[chris]

Robert Earley was convicted of killing Emily Rebecca Lambert, a 30-year-old Texas schoolteacher and divorced mother of two daughters, after investigators said he beat her, tied a rope around her neck, dragged her behind his car and left her body on a rural ranch near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Lambert taught third grade at O. Henry Elementary School in the Richardson Independent School District outside Dallas. She had driven to southeastern New Mexico in early March 2014 to spend the weekend with Earley, who worked in the oil fields around Carlsbad.

According to court records, Lambert was last seen leaving a Carlsbad bar late on the night of March 1, 2014. Earley called 911 to report his girlfriend missing from their motel near Carlsbad, telling dispatchers she had walked off and never returned to their room. Searchers found her body on March 4 behind a barn on a ranch near Loving, a small town south of Carlsbad, clad only in a bra.

An autopsy attributed her death to blunt force trauma to the head. Investigators reported abrasions across her body consistent with being dragged, and evidence that a rope had been tied around her neck.

According to an arrest affidavit, Earley's account shifted several times. He first claimed Lambert had left the bar with another man. He later admitted kicking her in the head until she lost consciousness in the motel room, striking her with an air pump when she came to, and tying a rope from her neck to his car before dragging her to the ranch.

Prosecutors charged Earley with first-degree murder, kidnapping and tampering with evidence. A jury convicted him in May 2015, and he received a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. In May 2016 the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the convictions, rejecting Earley's argument that his statements to police should have been thrown out and finding the evidence sufficient to support the verdict. He is serving his sentence at the Lea County Correctional Facility in Hobbs.