Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 15, 1991                   TAG: 9103150893
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ARLINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

ARLINGTON MAN FOUND GUILTY IN SLAYING OF 3 PROSTITUTES

After nine hours of deliberation, a jury of seven women and five men recommended that Matta be sentenced to life in prison with no parole for each of the three murders, and that he serve 10 years in prison on each of three robbery counts.

Judge Paul L. Sheriden set sentencing for April 19. Under Virginia law, the judge can uphold or reduce, but not increase, the jury's sentence.

Defense lawyer William B. Moffitt said no decision about an appeal has been reached yet.

The death penalty was never a possibility for Matta because none of the three slayings met Virginia guidelines for capital murder. Multiple murders are punishable by death only if they are part of "the same act or transaction."

Matta, 22, of Arlington was arrested last June and charged with the Memorial Day weekend slayings of Sherry Larman, 26, Jodie Phillips, 16, and Sandra Johnson, 20. Each woman had been killed by suffocation.

Moffitt admitted from the beginning of the trial eight days ago that Matta had committed the crimes, but said that an irresistible impulse had compelled him to kill.

Prosecutors portrayed Matta as a calculating and sane killer who watched his victims suffocate after he placed plastic bags over their heads.

Arlington County deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Arthur Karp said he was not in the least surprised that the jury recommended the maximum sentence, which he called appropriate.

As the guilty verdict was read in the packed courtroom, Jagjit Matta, Chander Matta's father, hung his head despondently. The mothers of the defendant and Larman, one of the victims, broke into tears.

The centerpiece of Matta's insanity defense was Moffitt's argument that his client was a latent schizophrenic whose condition was activated in the fall of 1988 by a hazing incident at Norwich University in Vermont, where he was a student.

But the scenario was not enough to convince jurors. According to juror James Ritchie, agreement on the verdicts "was pretty general all the way through."

"I think justice should be done, and justice was done," said Sandra Johnson, Larman's mother, who expressed her sympathy to Matta's mother after the verdict was announced.

"She's lost a son," Johnson said. "The difference is, he [Matta] is still alive."