Kansas City, Mo. ? A Jackson County jury convicted a Kansas prison inmate of the 1987 rape and killing of an 88-year-old woman who had been his neighbor.

Fifty-five-year-old Marshall A. Tillman was convicted Thursday of second-degree murder, rape and sodomy.

The jury recommended that he receive a life sentence for each of the three charges.

Edna Walton was found dead at her Kansas City home on Aug. 26, 1987. An autopsy found she died of strangulation and revealed she suffered severe blunt force trauma to her mouth and head.

Tillman had lived next-door to Walton at one point. When the crime happened, he was going through a divorce and had already moved out.

In 2004, DNA evidence was matched to Tillman, who was in prison in El Dorado, Kan., for an unrelated rape.