Robert "Bobby" Lozano murdered his wife, Viki, with his service pistol July 6, 2002, a jury decided Friday afternoon after five hours of deliberation.
Lozano, 44, a former Denton police detective, remained still after the guilty announcement, but his current wife, Renee Lozano, sobbed with her head in her hands as other family members tried to comfort her. Most of them cried as well.
The penalty phase of the trial will begin at 9 a.m. Monday.
Virginia "Viki" Lozano was 36 when her husband of 16 years called 911 and said he had found his wife sitting slumped over on their bed with a gunshot wound and he did not believe she was breathing.
Their 11-month-old son was asleep in another room and her mother, Anna Farish, was in Plano giving piano lessons.
Jurors declined the option of finding Bobby Lozano guilty of manslaughter or negligent homicide.
Defense attorneys had tried to convince jurors that Viki Lozano's death was a suicide.
But prosecutor Susan Piel said Bobby Lozano's explanation that he had started cleaning his gun and then decided to wait to finish until he returned from a tanning salon was a cover-up to hide the time of his wife's death.
"I need to stop and leave all this stuff on the bed because I had an emergency tanning session, because I have not tanned since yesterday," Piel said mockingly. "He had just shot his wife, and he needed an alibi."
Lozano lied about crying out to his dead wife not to leave him, Piel told the jury. That was not heard on the 911 tape, she said. Piel also said he lied about Viki Lozano being ill after the baby was born and him having to care for the baby for months, and he lied about performing CPR.
But the defense team argued that though Viki Lozano may have appeared happy, it was obvious her husband was making her miserable.
"You are required to presume that Bobby Lozano is innocent despite the fact that you hate him," said Rick Hagen, Lozano's lead attorney. "You must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was not suicide and not murder."
The defense focused on the medical examiner's ruling that the cause of death was "undetermined."
Hagen said a case of murder could be made but not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
"You can think it," he said. "You can believe it. You can be clearly convinced that it's true. But they have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt."
