ANDERSON — A former Anderson firefighter convicted of a 1983 rape was denied early parole Wednesday by the Indiana Parole Board, according to board secretary Phyllis Scroggin.

Victor Fionto, 50, has served 26 years at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility for the rape of an Anderson woman while her daughter slept mere feet away. It’s unclear how many years Fionto was finally sentenced to.

Indiana Parole Board documents say he has a 40-year sentence, but Madison Superior Court 3 Judge Thomas Newman originally sentenced Fionto to 104 years.

Newman said he remembers the case.

“What he did was extraordinarily heinous,” Newman said Wednesday.

Newman’s recollection matches a 1983 article in The Anderson Herald. Fionto abducted the woman as she exited a pharmacy on Scatterfield Road, where she’d filled prescriptions for her sick 7-year-old daughter. The daughter was asleep in the backseat as Fionto raped the woman for hours.

In The Anderson Herald article, Fionto’s attorney, Howard Grimm, said the 104-year sentence was unreasonable, especially since hairs that could have either cleared or fingered Fionto had gone missing.

“I think the sentence is grossly disproportionate to what the evidence disclosed, especially in view of the fact that the state had, either intentionally or inadvertently, destroyed evidence which could have cleared Victor Fionto.”

Contact Christina M. Wright, 640-4883, christina.wright@heraldbulletin.com.