Armed robber gets 55 years

Madisonville Mayor Peter Gitz seemed to close a brutal chapter of his life Wednesday, relieved the man who robbed him two years ago was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

“It’s something that needed to be done,” Gitz said. “We need to get people like this — these multiple offenders — off the street. We shouldn’t have to worry about him doing anything else like to anyone else.”

Charles Holcombe, already serving a five-year sentence for a related drug charge, was convicted Nov. 20 for the armed robbery.

During the June 21, 2006, holdup, Gitz, then 71, was beat to a bloody pulp outside the mayor’s town eatery, Badeaux’s Drive In.

Gitz, now 73, earlier testified that at about 10:30 p.m., as he closed the restaurant’s financial books, he was blindsided by what “sounded like an aluminum baseball bat.”

He was hit 10 to 15 times, throwing up his hands to block the blows.

It didn’t work. He lost his front row of teeth, and doctors inserted 21 metal clips, 32 stitches and a screw in his jaw.

Sometimes during the attack, Holcombe reached for his pocket.

Holcombe stole $2,200 and $500 in Home Depot Gift cards.

“That’s when I knew what he wanted,” Gitz had testified.

In November last year, Holcombe was sentenced to five years in jail after detectives interviewing him as a suspect found 14 pills of hydromorphone, a generic form of the painkiller Dilaudid, inside his wallet.

They also found syringes, a pipe and cocaine.

In 1998, he was convicted of second-degree battery for beating a man. Citing the previous convictions, 22nd Judicial District Court Judge William “Rusty” Knight sentenced Holcombe to 55 years, a mid level sentence for armed robbery convictions which carry 10 to 99 years.

Holcombe still faces trial for second-degree battery and attempted second-degree murder in the Gitz case, said Rick Wood, spokesman for the District Attorney’s office.

For now, Gitz said he can sleep easier.

“It’s working out all right,” he said. “We just have to keep going.”