The man being held for the 1997 murder of Susannah Chase received new legal counsel late Friday, a day after he dumped the two public defenders that had been representing him.

Mary Claire Mulligan, of the Boulder firm Mulligan & Mulligan, will represent Diego Olmos Alcalde as the 39-year-old Chilean native gets ready to enter a plea in the case.

He is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 18.

Mulligan was retained from the Colorado Office of Alternative Defense Counsel, which provides lawyers to those who are no longer represented by the public defenders' office. Alcalde said Thursday he couldn't work with his public defenders.

Mulligan, whose services will be paid for with public funds, got her law degree from the University of Colorado in 1992 and has practiced law from her Boulder office since that year.

Alcalde was linked to the murder of Chase earlier this year after his DNA was matched to evidence from the scene of the crime more than 10 years after it occurred.

Chase, who was a 23-year-old CU student, was brutally beaten and raped as she walked back to her Spruce Street home in the early morning hours of Dec. 21, 1997.

She died the next day.