REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- A judge sentenced a 31-year-old mill worker to 104 years in prison for abducting a young hitchhiker and holding her as a sex slave for seven years -- often keeping her in a coffin-like box.
Cameron Hooker of Red Bluff, Calif., accused of abducting the woman at knife point in 1977 and subjecting her to bondage and rape, was sentenced Friday to the maximum allowable prison terms for the charges.
Hooker was sentenced to 1-to-25 years for kidnapping, an additional 5-to-10 year term for using a knife in the abduction; eight consecutive 8-year terms for rapes, and an additional 5-year term for sexual abuse. Court officials said he would stay in prison at least until 2,012 when he will be 58 years old.
'He is the most dangerous psychopath I have ever dealt with,' said sentencing Judge Clarence Knight of San Mateo County Superior Court. 'He will be a danger to women as long as he is alive.'
Hooker showed little emotion as the sentences were read, tapping his foot nervously on the floor.
The victim, Colleen Stan, who was 21 when she was abducted near Red Bluff 190 miles north of here, told reporters afterward, 'I'm glad that Cameron will not be able to hurt anyone else.'
Stan told the jury, which convicted Hooker Oct. 31, that he had whipped her, kept her for long periods of time in a coffin-like box and subjected her to bondage devices such as a box that fitted over her head, warning she would be severely punished if she tried to flee.
Hooker was described in a probation department pre-sentence report as 'a sadistic criminal who should be kept out of society as long as possible.'
Prosecutor Christine McGuire urged the maximum sentences, saying that 'mercy was not shown and mercy should not be shown now.'
Stan fled to her family in Riverside, Calif., in 1985 after learning that a purported group called 'The Company,' which Hooker said was watching her and would punish her and her family if she fled, did not exist.
Defense attorney Rolland Papendick had argued that the young woman had fallen in love with Hooker and at one point wanted him to divorce his wife, Janice, 27, so he could marry her. But Stan denied she had stayed willingly.
'I felt I had no rights at all,' she said. 'Cameron Hooker took them all away.'
She said she had told him she loved him on occasion 'so that Cameron would give me more freedoms and not stick me in the box.'
