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The Evanses were comforted and kept informed by detectives throughout the trial. The couple sat through the trial’s every hour, except for the time the jury was shown photos of their daughter’s body in the ditch near the South Keys Shopping Centre. They sat in the front row — Det. John Monette had reserved the spot for them — with Benson at their side. Rutherford told the couple they had the sympathy of the court and the community.

Benson said outside court he was relieved the deliberations were over.

“The jury did the right job and justice has been served, and the Evanses can move on to the next chapter in their life,” Benson said.

“I think the evidence was straightforward. It was quite obvious this wasn’t a case of PTSD or mental health,” Benson said. “This was a straight case of domestic violence and a young woman’s life was taken away out of mere jealousy of a husband that she was going to leave.”

Benson said he doesn’t want to take away from those who legitimately have post-traumatic stress disorder.

Detectives were convinced early on in their investigation that Richmond was guilty.

On Day One of the lengthy trial, Richmond’s lawyers told the jury that the soldier killed Melissa but insisted he was not criminally responsible because he was in the throes of a severe PTSD flashback and didn’t have the intent to kill, let alone know it was wrong.

Richmond, 53, testified in his own defence that he didn’t know what had happened at the time of the killing and was able only to piece it together in recovered memory months later. He told the jury that he heard an unexplained noise at the exact moment he was holding a screwdriver to his wife during a rape-fantasy tryst in the bushes at the edge of a darkened shopping mall parking lot. The noise, he said, startled him and triggered a flashback that to the day in Croatia in 1992 when, he said, he watched helplessly as a little girl in a sundress was executed.