A California woman whose lover killed her husband—after the pair tested poisons on a neighborhood dog—was found guilty of murder Thursday morning. Sabrina Limon, 37, was also convicted on charges of soliciting a murder, conspiring, and being an accessory.
Prosecutors say Limon and her younger lover sought to make out with $300,000 in life insurance payments after killing off devoted dad Robert Limon, just two days before his wedding anniversary. Sabrina Limon’s defense attorneys, on the other hand, claimed that the couple’s sexually open lifestyle was one Limon longed to escape. They portrayed her as a woman seduced by the attentions of a man who would later kill her husband in cold blood.
“The only evidence that the people have is Jonathan Hearn: an admitted, cold-blooded, calculating killer, who stalked her husband and killed him,” defense attorney Richard Terry said.
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The jury did not agree.
Robert Limon died on August 17, 2014, and Sabrina Limon’s lover, Jonathan Hearn, testified in September that the murder plot first came about as a sick joke months before.
But then the plan to cement a future together became a deadly reality. Hearn, a 27-year-old firefighter, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and may spend as many as 25 years behind bars. Limon, on the other hand, remained free for two years until prosecutors secured Hearn’s cooperation in January.
The couple’s unlikely courtship began when Hearn, then just 22 and raised in a devout family, met Limon as she handed out samples at Costco. Hearn was there picking up supplies for work, and Limon eventually gave him her number.
“I feel God’s purpose and strength working in my life and in our relationship,” Limon allegedly texted Hearn in the leadup to the murder. “I love you, Jonathan.”
Limon complained to him about her husband’s fixation “on partying, his truck, his boat,” Hearn testified.
Those complaints magnified until the couple practiced a murder plot on a neighborhood pup.
“He feels terrible about the dog,” Clayton Campbell, Hearn’s attorney, told The Daily Beast in February. “He wanted to confirm that what he had (the arsenic) was going to do the job when they poisoned Robert. He did the calculations on the weight of the dog and made a proportionate dosage.”
But the lovers soon tossed out the poison plot, as well as an idea to set Robert’s car on fire, in favor of Hearn murdering him at work.
Hearn shot Robert Limon with a Glock muffled by a silencer fashioned from a flashlight, and tried to stage a robbery.
The case against Sabrina Limon lasted more than three weeks. She was acquitted of attempted murder and poisoning.
"They don't have a father, and now, they don't have a mother!” Limon’s sister, Julie, told the press after the verdict. “I look them in the face and they are in so much pain, so much pain.”
Limon will be sentenced November 3.
