SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – A California inmate already serving time for brutal crimes in the Sacramento area is now linked to two cold case murders in Tennessee that date back 17 years.

Two 18-year-old women were brutally murdered, stabbed dozens of times. Years later, Nashville police believe they’ve found their suspect.

“The killer thinks he’s gotten away now, and he really hasn’t. It’s just a matter of time before we get him, and I want him to know that if he sees me right now, I want him to know that I will get him eventually,” said Gail Chilton, the mother of one of the victims.

Those words were spoken years ago and now they finally ring true.

It was Wednesday afternoon when a cold case sergeant from Nashville visited Solano County State Prison. He looked Patrick Streater in the eye and told him he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for killings that happened nearly 17 years ago to the day.

“We’re talking about overkill, passion killing-type, what I would consider a passion killing,” investigators said in 1996.

Tiffany Campbell and Melissa Chilton, both just 18 years old, were found brutally stabbed inside Exotic Tan for Men, a Nashville adult business. All along, investigators believed the murders were personal, and now think Streater was Campbell’s ex-boyfriend.

Late Nashville Det. Grady Eleam thought he was close to solving the case in 2002.

“We do have a suspect. We’re concentrating on him and have been concentrating on for six months now,” Eleam said.

Around the same time in early 2002, Streater was arrested in a series of violent home invasion robberies in the Sacramento area. At the time, he was a football coach at Jesuit High School in Carmichael, known to the players simply as Coach Streater.

Serving time in state prison for those robberies, detectives believe he is responsible for two murders that went unsolved for nearly two decades.

Police say scientific evidence and interviews conducted over the years links Streater to the killings. He will soon be transported to Nashville to face his new charges.