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Man who killed girlfriend in their Huntington Beach apartment convicted of murder

April 29, 2025

A man who killed his girlfriend shortly after she kicked him out of their Huntington Beach apartment and had the locks changed — a slaying partially caught in a voicemail to her friend — was convicted Tuesday, April 29, of stabbing her to death.

An Orange County Superior Court jury deliberated less than two hours before finding Craig Charron, 39, guilty of first-degree murder for the Sept. 2, 2020, killing of 25-year-old Laura Sardinha at the couple’s apartment in the 8400 block of Jenny Drive.

Charron — who said he acted in self-defense and denied accusations that he had repeatedly abused Sardinha and several other ex-girlfriends — now faces up to a 26-years-to-life prison sentence.

Charron said he suffered a serious cut to his neck during the violent struggle, but prosecutors countered by saying it was self-inflicted to bolster his self-defense claim.

Charron and Sardinha had been dating a short time when they decided to move in together. Within months, a “manipulative, possessive and paranoid” Charron had already attacked Sardinha, leaving her with a perforation of her ear drum, according to the prosecution.

“You keep hitting me,” Sardinha texted to Charron at one point in August 2020, with Charron replying: “Massage my calves or end this relationship.”

In video taken by Charron hours before the killing, he appeared to be baiting Sardinha by repeatedly asking if an ex-girlfriend he had previously had sex with could come over to their apartment.

Sardinha, who was doing schoolwork on her laptop, appeared to be trying to ignore Charron.

Charron falsely claimed that Sardinha was hitting him.

Sardinha walked over to the apartment management office to find out how to get rid of Charron, while Charron at first followed her and then apparently left for a walk. Sardinha had the locks to the apartment changed, texted Charron that she was done with him and ignored his texts and calls, according to the prosecution.

In a three-way phone call with her mother and her best friend, Sardinha sounded “happy and free,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Janine Madera said.

Then, the mother and friend abruptly heard a terrified Sardinha say, “Oh my (expletive) God he is back here!” and yelled, “Get off me!” before screaming.

He would say the door was open. Prosecutor speculated he might have hopped the fence to the apartment patio, or the door may not have been entirely closed.

The mother and friend hung up to call 911.

Somehow, Sardinha’s phone called her friend back, leaving a voice message in which Sardinha can be heard yelling, “He is going to kill me!” between sobs and screams.

Monday, April 28, during her closing arguments in a Santa Ana courtroom, Maddera told jurors: “If you listen clearly, you hear a woman narrating her own murder. … She fought like hell to her last dying breathe.”

Charron testified that he just wanted to talk to Sardinha, claiming she attacked him with a knife.

“I think we started struggling or grappling over that knife,” Charron said. “It gets hazy after that.”

“Are you trying to defend yourself?” Carron’s attorney, Michael Guisti, asked his client of his actions during the alleged struggle.

“Yeah, that is the entire thing,” Charron replied.

The defense attorney during his closing arguments denied that Charron intended to kill Sardinha. He described the wounds that Charron suffered as the “elephant in the room,” and said that Sardinha had tried to come up behind Charron and slice his neck.

“Is this somebody who reached the end of her rope and she was afraid and she wasn’t going to take it anymore?” Guisti asked of Sardinha. “Would she have attacked my client with that knife?”

Madera countered by noting that Sardinha was “terrified” of Charron, was far shorter than him and weighed far less.

It was “cold-blooded murder,” the prosecutor argued, not self-defense or a slaying in the heat of passion.

Charron is scheduled to return to court on July 25 for sentencing.

Orange County Register

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Man who killed girlfriend in their Huntington Beach apartment convicted of murder

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