The day she changed her lock to keep him out, 25-year-old Laura Sardinia was on the phone with her mother and her best friend.
She had issued restraint orders against him. She had requested that he move out of her Huntington Beach apartment. She didn’t answer his phone.
However, her phone was interrupted when he showed up at her apartment on the afternoon of September 2, 2020. She left a refined voicemail message of 37 seconds when he attacked her with multiple knives.
“If you listen carefully, you can hear a woman telling her murder,” Orange County Deputy Bureau. Atty. Janine Madera told the ju judge during her final discussion at Charlon’s trial in Santa Ana this week.
After less than a day of deliberation, ju umpire Tuesday was found guilty of first-degree murder, 39-year-old Charlon.
Sardinia worked as an assistant to a bartender, but due to a motorcycle accident in 2019, she was unable to grab a knife enough to chop the lemons if needed. She pursued an online psychology degree and spent several months dating Air Force veteran Chalong.
Testimony said Sardinia received a $750,000 settlement after the accident, giving him nearly $100,000 of which. “Thank you for showing me that you guys are mine,” he texted her after receiving a considerable chunk.
Two weeks before her murder, Sardinia texted him saying that she couldn’t hear him because he had destroyed the drums in her ears. In the exchange she recorded on her phone, she can be heard saying, “You’re continuing to attack me.”
“Massage the calves or end this relationship,” he replied.
On the morning of her murder, Sardinia tells her friend that Charlon had woken her up in the demand for oral sex. She recorded her begging him to let herself go to sleep.
“Would you like me to leave?” she asked repeatedly. “Run away from me.”
“All I want is to be with you,” he said.
“You terrify me, because you won’t leave.”
Later, you can film yourself in the apartment and hear him say, “Oh, what a god, hit me… Laura, why are you hitting me?” She tries to ignore him while she sits on the sofa yard.
Just before noon she went to the lease office and asked if she could change the lock. The apartment manager returns to her apartment as Chalong approaches and hides her inside. The maintenance man has changed the lock.
Charlon texted and called, but she ignored him. At about 1:15pm, she was making a three-way call with her mother and her best friend.
It is not clear how Chalong entered her apartment. With his account, he simply walked through an unlocked door.
After her friend hung up to call 911, Sardinia calls her, “He’s going to kill me!” and “Run me!”
Prosecutors said that Chalon stabbed Sardinia twice in the chest, almost sliced her nose and stabbed her head, thus bent the pronged tomato knife he was using.
Police arrived soon and found Sardinia dead, and Sharon bleed to her chest and neck from the wound. Prosecutors suggested he gave him a serrated steak knife to bolster his story of Sardinia attacking him.
“It doesn’t matter if he’s hurt or if she defended herself,” Madera said. “He was a 100% time attacker.”
At about 6 feet tall and 220 pounds, he was about nine inches taller than Sardinia and weighed over 100 pounds.
“She can’t make sure to cut the lemon and lime with a knife, not to mention protecting her life,” Madera said. “He towered over her.”
Chalong said he was a former combat medic who received 100% disability rating for psychiatric treatment in the VA because he took a stand in his own defense. He said he could not call much of his conflict with Sardinia “blushes.” However, he claims that she came to him with a knife and that he stabbed her in self-defense.
“I didn’t fully understand what was going on right now,” he said. “It takes me a little while to realize that I’m being cut out.”
During the trial, three of Chalong’s ex-girlfriends testified that they issued restraint orders against him. One woman said he suffocated her and slapped her on the head with a bottle of wine. Another said he slapped her and poured vodka onto her head. The third said he pinned her to the wall and punched the man who was in her company.
“He has control issues,” Madera told the ju referee. “He doesn’t care about women who want to exercise their free will.”
During his final discussion, defense attorney Michael Guisty said that while his client had a history of violence it was “non-damaged violence,” and evidence suggested that he may have acted in the heat of passion or self-defense.
He said that Chalong’s wounds were severe enough and he had to be resurrected, saying he was “basically dead.” “They need to believe he fakes his wounds,” Guist said.
Madera described Sardinia’s death as a “cool murder,” pointing to the voicemail she left behind in her final moments.
“You didn’t ask the accused about it, and his silence is absolutely jarring,” she said. “He enjoys taking his time killing her.”
Superior Court Judge Michael Cassidy has set a Judgment date for July 25th. Chalong faces the possibilities of living in prison.
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