Tuesday, Oct. 1, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
It wasn't enough that convicted killer Gregory Bolin was being sentenced to death by lethal injection for raping and murdering a video store clerk.
District Judge Bill Maupin, at the request of Deputy District Attorney Gary Guymon, also declared Bolin to be an habitual criminal and sentenced him Monday to a life prison term with no chance of parole.
Maupin also blistered the Colorado parole board that had released Bolin just 15 days before he came to Las Vegas in July 1995 and stabbed 21-year-old Brooklyn Ricks to death after kidnapping and raping her.
It was similar to the rapes for which he had been imprisoned. But this time it had turned deadly.
The parole board, Maupin said, "must have been out of its mind to restore this man's liberty."
"He is a sadistic and sinister menace to the community," the judge said. "He should not have been eligible for release until he was old."
Bolin's three prior felony convictions -- two for rapes and one for having a knife in prison -- made him eligible for the habitual criminal sentence.
But an angry Bolin said he already paid for those crimes and called his treatment "a railroading ... a lynching."
He again maintained that he was innocent of Ricks' murder and charged that he didn't receive a fair trial. Defense attorney Patricia Erickson said she will file a motion for a new trial.
Guymon said that Bolin, 39, who has been in prison all but a few months since age 16, "can't be rehabilitated. He has violation after violation after violation."
Guymon noted that in 1975, Bolin and some friends kidnapped a woman and her husband. The men put the husband in the trunk of the car, where he had to listen while his wife was repeatedly raped in the back seat.
That, Guymon added, occurred just a day after another woman was raped after similarly being abducted as she was entering her car.
Bolin was convicted in Las Vegas of torturing Ricks as he raped her. She was stabbed nearly a dozen times with a screw driver and beaten with a board.
Guymon lamented during the trial that Bolin learned the lesson from his prior convictions in Colorado that he shouldn't leave his rape victims alive to testify against him in court.
Bolin's conviction was based primarily on the identification of him by a construction worker who arrived early for work at a partially constructed house in northwest Las Vegas where Ricks' bloody and mangled remains were found.
Keith Sirevaag testified that the woman had been bound, gagged and was nearly dead from numerous stab wounds to her chest when he entered the house in northwest Las Vegas.
She died moments later as Sirevaag raced to a nearby home to call 911.
Bolin claimed he was attending a party at the time of the murder with two men he had just met in a bar.
Bolin originally was targeted by police from a videotape recording of him earlier the night of the murder at the video rental store where Ricks worked.
Ricks closed the store at 1437 N. Jones Blvd. about midnight and was seen driving off in her primer gray pickup truck. Her husband became alarmed when she didn't arrive home.
Bolin was arrested in 1975 for the rapes of the two women and served 19 years before being released. He then moved to Las Vegas to live with his parents.
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