TORRANCE, Calif. - A man who murdered his ex-girlfriend but remained free for 30 years before police solved the crime was sentenced Friday to 26 years to life in prison.
Douglas Gordon Bradford, a 62-year-old engineer from Orange County, strangled Lynne Knight in 1979.
A jury convicted him in August of first-degree murder of the then-28-year-old nurse from Stratford, Ont.
The Orange County Register reports that police in Torrance cracked what had been a cold case when they connected the wire used to strangle Knight to wire that Bradford's artist mother used to hang her paintings.
Bradford lived with his mother at the time of the killing.
Bradford had dated Knight, who had moved to the U.S. to pursue her career, and police long suspected he was the killer.
