Idaho inmate to stand trial in '83 killing

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SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- An Idaho prison inmate will go to Utah to stand trial in the 1983 killing of an 11-year-old girl as a result of DNA evidence, prosecutors said.

Gregory L. Seamons, 44, was charged Oct. 2 with first-degree murder and rape in the death of Rebecca Lemberger, who disappeared on her way to school March 2, 1983, in Ogden, Utah, The Salt Lake Tribune said Wednesday.

Extradition paperwork was filed Monday, promising Seamons would be returned to Idaho oncethe trial is over, the Tribune said. Seamons' Idaho sentence runs through 2017.

Cold case detectives used DNA evidence gathered after classmates found her body wrapped in a blanket and hidden beneath a mattress in a shed not far from where she disappeared to link Seamons to the case.

Seamons, 15 at the time, admitted in a letter sent to the Tribune to "fooling around" with Lemberger, but said he suspects his late father, Larry Seamons, killed the girl.

"One morning [my dad] picked me and this girl up at the Circle K on Monroe and said he would take me to school first then drop her off on his way back because he wanted to talk to my Mom. I never saw this girl again and a few days later it came out on the news that she had been killed," Seamons wrote in a letter sent from the Idaho prison where he is serving time on an unrelated kidnapping conviction.