Plea entered in Boise cold case

BOISE (AP) - A state judge entered a not guilty plea on Tuesday on behalf of an Idaho inmate charged in the 1998 rape and murder of a Boise woman.

The judge also granted Ada County prosecutors more time to decide whether to pursue the death penalty against 40-year-old Patrick Jon Zacharias.

Zacharias was charged last month with first-degree murder and rape in the slaying of Kay Lynn Jackson, whose body was found in a bridge tunnel along a popular Boise River recreation trail.

Zacharias is serving a life sentence in the Idaho Correctional Center after being convicted and sentenced in 2007 of lewd conduct with a child under 16.

Zacharias stood silently in court during the hearing in the murder case, when the judge gave prosecutors 120 days to decide whether to seek the death penalty. Trial is expected in February.

Jackson was 22 at the time of her death. Police said she had left her job at a downtown Boise motel and was walking to church on Palm Sunday when she was forced under the bridge and attacked with a knife.

During the initial investigation, investigators sent DNA taken from semen to law enforcement databases around the country but got no results.

When Zacharias was sent to prison in 2007 in the lewd conduct case, officials collected a DNA sample and sent it to labs at the Idaho State Patrol. They got a hit on one of the samples in May, leading to a grand jury indictment.

Information from: Idaho Statesman, http://www.idahostatesman.com