Denver jurors this afternoon convicted former airman Robert Walters, 25, of beating and choking his girlfriend to death and staging a car wreck to hide the evidence.
But Walters was found not guilty of a second charge stemming from his alleged attempt to hire a hitman to kill his wife from behind bars.
The three-week trial hinged on Walters’ seemingly compulsive confessions, caught on tape, and blood evidence found in victim Britney Brashers’ Pontiac Vibe.
Throughout the trial, both Brashers’ and Walters’ families held vigil in the courtroom. At one point, Walters’ father told his wife the case was “based on lies, and there’s nothing we can do.”
Authorities accused Walters of getting jealous in November 2009 when girlfriend Brashers, a 22-year-old member of the Air Force, removed her top during a photo shoot for a women’s full-contact football at a Denver strip club.
As she drove them home afterward, Brashers refused to apologize and Walters punched her unconscious.
The prosecution brought out witnesses who testified they saw Brashers car come to a sudden halt on the freeway and then pull to the side of the road.
They believe Walters maneuvered the Vibe to Yuma Street, positioned Brashers back in the drivers seat, got the car to speed and steered into a line of parked vehicles.
There were questions about exactly what killed Brashers, whether it was impact with the windshield, impact with Walters’ fist or whether she’d been strangled.
Jurors heard dozens of conversations Walters had with his wife where he described killing Brashers and threatened his wife.
Elena Walters, now divorced, testified that Walters drover her to an empty field one night and told her he would kill and bury her there.
She recorded the threats and confessions on her phone and turned them over to investigators even as she stayed with Walters.
In one recording, Walters threatens suicide, saying he always believed he would never hit a woman.
“Then I kill a girl by hitting her, and I can’t fix it. There’s no way to fix it. There’s no way to fix it,” he says on tape. “Just die — that’s the only honorable thing to do.”
The jury convicted him just before 4 p.m. of first-degree murder. He will be held without bond until sentencing Oct. 24. He faces life in prison.
Defense attorney Fernando Freyre tried to persuade the jury that Walters was a liar and manipulator trying to scare away Elena Walters with tough talk and tall tales.
In his closing arguments, Freyre repeatedly called Walters a “22-year-old kid” and said people may wonder “What the hell was he thinking?” when he said those things, but that it didn’t make Walters a murderer.
The defense maintained that Brasher’s death was the result of a car accident and tried to sow doubts about the way Denver investigators reconstructed and analyzed the crime scene.
But prosecutors Helen Morgan and Phillip Geigle said blood evidence in Brasher’s car proved she was injured before the accident.
The airbag, for example, had a perfect imprint of Brasher’s bloody face with no missing lines or spots – suggesting the bag was fully inflated when she hit it.
On the second charge, jurors found Walters not guilty of conspiring to hire a hit man to kill Elena Walters. Conflicting testimony from former cellmates muddied the prosecution’s case on that charge.
Jessica Fender: 303-954-1244 or jfender@denverpost.com.
