MARTINEZ, Calif. (AP) - A Contra Costa County judge has sentenced a 73-year-old rapist to death for the 1978 murder of a Lafayette housewife whose death remained unsolved for a quarter-century.
The death sentence handed down by Judge John Kennedy Thursday was the second imposed on Darryl Kemp, who was awaiting execution for the 1959 murder of a Los Angeles woman, but that when California suspended the death penalty in 1972.
Kemp, a Los Angeles native, had been out of prison for four months when 40-year-old Armida Wiltsey was found strangled to death after she went for a jog at Lafayette Reservoir. The case went cold for decades, until DNA linked Kemp to the murder in 2005.
At the time, he was serving a life sentence for three Texas rapes.
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Information from: Contra Costa Times
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