CNN - Former cadet guilty in teen's murder (2024)

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NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas (CNN) -- Former Air Force Academy cadet David Graham was found guilty Friday of murdering a high-school classmate, who allegedly died because his then-fiancee wanted revenge for a sexual fling.

Graham, 20, was immediately sentenced to life in prison for the December 4, 1995, murder of 16-year-old Adrianne Jones, a schoolmate. Prosecutors contended he shot her twice in the head to prove his love for Diane Zamora, after telling Zamora he had sex once with Jones after a high-school track meet.

Zamora, a former midshipman at the Naval Academy, was convicted in February and sentenced to life in prison for her part in Jones' murder.

She refused to testify at Graham's trial, invoking her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself. She is appealing her life sentence.

Graham's trial began July 6, and the jury began deliberating on Thursday. At the request of the victim's family, prosecutors did not seek the death penalty in either case.

Witnesses described the relationship between Graham and Zamora, which began in August 1995 when both were high-school seniors, as obsessive and all-consuming. After high school, when they were at their respective service academies, they wrote each other letters every day.

The Jones murder went unsolved for months until the summer of 1996, when Zamora told her roommate at the Naval Academy about it. The roommate told authorities.

The roommate, Jennifer McKearny, testified at Graham's trial.

"She told me that she and her boyfriend, David, had killed a girl while they were in high school," McKearny said of Zamora. "She said the girl had slept with David, and she said in order to make up for it, he had to kill her."

Zamora and Graham were arrested in September 1996, after both had left the Fort Worth, Texas, area to go to military academies.

Graham's lawyers contended he wasn't present when Jones was killed and that he confessed to the slaying only because he was in love with Zamora.

Earlier in the trial, that confession, in which Graham said he killed Jones to satisfy Zamora's demand for "womanly vengeance," was read to the jury.

"I just pointed and shot," Graham wrote in his statement to police. "When this precious relationship that we had was damaged by my thoughtless actions, the only thing that could satisfy her womanly vengeance was the life of the one that had, for an instant, taken her place."

Testimony at Graham's trial also came from Grand Prairie police officer Don Swanz, who said he found a 9 mm handgun wrapped in a T-shirt, duct tape and three plastic grocery bags in the attic of Graham's father's home. Prosecutors said the gun was the murder weapon.

Because of pretrial publicity, Graham was tried in New Braunfels, 30 miles northeast of San Antonio, instead of Fort Worth.