The Galveston County Daily News

BAYOU VISTA — A Galveston County jury returned a murder conviction Friday in the case of a man accused of helping torture and inject a lethal dose of narcotics into the arm of a Houston man.

Wayne Delwin Gill, 47, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 27-year-old Karim “Jimmy” Gamil Ubaldo.

It took the jury about three hours to convict Gill, who is the second person convicted in Ubaldo’s death. The life sentence was handed down after another 30 minutes of deliberation.

In August, a jury took 20 minutes to convict Christopher Lee McKnight, who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in Ubaldo’s death.

Ubaldo’s body was found wrapped in a sheet in the back of his own Jeep, which was driven from Houston to Bayou Vista by McKnight in July 2008.

Ubaldo was killed after he was lured to a Houston motel room, Galveston County prosecutor Lester Blizzard said.

When Gill, McKnight and others in the room suspected Ubaldo was a police officer, they strapped him to a chair with tape, terrorized him and gave him a lethal injection of heroin or methamphetamine, prosecutors said.

McKnight drove Ubaldo’s body to Galveston County intending to dump him in the water but was “so high” he couldn’t do so, prosecutors said.

Bayou Vista police found McKnight in his underwear, rolling around in the grass, and then found Ubaldo’s body wrapped in the sheet in the back of the Jeep.

Because Ubaldo’s body was found in Galveston County, the two cases were tried here, even though investigators said he was killed in Harris County.