A jury at the trial for Bo Dukes, the Georgia man who helped conceal the murder of teacher and beauty queen Tara Grinstead, took less than an hour to deliberate before handing down a guilty verdict on Thursday.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Dukes was found guilty of hindering the apprehension of a criminal, concealing the death of another, and two counts of of making a false statement.
As the report notes, Dukes, who was a former student at the high school where Grinstead taught, initially denied having any knowledge about Grinstead’s 2005 disappearance, but later admitted to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that he had helped his friend, Ryan Alexander Duke, dispose of Grinstead’s body after Duke, also a former student at the high school, killed her at her home during an attempted robbery. Dukes is believed to have burned Grinstead’s remains at his family’s pecan farm.
Duke was arrested in February 2017 on murder charges and will begin trial on April 1.
Dukes is set to be sentenced on Friday morning at 9 a.m.