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SALT LAKE CITY -- After nearly five hours of deliberations, a jury has reached a verdict in a 12-year-old murder case.
Around 11 p.m. Thursday jurors found Billy Charles, now 32, guilty of killing Jamie Weiss the day before they were to be married in 1996.
Weiss was found dead in the bathtub of the couple's Magna mobile home. Investigators suspected Charles but didn't have enough evidence to arrest him until individuals came forward with new leads, and DNA technology improved more than a decade later. Police arrested Charles in 2007 and prosecutors charged him with first-degree felony murder.
Charles claimed Weiss was alive when he left to go to work the morning she was found dead. But a medical examiner determined she likely died long before that time from blunt-force trauma and asphyxiation.
Charles faces up to life in prison when he's sentenced June 19.
