A convicted sex offender who has already served time in prison may never see life outside bars again after he was found guilty of committing a violent mall robbery more than three decades ago in San Jose.
Thomas Loguidice, 67, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison for the mall robbery, in addition to the sentence he is currently serving, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement Thursday.
San Benito County Sheriff’s Office
On January 13, 1994, shortly before 10 a.m., a 21-year-old woman arrived at the President Tuxedo store in the Oakridge Mall. As acting manager, she was preparing to open the store when Loguidice approached her and forced the victim into a back storage area at knifepoint.
The victim was forced to lie on the ground, her wrists tied, and she was tied to a pipe.
Investigators said that after taking a small amount of money from the cash register in the showroom, Loguidice returned to the storage room and sexually assaulted the woman. He then fled on foot.
San Jose police investigated, but the case stalled. However, in 2022, the State Attorney’s Office’s Cold Case Unit discovered that DNA collected at the 1994 crime scene matched an offender profile in a national DNA database called the Combined DNA Index System.
The profile was of Loguidice, who was convicted in 2012 of continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 13 in San Benito County. According to prosecutors, he is currently serving a 40-year prison sentence for the case.
“We won’t forget it. The passage of time does not minimize this suspect’s violent and heinous actions, and he deserves to be held accountable. I am grateful for the great work of our Crime Lab, investigators and prosecutors to bring this perpetrator to justice. said District Attorney Jeff Rosen.
However, prosecutors said Loguidice was not charged in the assault because the statute of limitations for that crime expired in 2000.
