A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy was convicted Thursday of rape and bribery, stemming from two traffic stops, including one in which he pulled a woman over, then raped her in the desert, prosecutors said.

Jose Rigaberto Sanchez, 29, pleaded no contest to rape under color of authority and soliciting a bribe and is expected to be sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison.

Sanchez pulled over a 24-year-old woman in Palmdale while on duty Sept. 22, 2010, and allegedly offered not to arrest her on an outstanding warrant in exchange for sex, prosecutors said. The seven-year veteran then allegedly drove away with the woman, before sodomizing her in the desert.

Two nights later, he solicited a bribe in the form of sexual activity from a 36-year-old woman he pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Sanchez was most recently assigned to patrol duties at the Palmdale Station and had previously worked in the county’s jails.

The Sheriff’s Department launched an investigation in 2010 after receiving a tip from an informant, a department spokesman said. Sanchez was relieved of duty with pay in September 2010 after the tip was received, and his pay was suspended after he was arrested in July.

Sheriff’s officials did not immediately provide his current status, but felony convictions generally result in law enforcement officials getting fired.

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A jury on Wednesday convicted a child rapist who was deported in 2009 before he could be tried but was extradited back to Texas last year.

Jose Adan Rico, 38, raped two girls, ages 12 and 14, in separate attacks in their Dallas homes.

Known as the “Five Points serial rapist” for a section of northeast Dallas, he preyed on girls when they were alone and getting ready for school.

Authorities said he would bind them with duct tape, rape them at gunpoint and make them wait in a bathtub or shower afterward.

“He took a 12-year-old’s body and then disregarded her in the shower,” Assistant District Attorney Carmen White said.

Rico was arrested in March 2009, shortly after the second attack, but he posted bond and was deported months later before he could stand trial.

Last spring, U.S. marshals arrested Rico in Mexico and returned him to Dallas.

Testimony in his trial began Tuesday and focused Wednesday on the DNA evidence against Rico and an initial contaminated test.

Detectives found DNA evidence on both victims that was later linked to the Mexican national when he was arrested on a burglary charge in March 2009, months after the second assault.

While prosecutors say a second test confirmed the match, defense attorney Vic Cunningham argued that the same technician who handled the first rape kit also performed the second test, bringing both into question.

“It’s human nature to predict the answer we want to see,” Cunningham said.

But investigators also had a partial license plate number that matched Rico’s car, and when they searched his vehicle, they found a pair of white cloth gloves, a dark brown glove and clear duct tape, said White, the prosecutor.

During testimony, jurors learned that Rico bound the victims with clear duct tape and taped their eyes shut, telling one of them, “I have a gun. I will kill you.”

Jurors found Rico guilty Wednesday but could not decide whether he put his victims in fear of being killed or kidnapped. Had they come to that conclusion, Rico would have faced a sentence of life without parole.

Instead, he faces a life sentence but will be eligible for parole in 30 years. District Judge Mike Snipes is scheduled to sentence Rico on Feb. 20.

Jury selection begins Tuesday in the trial of a man accused of committing at least five rapes in the 1980s.

Daniel Wade, 63, is believed to be the Maintenance Man rapist, a nickname derived from the fact that he posed as a maintenance worker and attacked his victims in their apartments.

Police say Wade committed the rapes between January 1986 and January 1987. His victims ranged in age from 10 to 65. They were sexually assaulted in various apartment complexes along northeast Atlanta’s I-85 corridor.

The rapes went unsolved until April 2011, when police used DNA to link Wade to the five attacks, as well as three more in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. The suspect was indicted last September.

Wade faces a number of charges in Fulton County, including rape, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy, aggravated assault, cruelty to children, burglary and robbery by intimidation.

A man charged with participating in a gang rape of a 16-year-old girl outside her Richmond High School homecoming dance pleaded guilty Thursday in connection with the attack in exchange for a six-year prison sentence, a prosecutor said.

Elvis Torrentes, 26, entered a plea to sexual penetration of an intoxicated person before Judge Barbara Zuniga of Contra Costa County Superior Court in Martinez.

Torrentes will serve six years in prison, said prosecutor Harold Jewett.

Four other men have been convicted for their roles in the 2009 attack.

In August, Jose Montano, 22, of Richmond and Marcelles Peter, 20, of Pinole were sentenced to 33 years to life and 29 years to life in prison, respectively, after juries convicted them of forcible rape while acting in concert with others, a forcible act of sexual penetration in concert and forcible oral copulation in concert.

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A 25-year-old Chicago man has been charged in a sexual assault and beating that left a 15-year-old girl fighting for her life.

Chicago police said Sunday that Luis Pantoja was charged with attempted first-degree murder and aggravated criminal sexual assault in the Belmont-Cragin attack last month.

The girl was found December 17 lying in a pool of blood in the back yard of a home. She was hospitalized in critical condition and was unable to communicate with police until two weeks later.

A resident told the Chicago Sun-Times he was going to sweep the snow from his rear walkway just after 8 a.m. that day and found the girl outside his back door. Blood was pooling in the snow around her head. Her pants had been yanked off. Her shoes were off her feet. She was all but unconscious, moving a little, but saying nothing.

Pantoja, who lives just blocks from the scene of the attack, was arrested on Friday “through the work of Chicago Police Detectives and the Great Lakes Fugitive Task Force,” Chicago police said in a brief statement released on Sunday.

He appeared in Cook County criminal court briefly Sunday, but the bond hearing in his case has been delayed until Tuesday. In the meantime, he’ll be held in the Cook County Jail without bail.

