A man accused of murdering a research scientist in Malibu Creek State Park was sentenced Tuesday to three years and eight months in jail for attacking two LA County sheriff's deputies while he has been in custody.
Jurors found Anthony Rauda, 45, guilty June 9 of two felony counts of battery with injury on a peace officer. The sentence he received Tuesday from Superior Court Judge David Fields amounted to time he has already served behind bars, but Rauda remains in jail while awaiting trial on the far more serious charges he is facing.
The charges on which he was convicted involved:
- A March 30, 2020, attack on a male sheriff's deputy after a hearing in his murder case at the downtown Los Angeles courthouse; and
- An attack on a female sheriff's deputy at Men's Central Jail with a shaved-down pencil after a contentious court hearing on March 16 of this year.
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The jury also found in connection with this year's attack that Rauda had engaged in violent behavior that indicated a serious danger to society. Jurors could not reach a verdict on the same allegation involving the attack on the first deputy.
In her closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Antonella Nistorescu told jurors that Rauda became "angry and grateful" over court proceedings, and "he takes it out on deputies."
The prosecutor said Rauda has shown that "there is no restraining him... there is no stopping him," noting that the two deputies were attacked while he was surrounded by other deputies.
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In a brief closing argument, Rauda's attorney asked the jury to find that there was "insufficient evidence" to convict Rauda.
Both of the attacks were captured on surveillance video and shown repeatedly to jurors during the trial.
Rauda -- who was brought into the downtown LA courtroom for his sentencing in a chair in which he was confined -- is awaiting trial separately on a charge that he murdered 35-year-old Allergan scientist Tristan Thomas Beaudette of Irvine, who was shot at about 4:45 a.m. June 22, 2018, while camping in a tent with his then 2- and 4-year-old daughters, who escaped injury.
He is also facing trial on 10 counts of attempted murder -- Beaudette's daughters are among the named victims -- along with five counts of second-degree commercial burglary involving a series of crimes dating back three years.
Rauda has a string of convictions for weapons-related offenses dating back to 2006, according to the criminal complaint filed against him in the murder case in January of 2019.
He is due back in court June 29 for a pretrial hearing on that case.
Prosecutors allege that Rauda carried out attacks dating back to November of 2016, when he allegedly wounded a man who was sleeping in a hammock in the Malibu State Park area. He allegedly fired into the sleeping area of a vehicle less than a week later.
Rauda is also charged with shooting into vehicles, but not injuring anyone, on three occasions in 2017 and shooting at a Tesla on Las Virgenes Road four days before Beaudette's killing. He is additionally accused of a series of commercial burglaries committed between July 27 and Oct. 9, 2018.
He was arrested in October 2018 after a series of large-scale manhunts in the area for a rifle-toting culprit suspected in multiple food heists in the Calabasas area, including an early morning burglary at the Agoura Hills/Calabasas Community Center, where someone smashed a vending machine and stole food.
LA County sheriff's deputies thought the burglaries might be linked to Beaudette's killing.
Rauda was allegedly carrying a rifle when he was arrested in a ravine about a mile and a half north of Mulholland Highway west of Las Virgenes Road in the Malibu Canyon area, after deputies combing the area spotted fresh boot prints and tracked him down.
Authorities say Rauda had been captured on surveillance video in one of the crimes carrying a rifle and wearing what sheriff's investigators described as "tactical gear." The suspect in all of the heists stole food, detectives said, suggesting the man was living off the grid in the wilderness, carrying out the burglaries when he needed sustenance.
He was sentenced in December of 2018 to six months in jail for gun and ammunition violations, a sentence set to run consecutively with an earlier 160-day sentence for a probation violation.
In a statement released after Rauda was charged with Beaudette's slaying, the LA County Sheriff's Department said evidence had been developed and gathered "incriminating Rauda as being responsible for a series of armed burglaries, multiple shooting incidents, and the murder of Tristan Beaudette."
"A concentrated effort by detectives to unearth the past activities of Rauda correlating with this investigation has revealed that he apparently acted alone during this identified crime spree, stretching from November of 2016 to October of 2018. No similar crimes have been reported in the area since the October 2018 arrest of Rauda," according to the statement.
