SHALIMAR - An Okaloosa Circuit Court jury found Jeffrey Hutchinson guilty Thursday night of first-degree murder for the shotgun slayings of Renee Flaherty, 32, and her children, Geoffrey, 9, Amanda, 7, and Logan, 4.

Sheriff's deputies found their bodies, brutally blown apart by a pistol-gripped, pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, on the evening of Sept. 11, 1998, in the home Hutchinson shared with them on John King Road near Crestview.

Hutchinson, a 38-year-old former Army Ranger and Gulf War veteran, appeared dejected by the verdict. One of his defense lawyers, Kimberly Cobb, sobbed and wiped her eyes when the verdict was read by Judge G. Robert Barron.

Barron set a penalty phase, in which the five-woman, seven-man jury will make a recommendation of either life in prison without parole or a death sentence, for next Thursday and Friday.

"Right now, I'm numb, but I'm happy that things are finally over," said Wes Elmore, of Tacoma, Wash., Renee Flaherty's brother. He and his mother, Melva Elmore, also of Tacoma, are no relation to the prosecutor, Bobby Elmore.

Melva Elmore said she was too overcome to comment immediately.

The verdict, Wes Elmore said, "is what I expected. It's what I'd hoped for."

The verdict came just before jurors were about to be sent to a hotel, to be sequestered for the evening. But they continued for a few more minutes instead, arriving at their verdict at 9 p.m. Their decision came after two hours and 20 minutes of deliberations.

Advised by defense lawyers that a verdict was not expected Thursday evening, Hutchinson's parents left court, only to be advised of the verdict by a reporter seeking comment late Thursday.

"We don't have any statements now," said Bob Hutchinson, the defendant's father. "We need time."

"I'm glad the Sheriff's Department, the FDLE and the Medical Examiner's Office did a thorough and accurate investigation and the result bore out their hard work," said Bobby Elmore, the prosecutor.

Defense lawyers Stephen Cobb and Kimberly Cobb were not available for comment after the verdict.

Elmore offered jurors this explanation for the murders in his closing statement:

"It's the age-old story," the prosecutor said. "He couldn't let her go to someone else."

Stephen Cobb, in his closing, countered that "Jeffrey Hutchinson had no motive to kill these unfortunate victims. The evidence shows you he loved them deeply."

But Hutchinson's actions shortly before the slayings showed anything but love for the victims, Elmore said.

After a couple of beers at the AMVETS bar down the street, Elmore said, the defendant "drove up the hill (to the John King Road house) erratically, as if angry and in a hurry to get somewhere, losing control as if his motor control were disturbed by alcohol."

When deputies and emergency workers arrived at the John King Road home the night of the slayings, "he had the blood of two victims on him," the prosecutor said.

The only explanation for it, Elmore said, was heard in the call made to 911, a reference to what two witnesses testified was Hutchinson's voice on an audiotape of the call, saying "I just shot my family."

The defense called witnesses earlier Thursday to establish that Hutchinson had a high amount of alcohol in his system when found by deputies the night of the murders, a range of blood alcohol estimated in the range of .21 to .26.

A reading of .08 is the legal limit for drunken driving in Florida.

That means, Stephen Cobb told the jury, that Hutchinson "would have been an easy target for someone committing these murders."

All that alcohol also could have meant that "I just shot my family," might not have been meant literally, the defense lawyer argued. He suggested it may have meant Hutchinson felt guilt over not being able to prevent the murders, without conceding it was his client's voice on the audiotape of the 911 call.

He also told jurors the state did not show them nine bottles of beer on a counter in the house, or three empty beer cartons on the floor, again emphasizing how much alcohol had been consumed before the shotgun slayings.

Stephen Cobb told the jury that consuming that much alcohol would have rendered his client incapable of forming a conscious intent to kill, a possible defense against premeditated murder.

All of the witnesses who responded to the home that night were prejudiced, he said, by information from 911 dispatchers that a man had shot his family. For that reason, he said, all of the state's witnesses had a presumption of guilt against his client, and never considered other suspects.

But Elmore said the evidence against Hutchinson was overwhelming, leaving jurors with this thought:

"He thought the loss of Renee and the children was a reason to kill them, and he acted on that reason."