EVANSTON (WNE) — The Utah man charged with the 2001 murder of Evanston resident Sue Ellen Higgins has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life imprisoned in Utah.

Mark Douglas Burns, 69, pleaded guilty in February to 17 charges unrelated to the Higgins murder, including eight counts of aggravated sexual assault, six counts of aggravated kidnapping, two counts of aggravated burglary and one count of aggravated robbery. On Monday, April 6, a Utah judge sentenced Burns to a total of 242 years in prison for those offenses.

Burns was arrested in Utah last fall after DNA evidence linked him to multiple cold case sexual assaults that occurred in Utah and Wyoming over roughly a decade in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

After his arrest, he allegedly confessed to the cold case Higgins murder, which has remained unsolved since her husband found her dead in their home on a July afternoon in 2001, with two bullet wounds to the head.

Although a lengthy investigation ensued, and Higgins’s husband was at one point wrongfully charged with the murder, local authorities had been unable to determine who was responsible for Higgins’s death until the sudden break in January when Burns told Utah and Evanston investigators he had committed the crime.

Burns allegedly also confessed to other murders in Arizona and Oregon, although he has reportedly not yet been charged with those crimes.

After providing substantial detail regarding the Higgins murder, Burns has been charged in Uinta County with first-degree murder, attempt to commit aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, larceny and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. Burns had previously served prison time for rape in North Carolina in the 1970s.