LANCASTER : Killer Sentenced to Life in Prison

Convicted killer Christopher Arthur Mann was sentenced Tuesday in Van Nuys Superior Court to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Mann, 20, will most likely die in prison for slaying Hans Christian Herzog in March, 1993, during a robbery at an automated teller machine in Lancaster.

Mann shot Herzog in the back of the head with a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle and then dumped his body in the bank parking lot and stole his car.

Before Mann was sentenced, he heard impassioned statements from his father, Dennis, and Verena Herzog, wife of the murdered Lancaster resident.

Judge Candace Beason addressed Mann personally, bringing him and many others in the courtroom to tears, according to a court official.

Mann did not make a statement before his sentence was pronounced.

Because the slaying involved special circumstances--murder during the commission of a robbery--Mann had faced the death penalty, but the jury recommended the life sentence.

The shooting of Herzog, a telephone company worker and father of two, and Mann’s subsequent trial drew wide attention in the Antelope Valley, where such violent crimes are uncommon.

Events surrounding the killing were captured on videotape. During the trial, the jury watched a playback of Mann approaching Herzog at the ATM with a gun behind his back.

Mann’s accomplice in the murder, Wesley Dean Harper, testified that he watched the killing from a truck in the parking lot.

Harper testified as part of a plea bargain in which he was sentenced to 26 years in prison for first-degree murder.