Montana Convict Faces New Charges

SPOKANE

A Montana prisoner accused of murdering two Spokane teen-agers also is being investigated in the killings of two women in Grant County, authorities said.

Martin Sanders, who was serving a seven-year sentence at the Montana State Penitentiary for rape, kidnapping and assault, was brought here Friday.

The former long-haul truck driver was booked in the Spokane County Jail on two counts of aggravated first-degree murder filed in the 1983 deaths of Rhonda Rima and Elizabeth Marks.

The girls, both 14, were last seen May 20, 1983, at a downtown carnival. Their bodies were found 15 miles apart in the Spokane River on June 14, 1983.

Sanders, 37, was implicated in the Spokane murders a year ago after his former cellmate at the Montana prison said Sanders confessed.

Grant County Undersheriff Larry Hively said Friday that Sanders also is being investigated in the 1980 killings of two women whose bodies were found more than a year later along Interstate 90 between Ephrata and Moses Lake.

Marsha Weatter, 18, and Kathy Allen, 19, were killed between late March and early May of 1980 while hitchhiking home to Fairbanks, Alaska, Hively said.