He said he had sex with his best friend’s mother 30 to 40 times. She said the 16-year-old boy sexually assaulted her three times. Neither denied the 5,413 text messages and 863 phone calls the two exchanged over a seven-month period.

But in the end, a jury did not believe prosecutors proved that Sara Cole and the teenager had sexual intercourse. The jury found Cole, 48, not guilty of two felony counts of unlawful sex with a 16-year-old boy and hung 11-1 in favor of a guilty verdict on a third felony count alleging the same. But the Santa Clara County panel of seven women and five men convicted her of a lesser charge, a misdemeanor, of molesting or annoying a child — a crime that forces her to register as a sex offender.

As the clerk read the verdicts, Cole simply stared straight ahead, bouncing her left leg as she did through much of the trial.

Cole then left the courthouse without a word, holding her head down as she and a friend passed reporters and TV cameras waiting for her in front of the Hedding Street courthouse. No family members on either side were in the courtroom.

Despite her acquittal on the most serious charges in the intensely watched trial, Thursday’s outcome was still a dramatic downfall for the Los Gatos mother of four who was embraced by the community after a drunken driver nearly killed her in 2007, severely crushing her legs and leaving her with a limp.

Still, the verdicts, reached after two days of deliberations, seemed as conflicting as the testimony in the often-salacious trial, which included Cole’s own surprising account of the liaison.

But Deputy District Attorney Timothy Moore said that the mixed verdicts show jurors “didn’t believe beyond a reasonable doubt that sexual intercourse took place.” If they had believed it, the verdict on the third felony would have been guilty, he said. Cole’s attorney, Michael Armstrong, could not be reached for comment.

But Ed Fernandez, one of several attorneys who dropped by the courtroom of Judge Jerome Brock during the four-day trial, called the verdicts a “moral victory.”

“She testified, and they believed her,” said Fernandez, a former prosecutor.

As a registered sex offender, Cole will be required to check in with authorities every year on her birthday. But after seven years, she can petition the judge for rehabilitation and possible removal from the sex offenders registry.

Moore said his office will take some time to decide whether to retry Cole on the felony charge that caused the jury to hang 11-1 toward guilty. Cole also faces up to a year in county jail.

“I felt I proved my case,” Moore said, but admitted he will be doing “a lot of thinking, a lot of soul searching to see” if there were anything he might have done differently in the case.

The misdemeanor count was added after the other charges were filed.

Last week, as jury selection was under way, Cole rejected a plea deal that would have allowed her to serve a six-month sentence at home, wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. It also would have spared her from registering as a sex offender, according to court documents.

Moore has contended the relationship between Cole and the teen began more than two years after her accident. That period from January through mid-July 2010 — when the teen was whisked off by his parents to a wilderness camp for troubled children because of poor grades and drug abuse — is when the two exchanged all of the text messages and phone calls.

But Cole’s attorney told the jury that she was a well-meaning mother of four sons who tried to help the troubled teen. She welcomed him into her home only to find he was a “master manipulator” who lied on the stand about having sex with her 30 to 40 times to try to get out of going to boarding school. Last year, the boy, who is not being named because he is a minor, told police the two only had sex three or four times.

Cole dropped her own bombshell when she took the stand and accused the teenager of sexually assaulting her.

“I feel I should have been harsher,” she testified, “been more of a disciplinarian, reported what he had told.”

Staff Writer Tracey Kaplan contributed to this report. Contact Linda Goldston at lgoldston@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5862.