Parole denied for Burlingame sex offender

(KRON) — A California parole board denied granting freedom on Wednesday to a Burlingame sex offender who has served three decades behind prison bars for attempted rape.

San Mateo County prosecutors said Luciano Ramirez, 63, still fails to grasp the severity of his crimes and believes “he is the victim of an unduly harsh punishment.”

On June 11, 1995, a married flight attendant was hanging by a pool in her Burlingame apartment complex. Ramirez, a 33-year-old registered sex offender at the time, met her at the pool and they drank together. After they entered the woman’s apartment, the flight attendant told Ramirez that she was married and refused to accept his sexual advances, prosecutors said.

Ramirez told the woman that he didn’t care about her marriage, ripped the woman’s clothes off, and attempted to rape her, prosecutors said. The woman fought back. One of the victim’s roommates walked in, saw what was happening, and called the police.

Ramirez, who had prior convictions for sodomy, assault with intent to rape, and felony assault, was arrested by Burlingame police officers. On February 5, 1996, under California’s Three Strikes Law, Ramirez was sentenced to serve 60 years to life in prison.

At his parole hearing Wednesday at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, the inmate told the board that he was just “wrestling” with the flight attendant. “He continues to believe he is not a sex offender,” the DA’s office wrote.

The victim participated in the hearing opposing his release on parole. 

During his decades in prison, Ramirez racked up a poor record as an inmate, the district attorney’s office said. Today he is considered at moderate-to-high risk of reoffending if freed from custody, prosecutors said.

The board decided that Ramirez remains an “unreasonable risk of danger to the community if released and thus found him unsuitable for parole,” the DA’s office wrote.