NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. (AP) - A Tampa Bay area man has been convicted of killing an elderly woman who had hired him to mow her lawn.
A Pasco County jury found 49-year-old John Sexton Jr. guilty Friday of first-degree murder. He faces a possible death sentence.
Authorities say 94-year-old Ann Parlato was brutally beaten in her Port Richey home in September 2010. She was raped with an object and her body was mutilated and set afire.
Three neighbors testified to seeing Sexton outside the night of Parlato's murder. Authorities found Parlato's blood on Sexton's clothes and boots, and the woman's DNA was found under his fingernails and cuticles.
Sexton's attorney said DNA was found on a knife at the scene that didn't belong to Sexton or Parlato. The attorney argued that was the real killer.
