LOS ANGELES - A man described by a prosecutor as a sexually motivated serial killer was convicted Thursday of murdering two women in the 1980s.A downtown Los Angeles jury deliberated for about three hours before convicting 67-year-old Horace Van Vaultz Jr.
of first-degree murder for the July 16, 1981, strangulation of Selena Keough, a 21-year-old mother who was killed in San Bernardino County and dumped under bushes in Montclair, and the June 9, 1986, asphyxiation of Mary Duggan, a 22-year-old Reseda resident whose body was found in the trunk of her car in an empty parking lot in Burbank.The nine-man, three-woman panel also found true the special- circumstance allegations of multiple murders, murder during a rape involving both women and murder during sodomy involving Keough.Vaultz testified in his own defense and denied any involvement in the killings.The case marked the first criminal prosecution in Los Angeles County involving investigative genetic genealogy, in which detectives access commercial DNA databases, load DNA material from the crime and find a relative's match that can point toward a suspect and collect their DNA, then- Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said at the time.Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors in her closing argument the killings were "sexually motivated homicides" that were "committed by the same serial killer between 1981 and 1986," and she urged jurors to find Vaultz guilty of both killings.The prosecutor said Vaultz has been "unable to explain any of the evidence tying him to the murders in this case," including DNA evidence found on or in the bodies of each of the women, who were discovered either fully or partially nude.She cited "a ton of evidence" that.