Seven years after their daughter was raped, beaten, stabbed with a screwdriver and strangled to death, Chandra Ladner’s family finally found some closure Friday.

After an hour and 40 minutes of jury deliberation, Virgil “Scoop” Smith, 47, was convicted of first-degree murder in her 2001 killing, ending one of the most continued trials in St. Tammany Parish history.

Ladner’s father’s thoughts were succinct. “Justice was done. That’s all I have to say,” he said, declining to give his name as he left the courtroom alongside a dozen or so friends and family members.

Smith, previously convicted of at least six unrelated felonies and currently serving two life sentences, is scheduled to be sentenced to his third life term Aug. 20 by presiding 22nd Judicial District Court Judge Martin Coady. The family opted not to pursue the death penalty, and prosecutors agreed as allowed under Louisiana’s first-degree murder statute.

Smith, convicted by a six-woman, six-man jury, shook his head and looked down when the verdict was read. He vowed to appeal.

“I will be back,” he said. “Peace out. You can’t win ‘em all.”

Smith, who acted as his own attorney, killed Ladner in her Slidell area home in the late hours of March 15 or early morning hours of March 16, 2001, after she convinced his wife, Lori Smith, to leave him after years of physical and verbal abuse, the jury decided.

Ladner’s mother, Emily, and 4-year-old nephew found the 25-year-old at her home, her body sprawled on the floor with a gaping stab wound along her neck and pantyhose tied around her neck. They checked on her when she never arrived for a scheduled dinner outing. Later investigators found a toy train by her body, dropped by her nephew when he saw her, testimony showed.

Key testimony included a black condom found at the scene of the crime, one that then State Police DNA expert Angela Ross matched to Smith with a one in 336 billionth chance, prosecutor Scott Gardner argued during closing arguments.

“This trial is about nothing more and nothing less than the whereabouts of Virgil Smith on March 16, 2001,” Gardner said.

“He set out in a rage,” Gardner said, later referring to the moment he found out Ladner’s involvement in his wife’s decision to file for divorce. “It had to be bad. It had to be bad … she didn’t stand a chance.”

Smith countered. Digging into an evidence bag, Smith pulled out an unwrapped condom confiscated from him at the time of his arrest. Holding it up to the jury, he said prosecutors “said the man who raped Chandra had black condoms. If this is black convict me.”

He tore it open. It was white.

“Whew,” he said. “God is good. I’m going to leave it at that.”

He didn’t. He continued.

“They claimed I used black rubbers. It just so happens I had a white condom,” he said.

Although he had previously argued he and Ladner had consensual sex, on Friday Smith contradicted himself and told jurors he was never at the scene of the crime. The DNA evidence found in the condom could not match his because experts never took a sample for comparison, he argued.

Gardner refuted Smith in closing statements. He held up a crime lab report that indicated a blood sample from Smith was used as a basis for the testing.

Other key testimony rested on Lori Smith, who testified in day two of the five-day trial.

“He said if he can’t have me, nobody can,” she testified. “There will never be a divorce. He said if I left him and somebody helped me, he would kill them.”

Despite Lori Smith’s warnings, Ladner, a friend the Smith couple met in earlier in 2000 when Smith was bonding out of jail and Ladner was bonding her boyfriend out, convinced Lori Smith to leave her husband, she testified.

“I was afraid to leave because of threats he made,” Lori Smith testified. “I told (Ladner) to watch her back … he’s violent and sneaky. You can’t trust him.”

Those were among the last words Lori Smith ever spoke to Ladner. On March 14, 2001, after fleeing to Phoenix, her hometown, she told Smith she filed for divorce.

Several days later Ladner was dead.

In the end, Smith offered jurors one last line to chew on.

“No matter how we live our life, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Everything is predestined.”