Theater Manager's Killer Gets Stiffest Possible Sentence -- $2,756 Robbery Brings 13 1/2 Years

Eight months after he shot and killed the manager of a Factoria movie theater during a robbery, Luis Omar Perez has been sentenced to 13 1/2 years in prison - the highest possible punishment for his crime.

Perez pleaded guilty in March to second-degree murder in the Sept. 19 slaying of 20-year-old Michael Fidecaro, a night manager at Factoria Cinemas in Bellevue.

The sentence, imposed Friday by King County Superior Court Judge Brian Gain, was the maximum Perez could have received for the second-degree murder charge. The standard range is 10 1/4 years to 13 1/2 years.

King County prosecutors said Perez, 20, shot Fidecaro once in the head before taking $2,756 from the theater.

Though Perez originally was charged with first-degree murder, prosecutors lowered the charge to second-degree murder in exchange for a guilty plea.

He is the last of three men to be sentenced in connection with the slaying.

Two of Perez's friends, Jessie Jose Perez (no relation to Luis Perez) and Jeffrey Edward Nunez (who also has gone by the last name of Nunez-Hernandez), were found guilty of rendering criminal assistance and possession of stolen property. Prosecutors said they helped launder the money Luis Perez stole by exchanging packets of $1 bills for $100 bills at a Beacon Hill bank in Seattle.

Jessie Perez was sentenced in March to 26 months in prison, while Nunez received a 14-month prison sentence in April.

Fidecaro had worked at the theater for four years. At the time of the slaying, he was working double shifts to pay for chemotherapy treatments he underwent for testicular cancer.

Luis Perez had worked at the movie theater with Fidecaro for nine months in 1993 and 1994.