[chris]

Clint Gerard Horvatt and William Dewey Foster received life sentences after Horvatt arranged a staged roadside robbery that killed his fiancee, Summer J. Smith, near Melrose, Florida, in December 2008.

Horvatt, then 32, called 911 on Dec. 12, 2008, and told a dispatcher that a gunman had walked up to his truck on State Road 26, demanded the couple's wallets and Smith's purse, and shot Smith, 36, in the head when she resisted, according to the Putnam County Sheriff's Office. "He was black," Horvatt said when asked to describe the gunman, and he pressed to be allowed to chase the car because "my girlfriend is bleeding real bad."

Detectives said the story was fabricated. Investigators determined Horvatt had arranged with a friend, Foster, then 53, to kill Smith, and that Foster walked up and shot her as the two men's trucks pulled alongside each other on the highway.

Deputies recovered the murder weapon, Smith's purse and Horvatt's wallet buried near Foster's home, contradicting the robbery account. The Sheriff's Office said Horvatt first approached Foster in November 2008 about killing Smith, and the two spoke several times before the shooting, which happened as Horvatt and Smith were driving to Gainesville to shop for Christmas.

Deputies said Horvatt was still married to another woman at the time and that Smith may have been planning to confront the wife, or had learned information that could have caused Horvatt trouble with the Department of Children and Families. Horvatt and Foster were arrested less than two weeks after the shooting and each charged with first-degree murder.

A jury convicted Horvatt of first-degree murder as a principal in November 2010, deliberating about an hour, and a judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole. Foster was convicted of first-degree murder the following month and also received a life sentence. Both remain in Florida Department of Corrections custody.