Curtis Wayne Sagmoen has pleaded guilty to assault in connection with the 2013 attack of a sex worker in Maple Ridge, B.C.
Sagmoen was originally charged with assault causing bodily harm, but pleaded guilty to the lesser criminal charge of assault.
He was sentenced to 30 days in jail Monday, but with credit for the time he spent in custody during the trial, he was not given any further time behind bars.
He was also given 24 months' probation.
Despite the sentence, the 38-year-old will remain in custody on other matters.
The accused is alleged to have attacked the sex worker in 2013. The court heard how Sagmoen contacted the victim and asked her to come to his place in Maple Ridge.
The Crown said there was a dispute over payment and Sagmoen assaulted the woman, causing injuries to the back of her head.
Prosecutors said Sagmoen followed her when she left his townhouse. A witness who called police said they'd heard yelling.
Defence later said she was shoved into a coffee table, but Mounties wrote in a report at the time, "There was a male chasing a female southbound on Gilker Hill Road and she was yelling for help. The female yelled. The male hit her with a hammer."
The RCMP tracked down the woman, but she did not want to give a formal statement, they said. She told them she had "fallen asleep on the couch when she woke up to the male beating her with a hammer."
In the report, Mounties said they'd searched the house with consent and found two hammers. Neither was near the room the woman said she'd been or covered in blood.
They described the woman as a "known Surrey prostitute" with an extensive criminal record.
"It appears he was ripped off," the report read.
Sagmoen was charged five years later, after the RCMP said officers had uncovered new information.
The defence said he was addicted to crystal meth at the time, a potent stimulant that can make users feel energetic, restless and irritable. In some cases it can cause paranoid delusions, hallucinations, aggressive behaviour and impulsive violence, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health says.
Sagmoen declined to address the court.
There were yells from the gallery directed at Sagmoen after his sentence was read out. He has a court date in Vernon next week on charges relating to another case.
Sagmoen has also been charged with assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm for an incident alleged to have occurred in August 2017. He has also been charged with assault for another incident alleged to have occurred on Canada Day the same year in the Okanagan.
Police at the time said those incidents also involved people who were advertising escort services online. He has not been convicted of any of the crimes, and none of the allegations have been proven in court.
The allegations surfaced before several women went missing in B.C.'s Interior, and before the body of a missing teenage girl was found after a lengthy search by RCMP of Sagmoen's family farm near Salmon Arm.
The death of Traci Genereaux, an 18-year-old sex worker, is still under investigation.
This is a developing news story and will be updated as information becomes available.
With files from CTV Vancouver's Maria Weisgarber and Jon Woodward
