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A man who spent 13 years in prison for a murder later linked to a suspected serial killer will be paid $25,000 in compensation by the state, according to a State Claims Board decision released Tuesday.

The money paid to Chaunte Ott, convicted of the 1995 murder of teenage runaway Jessica Payne, is the maximum payout allowed for a wrongful conviction without a separate act of the state Legislature.

"The Board concludes that there is clear and convincing evidence the claimant was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted," the board wrote in its decision to pay Ott.

At the time of the crime, DNA testing wasn't as advanced as it is today. A sample collected from Payne's body initially neither confirmed nor excluded Ott. Two other men implicated themselves and Ott in the murder, and Ott was convicted.

In 2002, the Wisconsin Innocence Project, trying to get Ott out of prison, asked for more testing. This time, Ott was excluded - though he remained in prison. Five years later, the DNA was linked to two other dead women. Eventually it was identified as belonging to accused serial killer Walter E. Ellis.

Ellis has been charged with killing seven women. Prosecutors have not charged him with killing Payne because they do not have enough evidence to meet their burden of proof in that case, according to Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm.

Ott was released from prison in January 2009. His pending federal lawsuit against the city, two former police chiefs and several detectives claims police coerced the confessions out of the two men who implicated him. Both men later recanted.