80-year-old convicted of 1972 murder after DNA testing

An 80-year-old former taxi driver was convicted of murder Monday after police did DNA testing on saliva from his coffee cup and linked it to a woman found strangled to death almost 34 years ago.

The Los Angeles Superior Court jury deliberated a day before finding Adolph Theodore Laudenberg guilty of killing 43-year-old Lois "Bonnie" Petrie on Christmas Eve 1972.

Laudenberg, suspected of committing several other murders in the 1970s, was wheeled into court on a gurney to listen to the verdict.

He was due back in court for sentencing Jan. 8. He faces life in prison with the possibility of parole, said Deputy District Attorney Lowell Anger.

Laudenberg was arrested in 2003 after DNA evidence linked him to Petrie's killing.

During a conversation that year with detectives about an auto burglary, Laudenberg left behind a coffee cup. Detectives used it to provide a DNA saliva sample linking him to Petrie's death.

Laudenberg, who was working in San Pedro around the time of Petrie's death, was initially questioned by authorities in 1975. At the time, there was no DNA, physical evidence or eyewitness accounts linking him to the killing.