A suspect is behind bars, accusing of a brazen sexual assault that left a wheelchair-bound woman unable to defend herself. Police say the man attacked the 62-year-old woman inside her own home.

The victim’s friend tells CBS13 she heard the victim’s cries for help.

Investigators tell CBS13 what makes this crime so heinous is that suspect, allegedly posing as a maintenance man, sexually assaulted a defenseless and paralyzed woman.

“And before I can open my window, I could hear her cry, which pierced every bone in my body,” said Bonita Thomas, a friend of the victim.

Thomas says the screams for help from her friend shook her to the core. Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies say the brutal attack happened at an apartment on Power Inn Road over the weekend.

Late at night, Abraham Arroyo allegedly knocked on the victim’s door, pretending to be someone else.

“The male voice on the other side said he was the maintenance worker,” said Sgt. Lisa Bowman, a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Dept. spokesperson.

Wheelchair-bound and paralyzed from the waist down, the 62-year-old victim told Arroyo to come back in the morning.

“At which time he forced his way in by breaking a window,” said Sgt. Bowman.

The victim was unable to call 911.

“He took her cellphone from her and basically dragged her out of her wheelchair and sexually assaulted her right there in the middle of her apartment,” said Sgt. Bowman.

“It was creepy,” said Thomas.

The attacker then ran off.

Neighbors heard the screams.

“I could hear her crying, saying: ‘He beat me. He raped me.’ And I was like, oh my God,” said Thompson.

Investigators say the victim doesn’t even know the Arroyo, but apparently he often visits a friend at the complex. He was arrested just days later.

The victim may have to see him again in court.

“That’s a strong woman — stronger than I could ever be,” said Thomas.

The suspect agreed to speak with CBS13 from behind bars, but changed his mind at the last minute.

The owner of the Spanish-language newspaper El Torero in Allentown was arrested by city police Friday and charged with raping a 15-year-old girl.

Ricardo Montero, 67, who has faced sex-crime charges before, was arraigned on charges of rape, statutory sexual assault, sexual assault and indecent assault. Police said the crimes occurred Dec. 5.

District Judge Wayne Maura sent Montero to Lehigh County Prison under $50,000 bail.

According to the police arrest affidavit, the girl reported being assaulted about 7 p.m. Dec. 5. A Lehigh County interview specialist followed up by talking with the girl the next day.

The girl told the specialist that she was walking near 44 N. Sixth St., Allentown, when Montero approached her.

“The defendant grabbed her by the hand and forcibly led her up to a third-floor apartment and into a bedroom,” the affidavit says. “The defendant put [the girl] on a bed and forcibly had sexual intercourse with her.”

The girl said, “no, no,” during the assault, according to the affidavit.

The girl said she knew Montero only as “Ricardo.”

The apartment, above the El Torero offices at Sixth and Linden streets, is Montero’s home, the affidavit says.

Allentown police obtained a search warrant Dec. 6 and looked through Montero’s apartment, taking photographs and collecting evidence, the affidavit says.

On Dec. 19, city Detective John Buckwalter interviewed Montero, who admitted having sex with the girl, but who insisted she had asked to go up to the apartment.

Montero also consented to give a DNA sample.

Montero has been charged with sex crimes twice before.

In January 2003, he pleaded guilty to trying to solicit sex from an undercover police officer in November 2001 at Ninth and Turner streets, Allentown.

At the time, he was awaiting sentencing on charges that in separate incidents in 2001 he lured a 16-year-old into the office of a co-defendant, Dr. Luis Campos of Allentown, for a topless photo session, and that he fondled a 19-year-old woman after asking her to his office under the pretense of interviewing her for a job. He pleaded guilty to indecent assault and corruption of a minor in May 2002.

Montero was sentenced to 111/2 to 23 months in Lehigh County Prison but was moved to an undisclosed location after he was beaten by other inmates at the prison’s work release center in Salisbury Township.

Montero, who previously ran the Spanish-language “Radio Ole” program on WHOL radio, started the El Torero newspaper in 1998.

A 27-year-old Mexican man is locked up after police charge him with raping a woman who cannot hear or speak.

Juan Corona-Martinez of Becca Lane in DeLand is held on $50,000 bond following his arrest on Friday.

The DeLand Police Department says they were called out to Florida Hospital DeLand on November 19th when a 37-year-old woman told a friend she had been raped by Corona-Martinez.

That woman – who was not identified in the arrest report – claims she had met Corona-Martinez at a birthday party on the night of November 18th and invited him and 2 other friends to her home after they had left the party to buy wine.

According to the arrest report, the 2 friends left the woman’s home soon after arriving and Corona-Martinez stayed behind.

She told DeLand P.D. she was cooking food for Corona-Martinez in the kitchen when he approached her from behind and started kissing her neck, telling her that he liked her.

The woman told police she kept telling Corona-Martinez that she did not want to have sex with him, but that Corona-Martinez “did not care”, forcing her into the bedroom so that they could have sex.

After the alleged attack, the woman said she threw up in the bathroom and ordered Corona-Martinez to get out of her house.

When questioned the following day by Spanish-speaking detectives, Martinez claimed initially he did not have sex with her, but changed his story later on, saying that the woman started it all by kissing him after he hugged her.

Martinez also told investigators that the woman was apparently upset over a recent break-up she had with a lesbian lover and that he had come to DeLand around 3 months ago as an illegal immigrant.

He was arrested after the police feared he could leave the area if he thought he was about to be arrested for the alleged sexual assault.