JACKSON, MS (AP) -
Federal prosecutors have until Aug. 1 to decide whether they'll seek the death penalty against a man who was declared dead in Mississippi in 1994 and surfaced years later as a suspect in the deaths of his Las Vegas girlfriend and her daughter.
Thomas Steven Sanders is charged in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, La., with kidnapping resulting in the death of 12-year-old Lexis Roberts. Her body was found in 2010 in Catahoula Parish, La. The body of her mother, Suellen Roberts, was found the next month in Yavapai County, Ariz.
The woman and her daughter had been shot to death.
Sanders is charged in Louisiana with kidnapping resulting in death and using a gun during a crime that resulted in death. Both charges carry possible death sentences.
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