Virginia man pleads guilty to killing 2 college students

A convicted rapist pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing two Virginia college students and avoided the death penalty by taking a deal that calls for him to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Jesse LeRoy Matthew Jr., 34, was sentenced to four consecutive life terms when he pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of abduction with the intent to defile in the deaths of Hannah Graham and Morgan Harrington, two remarkably similar murder cases that amplified concerns about campus safety.

Graham’s mother, Susan Graham, said her daughter accomplished great things, but in a way people never would’ve imagined — she enabled law enforcement to apprehend a “serial rapist” who had been “hiding in plain sight in Charlottesville for years.”

According to authorities, Graham and Harrington were young women in vulnerable straits when they vanished in Charlottesville five years apart.

Graham’s disappearance, which came at a time of rising national concern about sexual assaults and other crimes on college campuses, prompted a massive search.