SAN DIEGO -- Opening statements were heard Tuesday in the penalty phase for Scott Erskine, a convicted molester and killer of two South Bay boys in 1993.

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The jury must decide between a sentencing recommendation of death or life in prison with no chance for parole.

Erskine was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and special-circumstance allegations of molestation, torture and multiple murders in the slayings of 13-year-old Charlie Keever and 9-year-old Jonathan Sellers.

The boys were on a bicycle ride in South San Diego, near the Otay River, when Erskine abducted them and took them into an igloo-style fort covered with brush.

Prosecutor Valerie Summers said it may never be known which of the boys died first, and which one had to watch the other die before his own life was snuffed out.

DNA samples were collected from the victims, but it wasn't until 2001 that improved testing techniques allowed scientists to determine that someone else's genetic material was present in the older boy's mouth.

A "cold hit" search on prison inmates revealed a match with Erskine, Summers said. Erskine's DNA was also present on two cigarette butts that investigators found outside the fort, the prosecutor said.

The defendant was serving a 70-year sentence for raping a woman in October 1993 when he was charged with killing the boys.

Authorities in Palm Beach, Fla., consider Erskine a suspect in the 1989 rape and murder of a 26-year-old woman, Summers said.

The convicted murderer reportedly has offered to submit himself to long-term medical and psychiatric testing in return for a sentence of life in prison rather than the death penalty.

The penalty phase is expected to last several weeks.