A Long Island architect has pleaded guilty to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings. Rex Heuermann entered the pleas on Wednesday in a courtroom packed with reporters, police and victims’ relatives. His decision brings finality to a case that bedeviled investigators, tantalized the public and spawned true-crime documentaries, podcasts and a Hollywood movie. Authorities say Heuermann killed the women over a 17-year span. Many of them were sex workers whose deaths received little attention until their remains were found buried together along an isolated beach highway. Heuermann faces life in prison and will be sentenced at a later date.

A Utah sheriff's office says DNA testing has definitively linked the unsolved death of a Utah teenager in 1974 to the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. Laura Ann Aime, 17, went missing Halloween night 51 years ago after she left a party alone. About a month later, her body was found on the side of a highway, bound, beaten and a without clothing. Investigators long suspected that Bundy was responsible. He was one of the nation’s most prolific serial killers, with at least 30 women and girls’ deaths linked to him in several states in the 1970s.