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California

Cousins get life terms in 1973 shotgun slayings of 2 girls

Associated Press
Published | Updated
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    FILE - In this 2011 booking file photo provided by the Yuba County Sheriff's Department is William Lloyd Harbour. Harbour was sentenced, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017, to five years to life in prison for the 1973 slayings of Valerie Janice Lane, 12, and Doris Karen Derryberry, 13, in Yuba County, Calif. (Yuba County Sheriff's Department via AP, File) (The Associated Press)

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    FILE - In this 2011 booking file photo provided by the Yuba County Sheriff's Department is William Lloyd Harbour. Harbour was sentenced, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017, to five years to life in prison for the 1973 slayings of Valerie Janice Lane, 12, and Doris Karen Derryberry, 13, in Yuba County, Calif. (Yuba County Sheriff's Department via AP, File) (The Associated Press)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Two cousins have been sentenced to life prison terms in the 1973 shotgun slayings of two young girls in Northern California.

Deputy Yuba County District Attorney John Vacek said Larry Don Patterson and William Lloyd Harbour were sentenced Thursday to five years to life in prison in the decades-old cold case.

That's the maximum under sentencing laws at the time of the crime. For the same reason, the two men did not face the possibility of the death penalty in the killings of 12-year-old Valerie Janice Lane and 13-year-old Doris Karen Derryberry.

Patterson pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in December, while Harbour pleaded no contest to the same charges.

They were charged in September after a state forensics lab matched their DNA to semen found on Derryberry.