Woman, 75, Convicted for Killing Husband 40 Years Ago

Jurors convicted a 75-year-old woman who shot her husband in the mid-1970s of second-degree murder, despite her defense that she acted in a desperate bid to defend her 2-year-old daughter from attack by an abusive man. Investigators last summer recovered Ronald Holtz's remains from an abandoned mine on a ranch between Cheyenne and Laramie in Wyoming. The discovery led to Alice Uden's arrest in Missouri in September. Also arrested then was her current husband, Gerald Uden, 71, who was charged separately with killing his wife and two children in 1980.

Police haven't linked the two cold cases that brought the couple quietly living out their senior years in the rural Ozarks in Missouri to Wyoming to face charges. In the other case, Gerald Uden, 71, has pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder for shooting his ex-wife, Virginia Uden, and her two sons in central Wyoming in 1980. When Alice and Gerald Uden met is unclear, but they married in November 1976, five months after Gerald and Virginia Uden separated and two years after Holtz's death. Alice Uden faces 20 years to life in prison following yesterday's decision. Prosecutors say she killed Holtz while he slept, and one of her sons testified to the same. While on the witness stand, Todd Scott also turned to his frail mother and said: "I hate you." (More Wyoming stories.)