Jurors began weighing capital murder charges Thursday afternoon against Roy Kipp, the retired Florida sheriff's officer accused of killing his wife and her lover.

The panel of six men and six women filed into the deliberation room in Punta Gorda at 3:07 p.m. Kipp, a 17-year veteran of the Collier County sheriff's officer, faces death row if a jury finds him guilty of gunning down his wife, Sandy, and her boyfriend, sheriff's deputy Jeff Klein.

In closing arguments, prosecutor Marshall Bowers told jurors the May 20, 2000 killings in Naples were the work of "a controlling, obsessive husband."

"The defendant knew his wife was leaving him, that she had another person in her life and that person was Jeff. And he couldn't stand it," Bowers said.

Sandy Kipp, 35, was killed by a single bullet to her back as she tried to run from her new apartment. Klein, also 35, was shot eight times in the doorway of a guest bedroom.

Roy Kipp, 44, acknowledged pulling the trigger, but testified Wednesday that he was acting in self-defense after he discovered the pair together and Klein, his former co-worker and friend, pulled a gun. He said he shot his wife accidentally when she darted in front of him. No gun was found, but the defense claims investigators transferred Klein's off-duty weapon to his locked truck to make Kipp look more culpable.

Prosecutor Bower called Kipp's account "preposterous" and noted that Kipp fired at least two of the final bullets when Klein was already flat on his stomach.

Bower

"Do you shoot someone eight times in self-defense," he said. He attacked Kipp's claim of accidentally shooting his wife, saying the blood evidence showed only that Sandy Kipp was hit while dashing out the front door, a portable phone in her hand.

Bower urged the jury instead to concentrate on incriminating statements Kipp allegedly made to his friend Peter Lewkowicz both before and after the killings. Lewkowicz, who worked with Kipp for an elevator company, testified during the trial that Kipp suspected an affair between his wife and Klein six months before their deaths and promised to "(screw)'em up" if he found them together.

Just a few hours after the shootings, Lewkowicz testified, Kipp phoned him and said, "I waxed 'em." Lewkowicz said Kipp told him he shot Klein repeatedly before turning his gun on his wife who was screaming and threatening to call police. He never mentioned Klein having a gun, Lewkowicz said.

"What earthly reason would there be for Mr. Lewkowicz...to call the sheriff's department and make that up," said Bower.

The lawyer chastised the defense for "putting Sandy and Jeff on trial" by raising details of their sexual relationship and derided Kipp's claims that he was devoted to his wife.

"I'll show you how he felt about his wife," Bower said and then held up a crime-scene photo of Sandy Kipp's bloody body.

During a long, plodding closing that stretched an hour and a half and stood in contrast to Bower's brief, highly animated argument, defense lawyer Michael Orlando said his client never meant to kill.

"This was a situation that erupted in a matter of seconds," said Orlando. "Mr. Kipp loved his wife and loved his family and he is not the evil monster the state is portraying him to be."

Orlando

Orlando concentrated on Kipp's relationship with his wife. He said Kipp thought he was in a happy marriage and his wife had rented a temporary apartment as a quiet place to study away from him and their 8-year-old daughter. It was only after he went to the apartment to check on his wife's safety, Orlando argued, that he learned his wife had "a wandering eye" and had set up a "love nest" in her new apartment.

"He was left in the dark as to what was going on," said Orlando.

He suggested officers had tampered with evidence by moving Klein's gun to his truck and later returning it to his family before it could be analyzed.

"Cops carry their guns with them and that's what Jeff Klein did that night," he said, charging a string of officers lied during their testimony. "No one from the [Collier County] sheriff's department is going to admit that."

Orlando told jurors to pay special attention to the judge's instruction on the heat of passion defense and on self-defense, but he stopped short of arguing that his client was not guilty under one or both theories.

Judge Daniel Monaco

Jurors can find Klein guilty of first-degree murder if they conclude he premeditated the killings or committed them in commission of a burglary. They also may find him guilty of the lesser charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

If the jurors do not reach a verdict Thursday, they will be sequestered overnight.

The case is being tried in Charlotte County because of extensive media coverage in Collier County.