Mother of two Julie McGinley and her lover Michael Monaghan were jailed for life last night for the brutal murder of her 34-year-old husband Gerry.
As the Belfast Crown Court jury announced their verdicts, 31-year-old McGinley showed no emotion while 44-year-old Monaghan, her lover and business partner, slumped back into his seat in the dock of Court 14.
Members of Mr McGinley's family wept, as did two jurors, including the foreman who delivered the unanimous guilty verdicts.
Trial judge Mr Justice Kerr was about to tell the jury of five men and five women that he was going to send them home for the night when informed that they had come to a decision.
McGinley, dressed in a red top and light grey trouser suit, sat impassively in the dock while Monaghan, dressed in a blue shirt, jeans and a fawn jacket, buried his face in his hands, rubbing away at his forehead.
It had taken the jury less than three hours of deliberation at the end of the 13-week trial to convict the pair of murdering Mr McGinley, who was bludgeoned to death in the bedroom of his Derryraghan home in Coa, Ballinamallard in Co Fermanagh, on August 13th, 2000.
After the murder his body was stripped, then dumped to rot in a Co Leitrim wood across the Border where the skeletal remains were found by a schoolgirl some 10 months later.
Immediately the verdicts were announced Mr Justice Kerr told the pair the law dictated only one sentence - "life imprisonment" - but that a "tariff hearing" would be heard in the near future to determine how long of the life term they would serve before being considered for release by the authorities.
McGinley, who moved home to Windmill Drive, Enniskillen, stood to collect over £300,000 (€469,124) in insurance premiums from her husband's death who ran a furniture business with her and Monaghan.
Monaghan, originally from Grange, Co Sligo, but living in a flat in Ann Street, Enniskillen, was spotted having secret love-ins with McGinley in the car park of the Tempo Road business estate on the outskirts of the town where their furniture outlet was based.
On one occasion, a semi-naked Monaghan was spotted making love to McGinley in a dark blue car, while on another they were seen kissing in his van.
Although McGinley never admitted having an affair with Monaghan, his DNA profile was taken from semen stains found on her mattress.
At the time of her husband's disappearance in August 2000, McGinley had claimed he'd left with a man driving a southern registered car after packing a few clothes and taking £1,000 from their bedroom.
She also claimed that her husband may have gone off to kill himself as he was suffering depression and had attempted suicide in the past.
However, by their verdicts the jury accepted the prosecution assertions that Mr McGinley was murdered because he was "an impediment" to the love affair between McGinley and Monaghan.