California man sentenced for killing girlfriend, 2 babies
SANTA ANA, Calif. - A Southern California man who killed his girlfriend and her two young sons and left their bodies to rot on a balcony while he partied was sentenced Friday to three consecutive life terms in prison, prosecutors said.
Shazer Fernando Limas, 42, of Orange, was sentenced in Orange County.
Limas stabbed 31-year-old Arlet Hernandez Contreras 48 times at his home in April 2012 following an argument a day or two earlier, the Orange County district attorney’s office said in a statement.
Prosecutors said he then killed her sons, 16-month-old Fernando Hernandez Limas and 2-month-old Emanuel Hernandez Limas.
Limas, who also had another girlfriend, "let the bodies of Conteras and boys rot in a balcony closet for 10 days while he continued to go to dance clubs, rented limos, and even had friends over to his apartment," the statement.
After bleaching blood stains from his carpet, Limas loaded Contreras’s body into a large chest and drove it in a rented U-Haul to an industrial area in neighboring Los Angeles County, where her body was found dumped in a gutter, prosecutors said.
After getting rid of that body, Limas is believed to have driven another 100 miles to dispose of the bodies of the children, which were never found, prosecutors said.
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The victims were "discarded like trash," District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in the statement.
A few days later, Limas broke his lease on his apartment.
"Management from the apartment contacted the Orange Police Department after workers reported a suspicious smell, blood spatter on walls and pools of blood under the bleached carpet," the DA’s statement said.
Limas was arrested following a high-speed chase on two freeways. He was convicted in December of three counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances of multiple murder.
Even after being convicted, "this cold-blooded killer refused to take any responsibility for their deaths or give the grieving family any peace of mind by disclosing the whereabouts of the bodies" of the two children, Spitzer said.