A boilermaker from Kentucky will spend the next four decades in federal prison for snatching an 11-year-old girl from a Wheeling street and raping her behind a church in Ohio.

Joshua Michael Ridings, 29, of Owensboro, also will be on probation for the rest of his life after he gets out. There is no parole in the federal system.

U.S. District Judge Frederick Stamp yesterday imposed the 40-year sentence, which is considerably above the sentencing guideline range, as part of a guilty plea Mr. Ridings entered in October.

He and his public defender agreed to that term in exchange for not being indicted a second time in Ohio, where he still faces state prosecution.

Although the sentencing was public, the girl and another of Mr. Riding's victims, an adult woman from another state, testified privately in the judge's chambers.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette does not identify the victims of sexual assault.

U.S. Attorney Sharon Potter praised the FBI and police for solving the case and clearing other rapes, singling out Detective Troy Gossett of the Owensboro Police Department for special recognition.

The FBI said Mr. Ridings, while wearing only socks, grabbed the girl at 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 20, 2007, from in front of a convenience store on Main Street and forced her into his pickup truck.

He drove her to St. Clairsville, Ohio, raped her on a picnic table and drove her to Bridgeport, Ohio, where he released her.

An FBI evidence team recovered DNA from the picnic table and found a match to DNA recovered from an unsolved rape of an adult woman in Leitchfield, Ky., on Aug. 23, 2006. In that case, the victim remembered that the rapist was naked except for boots and had a tattoo on his upper right arm that featured barbed wire and the letters N, L and E.

The FBI put out an alert about the match in October 2007, spurring the memory of Detective Gossett, who had investigated another rape in January of that year in which Mr. Ridings had been questioned.

In that case, Mr. Ridings voluntarily submitted a DNA sample, although no DNA evidence was taken from the rape scene. Mr. Ridings wasn't charged.

When the FBI teletype went out about the Wheeling case, Detective Gossett recalled that Mr. Ridings had told him he had worked in Wheeling and planned to return to a job there as a boilermaker.

He called Wheeling police and told them that Mr. Ridings, who by then was jailed on a parole violation in Owensboro, had a distinctive barbed-wire tattoo on his arm.

An FBI analyst matched the DNA from the Wheeling case to the sample taken from Mr. Ridings in Owensboro and police had their man.

Ms. Potter said Detective Gossett's diligence "led our investigators to this defendant" and added that "this investigation truly represents a joint effort by federal, state and local law enforcement who never stopped working toward resolution."

She said that a debriefing of Mr. Riding allowed police in several states to resolve rape cases.

Before his guilty plea, Mr. Ridings tried to have the DNA sample taken in Owensboro thrown out as evidence, saying he thought he was in custody when he submitted to the rape kit exam without talking to a lawyer.

But a federal magistrate judge, and later Judge Stamp, said he was not in custody and had waived his Miranda rights in writing before voluntarily giving the sample.