Man, 86, guilty of murder

BEND (AP) — An 86-year-old Central Oregon man has been found guilty of murder in the killing of his wife of 39 years. KTVZ-TV reports that a jury in Bend spent an hour Tuesday deliberating the case against Lawrence Loeffler.

Prosecutors said he shot 83-year-old Betty Loeffler in January on the deck of their home outside La Pine in southern Deschutes County. The defense argued that Loeffler was acting under extreme emotional distress — overreacting to simple problems such as his wife screwing the lid on the ketchup bottle too tight, and then believing she was plotting to kill him.

The prosecution said he plotted rationally to set a trap for her and then kill her with two gunshots to the back and top of her head.