LUMBERTON — On Tuesday, Betty Rae Oxendine buried her head in her husband’s shoulder as prosecutor Stan Todd showed photographs of her murdered daughter to 12 jurors.

Oxendine and her husband Bradley were forced to sit in court for five days this week during the second murder trial of Travis Walters after a retrial had been ordered because of problems with the transcript from the original trial, in 2001.

The second time wasn’t any easier for the Oxendines.

“It’s like cutting me and throwing salt in my wound, over and over,” Betty Rae Oxendine said during the trial. “It burns.”

“It’s been harder this time than it was the first,” Bradley Oxendine said. “It still hurts.”

The Oxendines did get some satisfaction on Friday when the jury, which had deliberated for about 10 hours over three days, convicted Walters of first-degree murder. Superior Court Judge Robert Floyd then sentenced him to life in prison.

Walters, now 29, was 17 years old when he killed Betty Jane Oxendine in the early morning of Jan. 6, 1998 — Betty Rae Oxendine’s 47th birthday — as she worked as a supervisor at the Hardee’s on West Fifth Street.

Testimony at both trials showed that Walters shot her once in the face at close range after she had relented to his demand that she turn over money from a back office at the fast food restaurant.

Walters was arrested the same day at his grandmother’s home in Lake View, S.C. He had more than $400 in cash and a bus ticket to Washington, D.C.

Walters was sentenced to death in 2001 after he was convicted of the murder, but his sentence was commuted to life after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 ruled that is unconstitutional to execute someone for a crime that was committed when the defendant was less than 18 years old. The retrial was ordered in 2006.

During the trial, Todd, who is retiring from the District Attorney’s Office, used testimony from the defendant’s sister, Latasha Waters, to show premeditation. Latasha, who was 14 in 1998, testified that her brother told her he killed Oxendine because he had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend earlier that night and he was going “to take it out on someone.”

Also during the trial, Brenda Thomas, an administrative attendant at the Robeson County jail, said she heard Walter say the day after the murder: “I tried to shoot her whole (expletive) face off. That (expletive) won’t talk (expletive) no more.”

In addition to holding a supervisor’s job at Hardee’s, the victim was a student at Robeson Community College when she was killed.

"Everything she had and everything she would have had was taken away," Todd said during his closing argument.

Sue Berry, Walters' attorney, argued for a lesser conviction, saying the gun discharged accidentally, Walters was remorseful and he never denied his guilt. She also pointed out that Lynette Waters helped police find her son. Travis Walters’ last name is different from his mother and sister’s because of an error on his birth certificate that was never corrected, according to Todd.

"His family did what they could," Berry said.

Berry also pointed out that Walters did not harm a second woman who was working at Hardee’s that night.

The jury on Thursday asked for a clarification from Judge Floyd on the definition of second-degree murder. At least twice it told the judge that it was deadlocked 11 to one, but did not indicate in what direction and on what charge.

“Not only did it hurt me, but it hurt his family, too,” Betty Rae Oxendine said. “Thank God its over with.”