Ex-Reporter Convicted in Wife’s Slaying : Justice: Jury says prosecution failed to prove there was premeditation, so it finds John Robert Burrus, 70, guilty of second-degree murder.

A Vista jury on Thursday found a 70-year-old former newspaper reporter guilty of second-degree murder in the 1990 death of his wife.

John Robert Burrus, a man the prosecution portrayed as “consumed with greed,” was found guilty of bludgeoning to death 75-year-old Grace Burrus in their Oceanside apartment and then placing her body in her car and driving the car over a remote cliff near Borrego Springs.

Jury foreman Patricia Sayre said the prosecution “hadn’t proven beyond a reasonable doubt that there was pre-planning” when Burrus murdered his wife of 30 years.

While most jurors felt from the beginning of their four days of deliberation that Burrus played a role in his wife’s death, there was also consensus that an accomplice must have been involved, according to jurors.

Burrus, who had several days of stubble on his face after having gone the entire trial clean-shaven, glared at the jurors and shook his head as the verdict was read by Vista Superior Court Judge J. Morgan Lester.

While the jurors were polled by the court clerk, Burrus leaned back in his chair to make eye contact with each juror, then turned around and glowered at them as they filed out.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Garrett Randall said he was surprised the jury did not come back with a first-degree murder conviction.

“It doesn’t make a lot of difference, though. Considering his age and what he claims to be his health, it is probably automatic,” Randall said, noting that the mandated sentence will be at least 16 years to life in prison.

If Burrus had been convicted of first-degree murder, the mandatory sentence would have been 25 years to life.

Outside the courtroom, friends and relatives of Grace Burrus expressed satisfaction with the verdict, even though it fell short of first-degree murder.

“I didn’t want to kill him, I just wanted to stomp on him a little,” said Nancy Ray, Grace Burrus’ best friend and a woman John Burrus said was his “best friend” when they were both employed by the San Diego Union as newspaper reporters.

“John Burrus did this for money, and finding him guilty of any degree of murder deprives him of what he went after,” Ray said.

Grace Burrus’ sister, June Edwards, said she was “grateful for the conviction” and that Grace “didn’t deserve to die the way she did.”

During the monthlong trial, Randall showed that John Burrus had a financial motivation to kill his wife because of a property dispute arising from a pending divorce filed by Grace Burrus. The dispute was over more than $1 million in real estate holdings.

Her death came a week before a hearing was to be held to settle the divorce. Grace Burrus filed for the divorce in 1987 to make sure her sister would inherit an Oceanside apartment complex she owned, and, in part, because she knew that John Burrus had been having homosexual affairs, according to the prosecution.

Randall showed that, on June 27, 1990, John Burrus hit his wife over the head several times, splattering blood around their apartment. He then dragged her body into her 1979 Saab and drove it from their Oceanside residence to Montezuma Grade just east of Borrego Springs, a 90-minute drive.

He then sent the car off the highway into a canyon to fake a traffic accident.

An autopsy showed that she was not killed in the car but had died hours before and that her extensive head wounds could not have been caused by anything in the car or on the cliff.

Randall believes Burrus had help in either the murder or disposing the body, since Grace Burrus was a heavyset woman and John Burrus needed someone to drive him away from the desert cliff.

The prosecution has identified Wayne Edgars, a transient employed by Burrus as a driver, as the possible accomplice, but authorities have been unable to locate him.

Burrus claimed he had nothing to do with his wife’s death and claimed she had been killed by strangers, possibly robbers.

Burrus’ attorney, John Mitchell, declined to comment after the verdict.

In his defense, Burrus said that on June 27, the last day anyone is known to have seen Grace Burrus alive, the two of them had left their Oceanside apartment early in the morning, driving separately to Salton City, where they owned another apartment building.

Grace Burrus left the apartment first, taking a county road route, while he left sometime later, he testified. When he arrived in Salton City, she was no where to be found, he said.

After waiting for several hours, he unsuccessfully tried to locate her by retracing her route, he said.

While relatives of Grace Burrus wanted to call authorities to search for her, John Burrus convinced them to wait.

It wasn’t until June 28 that a group of friends and relatives found her car and her body at the bottom of a Borrego Springs canyon.