WICHITA FALLS, Texas (AP) - A federal judge has recommended a serial killer's death sentence be overturned.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul D. Stickney of Dallas recommended a new sentencing hearing for Faryion Wardrip, sent to Texas' death row in 1999 and serving three life sentences in the murders of three other women.

Stickney's recommendation will go to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas for a decision, but Wardrip's attorneys and the Texas Attorney General's Office have three months to file motions supporting or contesting it.

Marsha Bridgens, the mother of murder victim Terry Sims, tells the Wichita Falls Times Record News that Wardrip is "just playing the system." She said could not believe a judge listened to his case.

Wardrip was convicted of fatally stabbing 20-year-old Sims in 1984, but the murder was unsolved for years. Then he killed Tina Kimbrew in 1986, confessed, pleaded guilty and served eleven years in prison before he was paroled.

After DNA evidence linked him to other slayings, he pleaded guilty to Sims' murder and was sentenced to death in 1999.

He also confessed to killing three other women in 1985 and received life sentences in each of those cases. All but one of his five victims was killed in the Wichita Falls area: Taylor, in Fort Worth.

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