Marvin Pancoast was sentenced today to 26 years to life in state prison for the 1983 murder of Vicki Morgan, mistress to the late presidential confidante Alfred Bloomingdale.
Pancoast, 34, rocked nervously in his chair as Superior Court Judge David Horowitz imposed the lengthy prison term.
The same jury that convicted Pancoast of murder ruled on July 24 that Pancoast was sane when he bludgeoned Morgan with a baseball bat as she slept in the North Hollywood condominium they shared.
Pancoast pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity to the charges. The jury convicted him July 5 after only six hours of deliberations.
If the panel had found Pancoast insane, he would have been sent to a state psychiatric hospital for an indeterminate stay.
His attorneys, who claimed his longstanding mental problems led him to falsely confess to the July 1983 murder, were angered at the verdict.
Defense attorney Arthur Barens called the penalty phase proceedings a 'miscarriage of justice from the start.'
The main evidence against Pancoast was his taped confession to police, made hours after the killing, in which he says he killed Morgan because she treated him like a 'slave boy.'
Defense attorneys insisted the confession was worthless, however, saying Pancoast's deep desire to do himself harm prompted him to confess to a crime he did not commit.
Morgan, 30, earned national attention in 1982 when she filed an unsuccessful $11 million palimony suit against Bloomingdale, the department store heir who was a member of President Reagan's 'kitchen cabinet.'
