A Jacksonville man was found guilty Friday of first-degree murder in a plot to have his wife killed in 2019.

Velvet Burns was stabbed 39 times while she slept May 9, 2019, in the home she shared with Jerry Burns on Jacksonville’s Westside.

In less than an hour, the jury found Jerry Burns guilty of first-degree murder. They also had the option to convict him of a lesser charge such as second-degree murder or manslaughter, News4Jax reported.

According to prosecutors, Jerry Burns worked with his mistress, Amanda Love, to hire someone to murder his wife. That someone happened to be Love’s longtime on-again, off-again partner, Stephen Hand.

On Friday morning, the jury heard brief testimonies from a few more witnesses, including Jerry and Velvet Burns’ daughter and a woman who knew Love and Hand, and whom Love initially implicated in the murder.

After those testimonies, prosecutors and defense attorneys had the opportunity to address the jury one last time before they were sent out to deliberate.

During closing arguments, Prosecutor Alan Mizrahi said there is “zero doubt in the world that this was a premeditated killing.”

“The stab wounds demonstrate a contemplated decision to kill,” Mizrahi said.

On the other hand, Defense Attorney Michael Bossen called Love a “psychopath” and a “liar.”

“Every shred of evidence that’s going to link Jerry Burns allegedly to the murder of his wife, runs through one person, Amanda Love,” Bossen said.

Love, who has already pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and been sentenced in the case, acknowledged during her testimony Thursday that she pretended to love Jerry Burns to get money and that she would have married him for the money.

“I was a single mom with five kids, and Stephen Hand at the time didn’t have a job,” Love said on the stand.

She was sentenced to 40 years in prison and 30 years for conspiracy to commit murder in April of this year.

During her testimony Thursday, Love referred to Jerry Burns as her “sugar daddy.”

Hand and Love share three children and had been in a “rocky” relationship for about 13 years.

Hand, who admitted to fatally stabbing Velvet Burns and was sentenced to life in prison, testified in court Wednesday that he was still in a relationship with Love when she was having an affair with Jerry Burns.

“Amanda was pretty much in a relationship with Mr. Burns, and he kind of financed [us] from November through May,” Hand said. “He was unaware that I was present the whole time.”

Love testified that sometime in April 2019, Jerry Burns approached her about killing his wife.

“I guess he went and met the divorce attorney again, and he said that ‘this wouldn’t cost a lot of money, and it would be cheaper if she was killed, and then you would have a life insurance policy,’” Love said.

Love said Jerry Burns paid her $30,000 to find his wife’s killer.

“I was kind of shocked. He asked me if I knew anybody that would commit murder for money, and I told him I didn’t know nobody at the top of my head, and he asked me to see if I could find anybody,” Love testified.

But Mizrahi said that did not happen and Love spent the money on other things instead.

“It’s a murder-for-hire where a husband hires the woman he’s having an affair with, who happens to be a drug addict, to kill his wife because divorce is just too darn expensive,” Mizrahi said.

According to Mizrahi, Jerry Burns then told Love he would give her an extra $20,000 once the job was “done.”

Two of Love’s daughters also testified Thursday, recounting their interactions with Jerry Burns.

They described meeting him when he came to fix a door on a home they were living in at the time and that they saw him quite often.

Both sisters recalled their mom getting a large bag of money from Jerry Burns weeks before the murder.

One of them explained how Love and Hand had her clean the mats of the car they drove after the murder.

“They didn’t tell me why. They just told me to clean it off and not to say anything,” one of Love’s daughters said.

She added that she did not see any “visible blood,” but that the “cleaning solution made it phony.”

All three — Jerry Burns, Love and Hand — were arrested and charged with Velvet Burns’ murder, but Mizrahi said Jerry Burns was the mastermind behind it all.

“Amanda Love and Stephen Hand did what they were paid to do,” Mizrahi said. “This was an especially violent, heinous, atrocious, cruel, bloody scene.”

On Wednesday, the defense argued that while Jerry Burns was guilty of not being a faithful husband, that does not make him guilty of murdering his wife.

“He had a problem, and that problem he did bring on himself. And that’s Amanda Love,” Bossen said.

Jerry Burns was also charged with conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony.

The death penalty phase of this case is expected to start Monday.

A warden is expected to talk about Jerry Burns’ positive effect at the jail, especially his work as an electrician.

This story was produced by News4Jax, a Jacksonville Today news partner.