Wichita ? A former nightclub owner convicted of killing three men and recruiting patrons to help destroy the victims’ remains has been sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.

Arturo Garcia, 30, listened as Sedgwick County District Judge William Woolley said Friday the crimes were committed in an “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel manner.”

Garcia was given two consecutive “Hard 50” sentences on two counts of first-degree murder, plus 13 years and eight months for second-degree murder. The “Hard 50” requires that a person serve a minimum 50 years before becoming eligible for parole.

A Sedgwick County jury convicted Garcia last month of first-degree murder for the deaths of Clint Jones, 30, and Nicolas Ramirez, 22, and of second-degree murder in the killing of Oscar Ramirez.

All three were killed last summer in the basement of Garcia’s Club Mexico — Jones on July 26 and the Ramirez brothers five days later.

Witnesses testified to seeing the bodies and that Garcia recruited a group of club regulars to help him cut up the bodies and burn them in a Cowley County field.

“Most murderers do not cut up their victims, take them out to the country, douse them with gasoline and burn them,” prosecutor Ann Swegle said in arguing that Garcia’s actions met the requirements of state law for the “Hard 50” sentence.

Defense attorney Michael Whalen said Garcia’s actions were not necessarily depraved but reflected an intent to dispose of the bodies and cover up his crimes.

“It was not for joy; it was not for particularly sadistic reasons,” Whalen said. “It was to hide the events that occurred.”

The judge disagreed, saying Garcia’s crimes were indeed heinous under Kansas law.

“There’s a difference between merely getting rid of a body and the way these bodies were disposed of,” Woolley said.

On Friday, Whalen argued that giving Garcia such a harsh sentence because of how the bodies were treated was unfair, since the seven people who helped Garcia dispose of the bodies face only probation.

“Those thugs and punks got probation for the exact same activity,” Whalen said. “It’s disingenuous for the state to say, ‘Give (Garcia) an additional 25 years.”‘

But Woolley said if Garcia hadn’t killed the three men, there would have been no bodies to dispose of.