Ending a cold case that lasted over four decades, a man was sentenced to life in prison Friday for the beating death of a 79-year-old Hollywood widow in 1972.
Judge Laura Priver sentenced Harold Holman, 70, for the murder of Helen Meyler on August 2, 1972.
Meyler was found in her secured second-floor unit after she had been sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death with a candelabra in her bed. There were no witnesses or fingerprints left behind, leaving detectives frustrated for years.
Then last year, DNA evidence from a blanket at the scene of her death led detectives to Holman, who has been serving a 45-year sentence for killing a Santa Monica couple in 1980.
"I didn't dream that 43 years later, I would be testifying on this case," retired detective Chuck Gourley said last October.
Gourley was part of the original investigation.
Holman admitted to robbing high-rise apartment buildings every other day for several years before he went to jail, according to Richard Bengtson, a cold case investigator with the Los Angeles Police Department. He would scale the side of the building by jumping and pulling himself up, he added.
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"It's almost unhuman," Bengtson said.
Holman's methods earned him the nickname "Spider-Man." He revealed in a jailhouse interview he would take cash, jewelry and fur coats.
Holman said during the prison interview that he had special shoes with suction cups on them and that he wore night-vision goggles during the burglaries, LAPD detective Richard Bengtson testified during the trial.
"Harold Holman was not targeting a certain type of victim," Bengtson said in October. "He was targeting a certain type of building."
Earlier this month, jurors found Holman guilty after deliberating for less than half an hour, convicting him of first-degree murder.
The judge noted Friday that Holman has to serve a minimum of seven years in prison before he is eligible for parole under sentencing guidelines in place at the time of Helen Meyler's death.
Holman -- who complained that he had not been properly defended during his trial and objected to being "part of a media blitz" as a result of a TV camera being allowed in court -- was taken back in a wheelchair to a courtroom lockup to listen to the proceedings through a speaker.
"This case will give them (state parole officials) plenty to keep him in state prison for the rest of his life. He's never going to get out," Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said outside court.
Nikki Meyler Miller told the judge that her grandmother "spent much of her life helping others" and had moved to a security apartment building because she felt exposed and unsafe after her husband's death shortly after their 50th wedding anniversary.
"Her death was devastating to our family," she said, noting that her grandmother had decided to stay home from a family vacation at the last minute. Her body was discovered when a family member came to pick her up for church.
"Two of her children and two of her grandchildren have passed, but when the detectives told us they had identified the killer, we were all relieved to find out he had been in prison for most of those years,'' Miller said. "And that is all we are asking for now -- to keep him in prison until he is no longer breathing, and prevent any parole or compassionate release at any time, now or ever."
