5-Year Sentence For Teen's Murderer -- Judge Cites Cruelty, Cockiness To Justify The Exceptional Term

Convicted murderer Matthew Wright told a King County judge to sentence him as severely as she wished.

"It doesn't matter what you give me," Wright told Superior Court Judge Bobbe Bridge yesterday. "If I gotta do 40, 50 years that's all right because the truth will come out."

Bridge, who presided over the extraordinary murder case - unusually acrimonious even by Superior Court standards - took Wright up on the invitation. She sentenced him to more than 41 years in prison for the murder of Audra Letnes, 16, in a Shoreline park last May.

Calling 20-year-old Wright amoral, cocky, manipulative, cruel and a sociopath, Bridge meted out a prison term a decade longer than the standard maximum.

She cited his manipulation and brutalizing of an emotionally vulnerable minor and his apparent desire to kill her to avoid being prosecuted for rape as reasons justifying the exceptional sentence.

Wright, who smirked and smiled often through yesterday's hearing and the trial that ended in a first-degree murder conviction, showed little reaction to the sentence.

Letnes was obsessed with Wright and endured abuse from him, according to her diary and testimony from friends. He was being investigated for raping her and he killed her because of it, King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Bruce Miyake claimed.

The girl's corpse was found in Innis Arden Park May 12. She had been stabbed, strangled and beaten on the head with a concrete block.

Wright and his family vigorously maintain he is innocent and insist that the state's key witness, Brandon Reynolds, murdered the girl.

Reynolds, who testified that Wright confessed to him, attended the sentencing but could not get into the packed courtroom.

Roberta Wright told Bridge that her son suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and has solved his violent impulses.

Wright has rape, burglary, robbery and assault convictions.

Coral Letnes, the victim's mother, told Bridge that Wright called and wrote people who were urging he serve a long sentence and promised it would only make him meaner.

"It is obvious," said Letnes, "that if given a chance he will do this to someone else."

Defense attorney Peter Connick said he will appeal the conviction and sentence.