STARKE, Fla. -- Prosecutors say modern technology allowed them to find the man who killed a Bradford County girl 16 years ago, and Friday, that man was sentenced to a life in prison for her murder.

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Family Takes Satisfaction Meghan's Killer Will Never Get Out Of Jail Bradford Sergeant Recalls Finding Meghan's Body In 1989

Meghan Renaud's body was found in woods near Starke four days after she disappeared in March 1989. She had been raped and shot in the head.

Police said they identified Michael Knickerbocker was a suspect in her death within a year after they body was found, but they never had enough evidence to bring charges.

New analysis last summer of DNA evidence and ballistics results collected at the scene of the murder allowed police to positively identify Knickerbocker as the killer. Authorities found him already in prison doing time for a series of rapes in Gainesville.

Friday, Knickerbocker, now 39, pleaded no contest to charges he murdered Meghan under a plea agreement with prosecutors that they would not request a death sentence.

The family, who has since moved to Colorado, was in the courtroom Friday. They said the sentencing brought some sense of closure for them.

"The fact that he's not coming out of jail, and the fact that he's been in jail for the last 15 years makes a huge difference to our family," brother John Renaud said. "This is the absolutely best I could have hoped for, minus getting (a sentence of) lethal injection."

Knickerbocker had been released from prison several months before Meghan was murdered and was living in the same subdivision as the sixth-grader.

If Meghan had lived she would be 28.

"It's tough to think what she would have been like, if my sister had had kids and a husband," Renaud said.