As most of you already know, there was a guilty verdict – 15 years to life.

A murder case unsolved for 26 years was brought to an unexpectedly quick and dramatic end yesterday after jurors convicted a 68-year-old Toledo priest, Gerald Robinson, in the brutal, ritualistic murder of a nun.

The 12 jurors in the Lucas County Common Pleas Court trial deliberated just over six hours before reaching a unanimous verdict.

Robinson, wearing his clerical collar, showed no emotion as Judge Thomas Osowik read the verdict and then polled the seven female and five male jurors individually.

Judge Osowik then asked Robinson if he wished to say anything and the priest — who did not take the witness stand and never spoke during the three-week trial — declined. The jammed courtroom was eerily silent but for an immediate gasp, followed by the stifled sobs of the priest’s sister-in-law, Barbara Robinson of Toledo.

The prosecutor speaks:

Mr. Mandros said that if the state had filed charges against Robinson alleging it was a satanic-cult murder, it would have increased the burden of proof on prosecutors.

"It’s another legal element that would have to be in the indictment and, once you argue that that’s what this was, you would have been accepting the burden of proving that beyond a reasonable doubt to those 12 people," he said. "Why would I want to give myself that additional obligation?

"I think that I could have convinced quite a number of people on the jury that that was true. But I never felt like I could convince 12 of them," he said.

Despite the satanic evidence, Mr. Mandros said he is convinced of the theory he espoused in his closing argument: that Robinson killed Sister Margaret Ann in a fit of rage. He said the anti-Christian symbols were intended to desecrate the devout nun and to "leave a message for whomever his audience was."

"However, only one person knows what it all really meant. And maybe someday he’ll talk," Mr. Mandros said.