Ricardo Latjuan Ware, 21 of Cedartown, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Sharon Starr Bussey that occurred last year.

Ware was sentenced to the life charge after he entered a guilty plea to malice murder Tuesday in Polk Superior Court.

Judge Richard Sutton handed down the life sentence and also sentenced Ware to 10 years in prison for raping Bussey. That sentence is to run concurrently with the murder sentence, according to District Attorney James Osborne.

Ware will be able to apply for parole after 14 years, but Osborne said it was his hope that the defendant would never be paroled.

The state parole board, according to Osborne, has paroled less than one percent of those who apply for parole who have been convicted of murder.

Ware was also charged with kidnapping and cruelty to children but those charges were dropped when he agreed to enter the guilty pleas to the more serious charges, Osborne said.

According to earlier police accounts and Superior Court documents:

In October 2000, Cedartown police arrested Ware, of 100 Janes St., Cedartown about three months after Bussey’s body was found abandoned behind a concrete block plant on Jefferson Street, about three blocks from downtown Cedartown.

Ware’s arresting charges included murder, kidnapping, rape, aggravated sodomy, robbery, two counts of aggravated battery, and two counts of aggravated assault. He additionally had six counts of felony murder, which were given in connection for the more serious offenses.

Authorities state in a True Bill indictment that Ware used a concrete block to hit Bussey in the head, which killed her.

He also stole some cigarettes and sexually abused her.

Bussey, of Rockmart, was 44 at the time of her death.