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SAN FERNANDO VALLEY : Man Gets Life Sentence for Strangling Woman

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Jonathan Karl Lundh was sentenced Wednesday, after his second trial, to life in prison for strangling an assistant college dean after she left a Burbank self-improvement seminar in 1982.

The sentence gives Lundh, 45, no possibility of parole. He was convicted of murdering Patty Lynne Cohen, assistant dean of the School of Arts at Cal State Northridge. She disappeared April 27, 1982, from the garage of a Burbank motel, where she had been attending an Erhard Seminar Training meeting. Her body was found five days later in the trunk of her car in a North Hollywood alley.

Four witnesses said they saw Lundh near the motel. Rain Slook, a San Fernando Valley schoolteacher, testified on videotape that she saw Lundh after the murder driving a car like Cohen’s. Slook had initially been unable to identify Lundh, and she died of cancer after Lundh’s preliminary hearing.

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