Murderer given 30-year sentence
A 21-year-old Cheney man vowed Wednesday to fight his two murder convictions as a judge sent him to prison for the next 30 years.
John E. Lipinski told Superior Court Judge Harold Clarke that he, too, was a victim from the incident in August 2004 that killed both his fiancée and his unborn daughter.
“You heard lies about me … that I’m a monster. I’m not. I’m no murderer,” said Lipinski, who did not testify in his murder trial. “I wish I knew why this happened like everybody else. But I’m not to blame.
“That was my family, my life,” he said through tears.
A jury on March 14 convicted Lipinski of two counts of second-degree murder for pushing 19-year-old Melissa Saldivar out of a moving car. She was pregnant with their daughter when Saldivar suffered the fractured skull from which she died on Aug. 11, 2004.
Doctors kept her alive long enough to deliver their baby, Mataya, but the little girl was determined to be brain dead and was taken off life support on Oct. 1, 2004.
At the emotional hearing Wednesday, several of Saldivar’s and Lipinski’s friends testified about how the case has impacted their lives.
Helen Goertz asked Clarke for leniency for Lipinski.
“Not in my wildest imagination could I picture John being murderously violent. The John I know just doesn’t have it in him,” Goertz said. “I see no purpose in putting John in prison for a long time. If it was up to me, I would let him be released on bond.”
Susan Goertz testified that she had worked as a baby sitter for Patrick, who was Saldivar’s son. Goertz described Lipinski, who believed he was Patrick’s father, as the picture of a perfect dad.
“The world he had built, the new life he and Melissa were creating, had vanished,” Susan Goertz said. “But he kept going because he knew he had to be strong for Patrick. Then he found out that Patrick was not his biological son and his heart was broken again.”
Goertz said Saldivar pushed Lipinski into getting his GED because she believed he had potential.
“I know she would want him to be free, free to start a new life and prove to everyone that he is the man that she knew he was capable of becoming. Don’t take away his chance to prove her right,” Goertz pleaded with Clarke. “Enough lives have been destroyed already.”
Clarke said it’s his job to protect the community and impose an appropriate penalty.
“I know that as I pronounce this sentence this morning … there is nothing I can do to put Melissa and Mataya back on the earth,” Clarke said. “The sentence is not going to unwind the clock.”
Saldivar’s mother, Tina Saldivar, said she was pleased with Clarke’s sentence.
“I feel that he had no remorse and treated us like we had done it to him instead of us being the victims,” Saldivar said of Lipinski. “If it had been an accident, I believe he would not have changed his story or taken 38 minutes to take her to the hospital.”