A former Texas deputy sheriff accused of killing his paraplegic girlfriend and claiming it was a suicide was convicted of murder earlier this week and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The Denton County Criminal District Attorney’s Office said that a jury found Jay Rotter, 39, guilty on Tuesday and sentenced him the next day in the murder of Leslie Hartman, 46, on August 20, 2020.

Rotter, who worked for the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office at the time, called police and told them Hartman shot herself in the head, using his service weapon, while they were embracing, as CrimeOnline reported. He told detectives he “would have stopped her if he could have.”

But investigators uncovered evidence implicating Rotter in the death. When they brought him in for questioning, he initially refused to hand over his cell phone and then reset it to factory setting when he was alone in the room.

But detectives found chat messages on the app Discord from the night of Hartman’s death — posted before he called police to report her “suicide” — in which he wrote messages indicating he went into the back yard and fired a bullet into a milk carton, which led to an argument between the two. At 11:14 p.m., Rotter wrote, “I just sent a 9 millie in this f***** hippie” along with a photo of himself holding the pistol.

Neighbors said that Hartman, a beloved artist, was happy and had not appeared suicidal. In fact, one neighbor said, she had just adopted a new puppy.

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[Featured image: Leslie Hartman/Facebook and Jay Rotter/Denton County Criminal District Attorney’s Office]