LAWRENCE — A 22-year-old Lawrence man has been sentenced to life in prison, without the chance of parole, for the murder of a 36-year-old man in a Museum Square apartment four years ago.
Joonel Garcia, who last lived at 248 Salem St., was sentenced Monday after a Salem Superior Court jury found him guilty of the murder of Rafael Castro in 2004.
The jury deliberated for 15 hours over a three-day period, said Steve O'Connell, a spokesman for Essex County District Attorney Kevin Burke.
In addition to the life sentence, Judge David Lowy also sentenced Garcia to up to 40 years on two counts of kidnapping.
Garcia was convicted of killing Castro in his Museum Square apartment on the night of Aug. 26, 2004.
Three other men believed to be involved in Castro's murder remain at-large, O'Connell said.
Castro was shot in the head and dragged into a bedroom in his apartment just after midnight as he arrived home from picking up his girlfriend's daughter, Norma Cedeno, at Logan International Airport in East Boston.
Police said they believe Cedeno entered the apartment first, was overpowered, bound with duct tape and taken to another bedroom where she was left unharmed.
Castro was ambushed as he entered the sixth-floor apartment and was bound before he was shot, police said.
The apartment was then ransacked in search of money or cocaine, police said.
Cedeno worked her way free of the duct tape and called police at 1:05 a.m. to a report a man with "head injuries," investigators said at the time.
Officers arrived to find Castro dead in a bedroom.
Security cameras at the apartment complex were not operating that night, police said.
Castro's girlfriend, Ramona Gonzalez, 44, had left for New York 90 minutes before the shooting, police said. But when she learned of Castro's murder, she hopped an express van to return to Lawrence, then disappeared until she hired a lawyer, police said.
Gonzalez's nephew and two friends were driving her car back to Lawrence when they were stopped for speeding through a construction zone in New York's Westchester County.
During the stop, police found a kilogram of cocaine in the car, and all three denied the cocaine was theirs, police said.
Staff reporter Jim Patten contributed to this story.
