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Roberto Garcia-Lopez, 61, now has been sentenced to two life terms -- for killing a Portland homeless man and for killing a woman in Utah.

(Multnomah County Sheriff's Office)

More than 26 years after Roberto Garcia-Lopez fatally beat a homeless man in the head with a blunt object, Garcia-Lopez was sentenced Monday to life in prison for the killing.

Garcia-Lopez pleaded guilty in Multnomah County Circuit Court to murder then was sentenced. Although he received a life term, he will be eligible for parole under 1989 law -- meaning he could end up serving between 10 and 25 years for the murder.

Garcia-Lopez admitted to killing Kuen Yin Ng, 33. Ng's body was discovered on the shores of the Willamette River -- under the Interstate 5 ramp leading to Interstate 84 and north of the Burnside Bridge -- on Nov. 28, 1989. Garcia-Lopez, who is now 61, was in his mid-30s at the time.

He escaped detection for more than 20 years. After he served prison time for a federal crime, his DNA was entered into a federal database. The Portland Police Bureau's Cold Case Homicide Unit linked Garcia-Lopez's DNA to that from Ng's killing.

Ng wasn't the first person Garcia-Lopez has killed. Eighteen days before Ng's body was found, Garcia-Lopez killed a 62-year-old woman in Salt Lake City, Utah. Investigators determined that Lela Rockwell had been sexually assaulted. They found her naked body with broken ribs, head trauma and bite marks in a planter box on Nov. 10, 1989.

Garcia-Lopez also wasn't linked to Rockwell's killing for decades, until his DNA was entered into the federal database. Garcia-Lopez was sentenced to a life prison term during a 2013 hearing in Utah.

Authorities say Garcia-Lopez could end up serving less than a life sentence in Utah, because of more lenient sentencing laws back in 1989 in Utah. Ryan Lufkin, a Multnomah County deputy district attorney, said Garcia-Lopez's sentence in Oregon will run consecutive to the Utah sentence -- in order to maximize the time in prison Garcia-Lopez spends.

Since the inception of Portland police's cold case unit in 2004, it has reviewed about 250 cases and solved more than 40 killings, according to the bureau. Four detectives spend their days working through a stack of about 300 unsolved cases.

-- Aimee Green

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