A Queens man who shot and killed the serial sex predator who raped his girlfriend is finally getting out of prison.

John Valverde will have served 16 years of a 10-to-30-year prison sentence by the time he’s released on May 6.

He was denied parole his first three times before the parole board, despite an exemplary record behind bars.

“We’re very excited and very pleased with this decision,” said Valverde’s lawyer brother, Frank. “We’re looking forward to spending some time with him.”

Valverde, 36, was a college student with no criminal record when he learned that his girlfriend of three years had been raped by Joel Schoenfeld, a photographer on probation for two other sex attacks.

At his trial, he testified that he had gone to Schoenfeld’s Greenwich Village studio loft Jan. 5, 1991, with a gun in a bid to scare him off from trying to contact his girlfriend again, when the pair got into a fatal scuffle.

Police hadn’t been able to arrest Schoenfeld for the attack on the girlfriend because she was too traumatized to press charges.

A Manhattan jury acquitted Valverde of murder charges, convicting him on the lesser charge of manslaughter because he acted under “extreme emotional distress”

Police said Valverde’s 19-year-old girlfriend responded to a newspaper ad in June 1990 seeking models, and Schoenfeld suggested she act as his secretary in his studio instead of paying lab and photo-developing fees.

Days later, the girlfriend told the police, Schoenfeld raped her inside the studio at 375 West St.

While behind bars, Valverde earned college degrees and taught his fellow inmates, and his good behavior garnered him letters of support from prison guards, politicians and even the late John Cardinal O’Connor.

The girlfriend has since married and is now a mother, according to an individual familiar with the case.

Valverde’s supporters, led by Hispanics Across America President Fernando Mateo, staged a rally last summer in front of the parole offices in Albany.

“We took three busloads of people, and we held a huge rally demanding his release,” Mateo said. “I usually don’t put our organization out there if I feel there is any doubt.”

dareh.gregorian@nypost.com