A senior Northern Ireland fire officer Gordon Graham showed no emotion as he was found guilty by a unanimous verdict of a jury yesterday of murdering his lover's husband, Paul Gault. However, the Belfast Crown Court jury of 10 men and two women, who spent seven hours' deliberation over two days, have yet to decide on the fate of his former lover, Ms Lesley Ann Gault (35).
Mr Gault's family, some of whom "gasped" and wept with delight at the verdict, later praised the decision of the jury in convicting the 40-year-old assistant divisional fire officer.
His family claimed that "justice was done - our prayers have been answered", while Mr Gault's father, Paddy, declared Graham "killed my son".
Graham, a father of three children, who now faces the prospect of life imprisonment, had denied murdering his lover's husband in the bedroom of his home in Lisburn, Co Antrim, three weeks after he'd uncovered his wife's 2½-year affair in May 2000.
Through their unanimous verdict the jury members have rejected his claim that at the time of the murder he was shopping for an anniversary present for his wife, Hazel, who had to be comforted by a female friend as the guilty verdict was announced.
Instead they accepted that Graham confronted Mr Gault in his own bedroom where he'd gone to finish packing for a weekend break to Fermanagh with his wife.
A next-door neighbour, who was in his own bedroom doing repairs, unwittingly overheard that confrontation, telling the court of hearing voices and then a series of "bangs".
Those series of bangs came as Graham bludgeoned Mr Gault to death with a hockey stick, raining blow after blow down on his head before ransacking the house in an attempt to make it appear he was the victim of a crazed burglar.
During the eight-week trial the court also heard that Graham then went shopping before calmly making a presentation to visiting firemen from Dublin at the Fire Brigade Headquarters in Lisburn, where he headed the service's health and safety department.
But within hours of the brutal killing Graham was already under suspicion by police, who raided his locker at the Seymour Street brigade headquarters, where he handed over love letters he had written to Ms Gault together with clothing he'd been wearing that morning.
Although police did not find one spot on blood on his clothing from the blood-splattered bedroom, they did uncover minute traces of glass on his clothing and one embedded in his shoe.
The prosecution claimed they had come from a glass panel Graham shattered in the back door of the Gault home, in a further effort to make it appear as if Mr Gault's home had been burgled.
Then in February 2001, police got another break when forensic experts uncovered "low count DNA", which matched Graham's, on the handle and the inside of a bag he'd left behind on the kitchen table as part of the plan to divert police into looking for a fictitious burglar.
The position of Graham, who has been on suspension from the fire service since his arrest in June 2000, is now under review.
In a statement from the Fire Service, a spokesman said: "To have a colleague found guilty of the taking of a human life has horrified and stunned us all. Our thoughts at this time are with all those affected by this murder."