CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The wife of a Cleveland firefighter was convicted Friday of soliciting his death to collect on insurance money. 
 
 Uloma Curry-Walker was found guilty of aggravated murder, conspiracy, felonious assault and other charges in the Nov. 3, 2013 slaying of her then-husband of four months, William Walker. 
 
 Friday would have been the couple's 4-year anniversary. 
 
 Curry-Walker cried as the verdict was read and a Cuyahoga County sheriff's deputy placed her in handcuffs. It was the first sign of emotion the 45-year-old showed throughout two weeks of testimony. 
 
 Jurors reached their verdict after deliberating for less than two hours. 
 
 Curry-Walker now faces a maximum of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Common Pleas Judge Sherrie Miday set Curry-Walker's sentencing for Aug. 8. 
 
 Prosecutors said Curry-Walker had run tens of thousands of dollars into debt through credit cards and loans, some of which she had taken out in Walker's name. As she sunk nearer and nearer to financial ruin, prosecutors said, she plotted Walker's death to collect on his $100,000 life insurance policy. 
 
 Curry-Walker paid about a $1,000 down payment to her daughter's boyfriend, Chad Padgett, who went to his cousin, Chris Hein. After an initial failed attempt at Walker's life in October, Hein reached out to Ryan Dorty to carry out the killing. 
 
 All four, including Curry-Walker's daughter, pleaded guilty, testified against her at trial and said the plot began with her. 
 
 Curry-Walker and Walker had just bought a house in Madison Township and were packing up their Lampson Road house to move the night he was killed. 
 
 Curry-Walker sent her husband out to get food from McDonald's for her about 8:30, prosecutors said. Cellphone records show that she, her daughter and Hein placed several phone calls and text messages in the minutes leading up to the killing. Padgett and Dorty went with another man to the house and Dorty waited near the garage with a pistol that Hein had gotten. 
 
 When Walker came back home, Dorty ambushed him and shot him four times as he was unlocking the side door near the driveway. Walker's keys were still in the door, prosecutors said. 
 
 Curry-Walker placed a frantic 911 call at 8:35 p.m. to report her husband had been shot in the driveway. 
 
 Her daughter, who was 17 years old at the time of the killing, testified that she was riding in a car with Curry-Walker and Padgett when her mother first brought up the plot. 
 
 Curry-Walker told Padgett to have the shooter pull Walker's pocket out of his pants, to make the killing look like a botched robbery, the daughter testified. 
 
 The daughter also said her mother told her that "no one would believe I would hire a bunch of kids to kill someone when I know people that could." 
 
 Curry-Walker showed no emotion as her daughter pinned the plot on her. 
 
 Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Blaise Thomas compared Curry-Walker's conspiracy to a scene from the 1981 movie, "Body Heat", in which a lawyer, played by William Hurt, hires an arsonist played by Mickey Rourke to help him commit the perfect murder and kill his girlfriend's rich husband. Rourke's character cautioned that there are 50 ways to screw up the perfect crime. 
 
 "If you think of 25 of them, you're a genius," he says. "And you ain't no genius." 
 
 What Curry-Walker didn't realize, Thomas said, was that Walker had not finalized switching his life insurance policy into her name from the name of his ex-wife, who actually got the payout in the months after Walker's death. 
 
 Curry-Walker ended up having to give away most of their belongings and moved to North Carolina to stay with a relative. 
 
 Prosecutors hinged much of their case on Curry-Walker's actions in the weeks and even seconds after Walker's murder. 
 
 Thomas showed jurors a photograph of the blood-soaked white T-shirt that Walker was wearing when he was killed, and pointed out that a Cleveland firefighter who was one of the first emergency workers to get to the scene testified that Curry-Walker had no blood on her. 
 
 "Is it reasonable to expect that a loving wife is going to be there cradling her fatally shot husband?" Thomas asked. 
 
 Thomas had said in opening statements that Curry-Walker had left Walker's ashes and other personal belongings in her car in Cleveland when she went to North Carolina. The car got repossessed and investigators found the box containing Walker's ashes in the backseat. But trial testimony showed that Curry-Walker actually left the box in a drawer in an apartment, and her daughter's father took the ashes into the car to turn them over to police. 
 
 Curry-Walker then watched as the dominos started to fall, Thomas said. First investigators arrested Dorty. Then as police closed in on the conspiracy, her own daughter flipped and agreed to testify against everyone, including her mother and Padgett, with whom she had an infant at the time. 
 
 Curry-Walker penned a confession letter the day before she turned herself in to police, in which she said she killed Walker because he was abusive. 
 
 Prosecutors said Walker had no record of domestic violence, and Curry-Walker's defense lawyers did not call any witnesses who testified to that. 
 
 Instead, defense lawyer Deanna Robertson in her closing statements, which lasted nearly two hours, pointed to discrepancies in testimony from a host of witnesses who testified against Curry-Walker, and suggested that Curry-Walker's daughter had actually cooked up the plan. 
 
