A Howard County Circuit Court jury on Friday found Damon Willie White guilty in the stabbing death of his ex-wife in her Columbia apartment last year.
After a four-day trial and three hours of deliberations, the jury found White, 36, guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree arson in the slaying of Thelma Wynn.
He is due to be sentenced Nov. 1, following a pre-sentencing hearing and mental health examination. Prosecutors are seeking life in prison for White on the murder charge.
White had been charged with killing Wynn, 37, then stabbing himself and setting her Long Reach apartment on fire on Sept. 7, 2010.
"Basically there was no question about the evidence," said jury member Kevin Naiker, 47, of Columbia. "The evidence was overwhelming."
A knife with blood on it, most of it White's but some of it Wynn's, was found in the dining room next to where an unconscious White was rescued. A gas can and lighter were recovered nearby. A large freezer had been pushed into a hallway, blocking the front door from opening.
In closing arguments, prosecutor James Dietrich told the jury that Wynn's wounds spoke for themselves.
There were at least 103 cuts and slashes on Wynn, wounds on her head and neck, her shoulders and back, her side, torso, hands and arms, Dietrich said Friday. She died from blood loss, alive during each thrust of the large knife, he told the jury.
Earlier in the trial, White's attorney had argued that while Wynn was murdered, the act was not premeditated, and therefore not first-degree murder.
But in his closing argument, Dietrich said the amount of time it would take to get the knife and then to stab and cut Wynn so many times showed that the murder was willful, deliberate and premeditated, even if the decision to attack her was made in mere moments.
White's defense team, meanwhile, said the first-degree murder and arson charges were not proven past a reasonable doubt.
"We can doubt, because the state's evidence tells us nothing about what happened, except a young woman lay dead and a young man lay dying in a smoky apartment," defense attorney Mary Pizzo said in her closing argument.
She questioned the prosecution's narrative, saying the state had not put everything together and "the puzzle was incomplete."
Prosecutors could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt what led to White attacking Wynn, Pizzo said, though she conceded that an attack did occur. She argued that White went into a frenzied, adrenaline-rushed "fugue state."
Prosecutors contended that the attack was prompted by White finding out that he was not the father of the unborn child Wynn had recently lost, which he discovered when he read a message to her boyfriend on Wynn's cell phone.
While prosecutors called a battery of witnesses to the stand during their case, included police officers, firefighters and relatives, White's attorneys called just one witness: a case manager with Saiontz & Kirk, a law firm that handles automobile accidents. The case manager testified that White had set up an appointment for White to see a physical therapist the afternoon of Wynn's death — suggesting, the defense said, that the slaying was not premeditated.
"This was really hard," Marlene Roberson, Wynn's aunt, said after the verdict. "Every day we came here was like rehashing it, especially witnessing the pictures. Now we can have closure."