LAS VEGAS — Jurors in Nevada found a 61-year-old convicted Arkansas sex offender guilty in the 1985 rape and murder of a woman in Las Vegas.
The same Clark County District Court jury that found Charles Conner guilty on Wednesday in the slaying of 23-year-old Beth Lynn Jardine is now determining if Conner should be sentenced to death.
Jardine was an airman 2nd class at Nellis Air Force Base, not far from the apartment where she was found dead in June 1985. Authorities say she was sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer.
Prosecutors were expected to tell jurors of Conner’s 1996 conviction for the kidnap and rape of a 10-year-old girl in Arkansas.
DNA evidence led Las Vegas cold case detectives to Conner in Pea Ridge, Ark., in 2007.