JOLIET, Ill. — It took five years to get to the case to trial and five weeks to get through all the testimony. But it took just 50 minutes of deliberations for jurors to find Christopher Vaughn guilty.

The suburban Chicago computer specialist was convicted of fatally shooting his wife and three school-age children during what he told them was a road trip to a water park.

Vaughn slaughtered his family because he saw them as obstacles to his dream of starting a new life subsisting in the Canadian wilderness, prosecutors told jurors before they withdrew to deliberate.