REDWOOD CITY -- George Franklin Sr., convicted of the 1969 bludgeoning murder of his daughter's childhood friend, was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for the 21-year-old murder.
Franklin, 51, said only, 'I am innocent of the crimes for which I have been convicted.'
He will be eligible for parole in six years because he was sentenced based on the sentencing terms in effect in 1969 when the killing was committed.
Franklin was convicted of murder in November largely based on his daughter's accounts of the crime.
Eileen Franklin-Lipsker, 30, came forward for the first time in 1989 after she said she suddenly began experiencing flashbacks of the killing of her childhood best friend, Susan Nason.
Nason, 8, disappeared from her home in the San Francisco peninsula community of Foster City on Sept. 22, 1969. Her decomposed body was found months later under a mattress near a reservoir in San Mateo.
In the intervening years, Franklin-Lipsker said, she blocked out the memory of the murder. She finally went to police after she started having vivid flashbacks of the slaying, as she recalls it, down to minute details.
San Mateo Countyprosecutor Ellen Tipton praised Franklin-Lipsker's courage in coming forward after so many years.
