Alaska jury convicts soldier Kip Lynch of killing wife, baby daughter
(CBS/KTVA/AP) ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A military police officer was convicted Wednesday of killing his wife and baby two months after he returned from a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan.
Pictures: Soldier kills wife, baby daughter
Spc. Kip Lynch, 22, was convicted of murdering his 19-year-old wife, Raquell, and his 8-month-old daughter, Kyirsta, in April 2010 at the family's off-base apartment in Anchorage.
According to CBS affiliate KTVA, prosecutors said after killing the two, Lynch shot himself in the head in a failed suicide attempt.
Soldiers from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson found Lynch and the two bodies three days later when he didn't report for duty.
The jury found that Lynch intended to kill his wife, but not his daughter. KTVA reports that jurors found him guilty of first-degree murder in his wife's death, and guilty to two-counts of second-degree murder in both his wife and daughter's deaths.
During the trial, the defense maintained someone else shot all three members of the Lynch family. However, the prosecution countered that the weapon belonged to Lynch, and the head wound he sustained indicated it was a suicide attempt.
Lynch, who met his wife in high school, was a military police officer from Jacksonville, Fla. He enlisted in the Army in Sept. 2007 and went to boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. He was assigned to the 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. His unit served near the Pakistan border. Raquell Lynch moved to Anchorage in February 2010 to rejoin her husband when he returned from Afghanistan.
