“We’re unhappy in a verdict, of course, though a conflict is distant from over,” Sam Talkin, a counsel for Mrs. Pilmar, said.
Throughout a trial, prosecutors portrayed Mrs. Pilmar, 61, and Mr. Wald, 45, as greedy, vengeful siblings who lured Mr. Pilmar to his bureau and murdered him in Mar 1996 to solve financial troubles and settle personal scores.
“They designed it as a trap, and they set it adult as a trap,” Elizabeth Lederer, a lead prosecutor, told jurors on Monday during shutting arguments. “And he didn’t mount a chance.”
Mrs. Pilmar was staring down low financial problems before her husband’s death, prosecutors said. She had been held hidden $160,000 from a dentist’s bureau where she used to work and had betrothed to compensate it back. But she had kept a problem a tip from her father and was unfortunate to come adult with a income but his help.
In a days before a murder, a calls about her debt were visit and persistent, prosecutors said.
Adding to her debts, a state told Mrs. Pilmar that she due a supervision about $14,000 in delinquent taxes associated to her work using one of her husband’s coffee bars. They threatened to close a business down if she could not come adult with a cash, Ms. Lederer said.
“She due a money, and she had to compensate it back,” Ms. Lederer pronounced of Mrs. Pilmar. “She had to find it quickly.”