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Crime & Safety

Man Who Kidnapped, Raped Ex-Girlfriend Gets 105+ Year Prison Term

The woman was abducted from Palm Desert, and taken to a trailer in Calimesa, where she was raped, according to court evidence.

A man who kidnapped and raped his ex-girlfriend was sentenced Friday to 105 years to life in state prison.

Mark Anthony Mays, who also goes by Clayton Moore, was convicted Jan. 30 of kidnapping, rape by force and other felonies for abducting the victim in Palm Desert and taking her to a friend's trailer in Calimesa, where he assaulted her on Aug. 2, 2009.

Mays, 52, addressed Riverside County Superior Court Judge Richard A. Erwood before his sentence was handed down.

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"I will never say I did this because I didn't do nothing to this girl," Mays said.

He said the DNA evidence didn't prove that he raped the woman, only that they had sex. And his attorney didn't object when Mays thought he should have, the defendant said.

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"I'm asking you in the interest of justice to postpone the sentencing," he said.

In a previous hearing, Erwood denied Mays' attorney's request for a new trial, and today denied a request to strike a prior offense. Mays changed attorneys after he was convicted.

Deputy District Attorney Scot Clark said the victim, who wasn't at the sentencing, was "grateful" for the legal process.

"She believes with the jury's verdict and coming in and telling her story (that) she has achieved some modicum of dignity and begun the process of getting her life back," Clark said.

He said the victim wanted the longest sentence possible "so no one else down the road has to go through what she went through."

Erwood said the woman was "particularly vulnerable" and Mays "took advantage of a position of trust" because of their prior relationship.

The judge noted that Mays told a probation officer that the reason he turned to a life of crime -- he has several felony convictions -- was that he was tired of working.

"Society needs to be protected from people like that," he said.

Erwood delayed sending Mays to prison until Feb. 8 so he could have surgery on his jaw, and ordered him to pay $22,725 in restitution.

Two months after he broke up with the then-25-year-old victim, Mays called her and promised her money. He persuaded her to step outside the gated community where she was staying with her parents in Palm Desert and asked if they could get back together, according to the prosecution's sentencing memorandum.

When she refused, he told her to get in a car, driven by a friend, or he would "'snap her neck right here on the sidewalk,"' the document states.

On the way to Hemet, where another man riding in the car lived, Mays hit the woman, threatened to throw her out of the car and forced her to have oral sex with him, according to the memorandum.

They dropped the Hemet resident off and went to the driver's mobile home in Calimesa. There, Mays told the woman to masturbate in the shower or he would cut her with razor blades. He then raped her, hit her and zip-tied one of her ankles to his, according to the sentencing memo.

"(The woman) was terrified throughout the encounter but resolved to do and say what (Mays) wanted so she could extricate herself from the situation," the document says.

Mays cut the zip ties and had his friend drop the woman at his mother's house in Menifee, where she called a friend, who contacted the woman's parents. A sheriff's deputy arrived and found the woman "desperate to leave the home," the document states.

During a rape exam, a nurse found a cut on the woman's ear and "saw that her face was red and swollen from blunt-force trauma." A DNA test matched Mays' semen inside the woman, according to the sentencing memo.

Mays testified that the woman made everything up because he wouldn't give her drugs. He said the zip ties were her idea "since she was 'adventurous,"' and he denied threatening her, according to the prosecution.

Mays has several felony convictions, including robbery, burglary, weapons violations and drug possession.

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