Man gets two life sentences in killing

Stacy J. Willis

Friday, April 21, 2000 | 11:38 a.m.

A Las Vegas man was given two life sentences without parole for the first-degree murder of an 18-year-old who had dated his daughter.

Jack Getz Sr. was sentenced Thursday by District Court Judge Jeffrey Sobel after the victim's family read emotional statements about their loss.

Prosecutors asserted that Getz killed Ray Ware, a UNLV student, because he believed Ware had raped and impregnated his daughter Tami Getz, 16.

Ware's family said that there was no rape and no pregnancy, but that Tami Getz was obsessed with Ware and misled her father.

Getz shot Ware four times in a desolate parking lot near McCarran International Airport on Christmas night, 1997. Getz hid his blood-stained clothes in the Arizona desert before leading police to the scene, where he claimed he shot Ware in self-defense.

A jury found Getz guilty of first-degree murder in February.

"I thank God the court came to this conclusion so that other mother's sons won't be at risk of being at this man's hands," Ware's mother, Bonnie Mataczynzski, said after the sentencing.

"But I will never get Ray back, and so there will never be justice."

The Getz family said they plan to appeal the case.

"He doesn't deserve this," said a tearful Tami Getz.

"I lost my dad over this ... I was a victim of sexual assault ... This isn't fair."