An American former convict who was found guilty of raping two Irish students in New Hampshire last year was given a life sentence yesterday by a judge who called the crime one of the state's most horrific cases, officials said.
Steven Gordon, who had already served jail time for a previous sexual assault, was convicted of raping the two students in an brutal early-morning attack last summer.
Superior Court Judge Patricia Coffey called Gordon's action's despicable and the most horrific rape case in her time on the bench, according to a spokesman for the Rockingham County prosecutor's office.
Gordon was given a life sentence for one of the rapes and a sentence of 95-190 years for the other counts with which he was charged. "If there was ever a case that called for the maximum sentence, it was this one," said the prosecuting attorney, Mr James Reams.
At the time of the attack Gordon was on parole after serving 3 1/2 years of a six-year sentence for a previous armed sexual assault.
The two students were working in the US for the summer when Gordon took them in hired car to a desolate spot near a graveyard, where he assaulted them at gunpoint. After the assaults, Gordon fled to Europe, where he eventually surrendered to US authorities at the US embassy in Brussels.