A felon linked to the 1977 murder of a 17-year-old mother in Long Beach was sentenced today to seven years and eight months in prison, after DNA evidence linked him to the crime, the Long Beach District Attorney’s Office announced today.
The man was sentenced under the guidelines in place at the time of the December 27, 1977 killing, after entering a plea of no contest to second-degree murder and second-degree burglary charges.
Martell Nathaniel Chubbs, 56, agreed to waive credit for all but the 30 days he has served in custody, District Attorney spokesperson Sarah Ardalani.
Police investigation determined the teenager, whose name has never been released, died of strangulation and also suffered superficial stab wounds. She had also been sexually assaulted, they found.
The teen’s 13-month-old daughter was found next to her dead body, unharmed on the 200 block of East 21st Street.
Chubbs was linked by police to the killing after submitting DNA taken at the time of the victim’s autopsy into a database that stores the information in federal, state and local crime labs.
A Long Beach police statement said he had been arrested numerous times since the murder, serving time in prison for rape and assault with a deadly weapon, but it wasn’t until investigators got a DNA match from another of Chubbs’ arrests in 2012 that authorities began to suspect him of the murder.
At the time of his arrest, Chubbs was living in Northern California in the town of Antioch.