DENVER — A man has been convicted of murder in the 1994 death of a woman at a Denver motel.
Steven Cumberbatch, 61, was found guilty Friday of one count of first-degree murder in the death of 36-year-old Rita Desjardine.
The jury deliberated for about nine hours before handing down the verdict. He was sentenced immediately to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Desjardine was found dead in a room at the Broadway Plaza Motel in December 1994. According to an arrest affidavit, an autopsy determined she died by smothering.
The case remained unsolved until a break came in July 2018, when police got a lead connecting Cumberbatch to DNA evidence at the scene, prosecutors said.
Additional testing by the Denver Police Department’s crime lab found that a palm print deposited in blood on the bedsheet underneath Desjardine’s body was from Cumberbatch’s left palm, prosecutors said.
In June 2021, Cumberbatch was extradited from Virginia to Colorado to face charges.
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