LAWRENCE, Mass. (Court TV) — Rejecting Richard Sharpe's claims of insanity, a jury Tuesday convicted the transvestite dermatologist of first-degree murder in the shooting of his estranged wife.

The jury of six women and six men deliberated for nearly 12 hours before returning the verdict. The conviction means Sharpe will receive a life sentence without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced Thursday morning.

The 47-year-old defendant, dressed in a white shirt and navy tie, kept his eyes closed as the verdict was read. When the jury foreman announced the first-degree finding, a cry of "Yes!" rose up from the family and friends of Karen Sharpe, seated in the front row of the courtroom. Sharpe, who had two outbursts during the trial, said nothing but scowled as bailiffs immediately placed him in handcuffs.

Karen Sharpe and her daughter, Shannon

Judge Christine McEvoy's court was packed for the reading of the verdict. The case has attracted intense media coverage on Massachusetts' north shore, where Sharpe had a successful practice and several medical businesses that made him a millionaire. After the murder, surprised locals learned that Sharpe had a penchant for cross-dressing, and photographs of him in a wig and fishnet stockings accompanied newspaper articles about the couple's rocky marriage.

Several months before the shooting, Karen Sharpe, a mother of three, had left the 26-year marriage and obtained a restraining order against Sharpe, who, she claimed in divorce papers, had abused her physically and verbally throughout their relationship. On July 14, 2000, Sharpe confronted his wife in the foyer of the home where she was staying with their two youngest children. With three witnesses looking on, he fired a single rifle shot to her chest, killing her.

During the two-week trial, Sharpe never disputed shooting his wife, but he claimed he was insane at the time. Taking the stand in his own defense, he told jurors that a vague "compulsion" to reunite his family led him to her house with a loaded gun. Jurors, however, apparently did not believe his testimony that mental illness and a toxic combination of red wine and prescription medicine left him unable to remember much of the shooting or remember why he had taken her life.

Sharpe family portrait

They also apparently discarded the testimony of a defense psychiatric expert, Dr. Kenneth Ablow, who diagnosed Sharpe with several mental problems, including major depression, borderline personality disorder and intermittent explosive disorder, and said he was not criminally responsible for the shooting. Ablow traced Sharpe's problems back to his abusive childhood and told jurors the doctor began dressing as a woman as a young teen to avoid his father's insults.

Jurors seemed to agree with prosecutor Robert Weiner who urged them during closing arguments to "put aside the psychobabble."

"Child abuse is not an excuse," he told them. Weiner painted Sharpe as a calculating murderer who had planned the insanity defense as part of the "perfect crime" of killing his wife.

"He's fakin' it," he shouted at the panel during closings. Weiner contended that Sharpe wasn't crazy, but furious because he believed his wife had stolen $3 million from him. The prosecution called a series of business associates and acquaintances of Sharpe who testified the doctor was alert and rational on the day of the shooting. Others testified that he was interested in buying a gun weeks before the crime and tried to hire someone to ransack his wife's belongings. And Sharpe himself admitted quickly disposing of the murder weapon and fleeing to New Hampshire, behavior prosecutor Weiner told jurors showed a guilty conscience.

Karen Sharpe and son, Michael, now 8

After the verdict, Karen Sharpe's sister, Kathleen Lembo, now the guardian of her two minor children, Alexandra and Michael, stood on the courthouse steps and described her sister.

"Karen Sharpe was a loving mother, the best sister anybody could have. She was a wonderful daughter and a friend," said Lembo, who was surrounded by her brothers, father and husband. Referring to Richard Sharpe's claim that his wife cheated on him and was having an affair with a contractor at the time of her murder, Lembo added, "You got a sense of a lot of things that weren't Karen Sharpe in the courtroom, but [Weiner] and his people were able to convey to the jury that she was not that person."

She noted that her sister never told her nor their two brothers about Sharpe's abuse.

"She didn't share it with any of us because she didn't want us to feel her pain," said Lembo.

Karen Sharpe's survivors are expected to speak at the sentencing.

Photos courtesy of the Sharpe family.