 Robertson pointed to text messages in the weeks and months leading up to Walker's killing in which the daughter called Curry-Walker "Mommy." When the daughter took the stand earlier this week, she referred to her mother by her first name only. 
 
 Robertson pointed to a family trip to Ireland that the daughter said she wasn't allowed to go on as a possible motivation, and pointed out that the daughter accompanied Padgett and Hein on the failed attempt at Walker's life. 
 
 "This girl is cold, and diabolical," Robertson said. "She went with them. She wanted to see." 
 
 Hein, Padgett and Dorty are all set to be sentenced after Curry-Walker. As part of their deals with prosecutors, they agreed to serve 18 years, 28 years and 23 years to life in prison, respectively. Prosecutors agreed not to seek adult charges against the daughter, who is set to spend a month in juvenile detention this fall. 
 
 To comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section. 

 In this undated photo, Uloma Curry-Walker appears at a hearing last month in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland. Curry-Walker, 45, a newlywed accused of soliciting her firefighter husband's... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this undated photo, Uloma Curry-Walker appears at a hearing last month in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland. Curry-Walker, 45, a newlywed accused of soliciting her firefighter husband's... (Associated Press) 
 
 CLEVELAND (AP) — A newlywed accused of soliciting her firefighter husband's killing to collect $100,000 in insurance money has been convicted of aggravated murder in a scheme that was flawed from the start: His ex-wife was still the beneficiary of his policy. 
 
 Uloma Curry-Walker, 45, could receive life in prison without parole for the November 2013 slaying of William Walker, whom she had married just four months earlier. Jurors deliberated for less than two hours before coming back with the verdict Friday, Cleveland.com reported (http://bit.ly/2uCGoXg). 
 
 Prosecutors said Curry-Walker was nearing financial ruin after running up tens of thousands of dollars in debt when she asked her then-17-year-old daughter and the daughter's boyfriend to find someone to kill her husband so she could collect the insurance money. 
 
 But a police investigation found that Curry-Walker's plan had a glaring problem from the outset. Her husband had not yet changed the beneficiary on the insurance policy from his ex-wife's name to Curry-Walker's when he was killed, so it was the ex-wife who received the money. 
 
 Testimony showed that Curry-Walker gave the boyfriend, Chad Padgett, a $1,000 down payment to carry out the slaying. Padgett contacted his cousin Chris Hein, who initially failed in his attempt to kill Walker. Hein then turned to Ryan Dorty to carry out the killing. 
 
 Prosecutors said Dorty ambushed Walker and shot him four times as he returned home from getting fast food Curry-Walker had requested. She and her husband were packing the night he was killed for a move to a house they had purchased outside Cleveland. 
 
 The daughter, Padgett, Hein and Dorty testified against Curry-Walker at trial as part of plea deal for their roles in the murder conspiracy. Hein agreed to a sentence of 18 years to life; Padgett 28 years to life; and Dorty 23 years to life. Prosecutors agreed not to seek adult charges against Curry-Walker's daughter. She will instead spend a month in a juvenile detention center. 
 
 The daughter testified at trial that her mother told her: "No one would believe I would hire a bunch of kids to kill someone when I know people that could." 
 
 Curry-Walker wrote a confession the day she surrendered to police that said she killed her husband because he was abusive. Her attorneys did not call any witnesses to testify that Walker was violent toward his wife. 
 
 Cleveland.com reported that one of Curry-Walker's attorneys pointed to discrepancies in witness testimony during closing arguments and suggested the daughter had devised the murder scheme. 
 
 Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 8. 
 
 Neither of her attorneys returned telephone messages seeking comment on Friday. 
 
 Friday would have been the couple's fourth wedding anniversary. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Information from: cleveland.com, http://www.cleveland.com
– An Ohio woman who'd been married for just four months before her husband died was found guilty of his murder Friday, and she could get life in prison without parole for her crime, the AP reports. Uloma Curry-Walker, 45, was convicted of aggravated murder, conspiracy, and other charges surrounding the 2013 death of firefighter William Walker, with prosecutors painting her during the trial as having fallen into financial straits and approaching her 17-year-old daughter and daughter's boyfriend with a deadly plan: Find someone to take out her husband, William Walker, so she could collect his life insurance money, which Cleveland.com notes was contained in a $100,000 policy. Curry-Walker handed over a $1,000 down payment to her daughter's boyfriend, Chad Padgett, to find a hitman, which precipitated a chain of events leading to her husband's slaying. But what William Walker's death didn't bring to his widow was the life insurance money, as he had never named his wife as the beneficiary after they married. Who did get the money: his ex-wife, who was still named as the beneficiary on the plan. Padgett, Curry-Walker's daughter, and two men who tried to kill William Walker (one of them was the successful hitman) took plea deals in exchange for testimony against Curry-Walker, who had said in her initial confession that her husband had abused her. Her daughter, the only one involved who won't go to jail (she'll spend a month in a juvenile detention center), said during the trial her mother had informed her: "No one would believe I would hire a bunch of kids to kill someone when I know people that could." Sentencing is Aug. 8. (A woman accused of hiring a hitman at Olive Garden killed herself.)