While serving a sentence for child molestation, Robert Arguelles, 34, confessed to being a serial killer.

On May 2, 1996, four years after the disappearance of three teenage girls from the Salt Lake City area, Robert confessed to their murders after receiving a letter telling him he is a father. The repentant slayer said: "I realised these girls were just little girls like mine.... I started to understand just how much it would hurt to have someone do what he had done". In return for fessing up, Arguelles has asked for a private cell, a color TV and the death penalty.

Originally he had been suspected in the deaths of Malisa Roberts, 15, and Lisa Martinez, 16, after he led police to their bodies in a stagnant pond in July, 1995. He claimed to have merely witnessed the dumping of the bodies, but in a tearful seven-hour session with his lawyer and the investigator he broke down and admitted killing the two teenagers, another girl of 13, and a 42-year-old high school caretaker over two months in 1992.

After confessing, he took police to the shallow grave of the third girl, Stephanie Blundell, in the mountains east of Salt Lake City.