MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- A Tennessee convict serving prison time for a 2001 rape has been charged with killing two women later that year, prosecutors said.
A Shelby County grand jury has indicted Thomas Maupin, 70, on murder charges in the deaths of two women whose bodies were found in a remote area of Memphis in 2001.
Maupin is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2017 to stabbing and raping another woman in Memphis, also in 2001.
Dentures collected by investigators in that case had been placed in a police property room with a sexual assault kit, including DNA evidence. But the rape kit evidence became part of a heavy backlog and wasn't tested until 2016, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Evidence from the rape investigation led to the reopening of the two murder cases, prosecutors said.
Maupin also served 12 years in prison in Washington for the 1988 abduction and killing of a Spokane girl.