Man Pleads No Contest to 1977 Murder of Teen Mom

LONG BEACH, CA - A felon who was linked years later through DNA evidence to the 1977 Christmastime murder of a teenage mother in Long Beach was sentenced today to seven years and eight months in prison.

Martell Nathaniel Chubbs, 56, was sentenced -- under the guidelines in place at the time of the Dec. 27, 1977, killing -- upon entering a plea of no contest to second-degree murder and second-degree burglary charges.

Chubbs agreed to waive credit for all but 30 days he has served in custody, according to Sarah Ardalani of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

Prosecutors and police have never released the name of the 17-year-old victim, who has been identified only as "Shelley H."

The coroner's office determined that the teenager died of strangulation, but also suffered superficial stab wounds. Police said she had been sexually assaulted.

Her uninjured 13-month-old daughter was found next to her dead mother in the 200 block of East 21st Street.

Long Beach police detectives linked Chubbs to the cold case killing after submitting DNA taken at the time of the victim's autopsy into a database that stores DNA information from federal, state and local crime labs.

Chubbs, who was then 18 years old and living in West Long Beach, was not suspected of involvement in the crime until investigators got the DNA match, police said at the time of his August 2012 arrest.

According to a Long Beach police statement, he had been arrested numerous times since the murder and had served a lengthy prison sentence for rape and assault with a deadly weapon.

He was out of prison and living in the Northern California city of Antioch when he was arrested for the killing.

--City News Service, photo via Shutterstock