BATON ROUGE, La. -- During the final pretrial hearing for a suspected serial killer, a judge refused to block a prosecutor from showing jurors crime-scene photographs of a woman who had been strangled and mutilated.

WAFB-TV

A State District judge ruled Gillis had enough money for his lawyers to hire defense experts for the trial.

A jury begins hearing testimony Monday in the first-degree murder trial of Sean Vincent Gillis. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the February 2004 killing of Donna Bennett Johnston, 43.

Johnston's naked body was found face down in a drainage canal south of Louisiana State University. Gillis was arrested two months later at his home in Baton Rouge.

Defense attorney Kerry Cuccia contended Friday that the photos would only inflame the jury. But prosecutor Prem Burns said that Gillis' attorneys are trying to "sanitize" the crime and "clean it up."

"Mr. Gillis is the only person that left Donna Bennett Johnston in the condition that she was in," she argued.

Gillis, 46, pleaded guilty last summer in West Baton Rouge Parish to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 1999 killing of Joyce Williams.

Authorities said Gillis has confessed to killing eight south Louisiana women between 1994 and 2004 and has been booked in seven of those deaths. An investigation into the eighth slaying is continuing.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)