PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – A man who admitted raping and strangling an 8-year-old neighbor was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole after calling his actions “despicable and unforgivable.”

Joshua Davis, of Woonsocket, was given the maximum sentence allowed by state law for the abduction and death of Savannah Smith on May 7, 2006. Smith’s family members clapped after the judge, who called the crimes heartless, inhumane and savage, announced the sentence.

“I can’t begin to imagine how much heartache and sorrow I have caused you,” Davis told the girl’s family Wednesday.

Davis pleaded guilty in April to first-degree murder and other crimes, admitting he abducted Smith from a park near her home in Woonsocket and drove her south to a wooded section of Cranston, where he raped, strangled and beat her. His lawyer said he admitted guilt to spare Smith’s family the ordeal of a trial.

Superior Court Judge Gilbert Indeglia said the sentence would keep Davis “from further harm to others, including other children.”

Smith’s mother, Lisa Smith, said Davis was “the lowest piece of scum that this earth has.”

“I want him to die in prison,” she told the judge. “I’ll never get my baby back.”

Prosecutor Bethany Macktaz portrayed Davis as a calculating and cold-blooded killer as she urged the judge to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life. Macktaz said Davis attacked the girl in a debris- and glass-littered area, left her battered and naked body in the woods and paused after she was dead to wipe her blood from his hands.

She said he crudely boasted about the murder by writing in a letter from prison that “I enjoyed my catch.”

“Are these the actions of a man with a chance for rehabilitation or are these the acts of a man with no soul?” Macktaz asked.

Attorney General Patrick Lynch called the murder the most brutal and offensive he had seen in his more than five years in office.

“If ever there was an individual who warranted Rhode Island’s most severe penalty, it is this depraved and monstrous defendant,” Lynch said in a written statement.

Davis’s lawyer, public defender John Hardiman, argued for leniency with a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. He said Davis immediately cooperated with police by leading officers to the scene of the murder and then accepted responsibility for his acts by pleading guilty.

He said Davis had been battling drug and alcohol addictions, drinking two 12-packs of beer on the day of the murder, and had also suffered from depression and attempted suicide.

“I don’t think any of us really know what happened or why it happened,” Hardiman said.

In announcing his sentence, Indeglia cited evidence that Davis had attempted to solicit someone from behind bars to burn down the attorney general’s office and read from a letter Davis wrote in prison warning of possible future attacks against other members of Smith’s family.

Davis and Smith’s family had been neighbors in a cul-de-sac in Woonsocket.

Smith helped Davis wash his red convertible on the morning that she was killed and asked her father if she could go for a ride with him in the car. Though her father said no, Davis nonetheless lured Smith into his car at a nearby park and drove her to an abandoned mill area in Cranston where the attack occurred, Macktaz said.

Davis also will serve consecutive life sentences for first-degree child molestation and kidnapping a minor.