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CHEHALIS — Randolph Graham was sentenced to 66 years and eight months in prison Tuesday afternoon for murdering his Winlock next-door neighbor and attempting to kill his son last May.

The sentence means Graham, 59, likely will spend the rest of his life behind bars for shooting Randy Lester, 44.

However, Graham’s lawyer, David Arcuri, filed a notice of appeal toward his client’s conviction and sentence. Arcuri declined to share the specific grounds of appeal but said that an exceptional sentence, which Graham received, “is an automatic appeal.”

“Summing up the pain ... seems an impossible task,” Lester’s wife, Rachel Lester, told Lewis County Superior Court Judge Andrew Toynbee in asking for the maximum sentence. “Randolph Graham stole from us the man I was supposed to grow old with.”

She said the trauma of the May 23 shooting remains with the family, and she did not want her sons to “fear the future,” referring to the possibility of Graham surviving beyond his prison sentence.

Graham, who maintained throughout the trial that he shot Lester in self-defense, made a succinct statement in court Tuesday: “I told you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That’s all I got.”