Texas businessman guilty of plotting ex-wife's murder

SAN ANTONIO - A Texas millionaire who made his fortune in a Washington state company was convicted yesterday of arranging the murder of his ex-wife, who was found shot in her kitchen with her throat slit as her 2-year-old quadruplets crawled in her blood.

Allen Blackthorne, 45, was the last of four people suspected in the murder-for-hire of Sheila Bellush to be convicted or to plead guilty. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

Blackthorne's Vancouver, Wash.-based business, International Rehabilitative Sciences, sells muscle stimulators under the name RS Medical.

The verdict came hours after hit man Jose Luis Del Toro Jr., 24, pleaded guilty in Florida and was given two consecutive life terms.

Bellush was slain in Sarasota, Fla., in 1997. Her body was discovered by her 13-year-old daughter from her marriage to Blackthorne. Bellush's quadruplets from her second marriage were crawling around unharmed, wearing life jackets for use in the backyard pool.

Prosecutors portrayed Blackthorne as a man who hated his ex-wife and who, after a string of custody battles, offered up to $54,000 to have her killed, with a bonus if he regained custody of his daughters, who were adopted by Bellush's second husband. Prosecutors said he used private investigators to track Bellush after she moved from Texas.

Blackthorne took the stand and admitted he once threatened to kill Bellush because he thought she was a negligent mother. But he denied arranging her murder.

The federal jury found Black thorne guilty of interstate conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and interstate domestic violence. He faces sentencing Nov. 2.

The courtroom was silent as the verdict was read because marshals had warned against outbursts. But once her elevator reached the ground floor, Gene Smith, Bellush's mother, spread her arms and yelled, "Hallelujah!"

"God bless all of these people who stood up for my daughter," she said.

The two middlemen in the plot are already in prison: The man who hired Del Toro, his cousin Sammy Gonzales, received 19 years behind bars. Daniel Rocha, Blackthorne's golfing buddy and the man who asked Gonzales to find someone to kill Bellush, is serving life in prison.

In the Sarasota courtroom, Bellush's widower, Jamie Bellush, held up pictures of his wife's disfigured face for Del Toro to see.

Del Toro looked away.

"Mr. Del Toro, you're a worthless coward with no remorse in your heart!" he bellowed. "It's unfortunate that I could not stand and watch you take your last breath with a needle in your arm."

Del Toro's response: "I do deserve to die. I am what you said of me. I can now admit it."