A serial rapist who prosecutors say began attacking women three decades ago in and around Baltimore County was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison for raping a 14-year-old student in Catonsville in 1989 after threatening her with a weapon. Alphonso W. Hill Jr., 58, was linked to the case by DNA evidence, Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger said. The sentence, handed down by Circuit Judge Thomas J. Bollinger, will have no practical effect on Hill, since he has already been sentenced to life. The new sentence will be served consecutively with the six concurrent 60-year terms to which he was sentenced in 2008 in connection with six other attacks, primarily along the Loch Raven Boulevard corridor, between 1978 and 2000. In addition, those six terms are to be served consecutively with a 15-year sentence Hill received in a conviction in 2002 for assaulting Laura Neuman, a technology executive whose persistence over two decades finally led to Hill's prosecution.

- Nick Madigan