Killer Pleads Guilty, Gets Life Sentence

Martin L. Sanders, 38, a former Spokane truck driver, was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole yesterday after pleading guilty yesterday to raping and killing two teen-age girls in 1983.

In return for the pleas, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against Sanders, who has been serving time in a Montana prison since 1987 for rape, kidnapping and assault.

Sanders pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated first-degree murder in the killings of Rhonda Rima and Elizabeth Marks, both 14, who disappeared while hitchhiking in May 1983. Their bodies were found three weeks later in the Spokane River.