Cécile Brossard, the shop assistant-turned-artist who shot dead one of France's richest men while he was tied to a chair during a sadomasochistic sex session, was today found guilty of unpremeditated murder by a court in Geneva.
The jury rejected defence claims that the killing, which she admitted, was a crime of passion committed by a psychologically vulnerable woman driven to distraction by the manipulative tendencies of her millionaire lover, Edouard Stern.
In a statement, the jury said that, before and after the shooting, Brossard, 40, had behaved in a manner that was "thought-out, cynical and manipulative, hardly compatible with that of a reasonable woman in the grip of violent emotion". She is expected to be sentenced today. She could spend up to 20 years behind bars.
The verdict, after an emotionally charged week-long trial, was a moment of triumph for Stern's family. The 50-year-old banker, who was based in Switzerland, was found dead in March 2005 with four bullet holes in the flesh-coloured latex bodysuit that covered him from head to toe.
His wife and children had always argued that Brossard, a former escort with whom he had had a tempestuous four-year affair, was a money-grabbing murderer who had killed her lover when he threatened to take back a gift of $1m (£612,000), which she had requested "as proof of his love".
She, however, claimed she had killed him in blind anger and passion after he taunted her while tied up during a sadomasochistic sex game, saying: "A million dollars is a lot of money to pay for a whore."
"When I heard that I understood I would never be his wife," she told the court. "I wanted to carry his name; it was a little girl's dream. My head, my heart imploded." Brossard, who broke down in tears and begged forgiveness on the first day of the trial, reiterated her apology to the dead man's family. "I am a woman still madly in love," she said.
But the argument that the killing was a crime of passion, which carries special status and could have halved her sentence, was demolished by prosecutors.
Daniel Zappelli, the Geneva chief prosecutor, said her actions immediately after the shooting showed she had been motivated by the possibility of her financial gift being frozen by Stern, who at the time was the 38th wealthiest man in France.
"It was not love that killed, but hate and money," he said. He pointed out that, for two weeks after the crime, Brossard denied involvement and had telephoned her lawyer to instruct him to make sure she could access the $1m.
The jury's statement indicated it agreed with his argument. Jurors said that, from the way Brossard cleaned up Stern's luxury apartment, threw the pistol into nearby Lake Geneva, fled the country and stopped between flights to check her bank balance, she had "acted with a certain determination".
"Her state of despair was not excusable," it added, referring to claims that Brossard, who suffered a traumatic childhood dominated by her mother's attempted suicide with her and her sister, had been driven to desperate lengths by Stern's unusual demands and the realisation that he would never marry her.
Stern, who was found tied to a chair in a flat littered with sex toys among antique heirlooms from his well-connected, "old money" family, was painted as a wilfully cruel lover who asked Brossard to find him other sexual partners and repeatedly left insulting answerphone messages.
Pascal Maurer, defending, argued that he was an emotionally and sexually perverse "hunter". "What he liked was tracking his prey. Cécile Brossard was pretty game for him. Human game."