LAS VEGAS — The jury that convicted 61-year-old Charles Conner of murder last week sentenced him to death on Monday.

Conner was arrested at a residence on Gates Lane north of Pea Ridge in 2007.

He had apparently lived there since 2004.

Conner was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder for raping and beating to death with a claw hammer Beth Jardine in June 1985.

More than two decades later, Las Vegas police detectives linked Conner to Jardine’s murder with DNA evidence. In 1996, Conner pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in Arkansas. It was because of that conviction that Conner’s DNA was entered into a national database, which led investigators in the Jardine case to him.

Defense attorneys have tried to present mitigating circumstances that explain Conner’s violent behavior, saying that he was physically and mentally abused by his father and was the victim of incest from one of his sisters.

Conner turned to alcohol to escape those memories, defense attorneys said.

When he was arrested for rape in Arkansas, Conner’s blood-alcohol level was 0.49 percent, more than six times the state’s legal limit for driving.

News, Pages 6 on 07/28/2010