After just under four hours of deliberations, a jury on Tuesday found Eleazar Yisrael guilty of murder.

The jury found Yisrael, 31, of Hazleton, guilty as charged on counts of first-degree murder, robbery, burglary, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. As the jury foreman read the verdict, Yisrael lowered his head, looking down with his hands in front of his mouth.The verdict means Yisrael will spend the rest of his life in prison. He was ordered to serve life plus 174 to 348 months in state prison.Yisrael was accused of murdering Samuel Vacante, 52, who was shot in the back with his own .22-caliber rifle inside the garage of his home at 20 Coventry Road, Drums, on Aug. 31, 2015.Yisrael's motive, according to prosecutors, was to allow his girlfriend, 53-year-old Lisa Vacante, to gain sole possession of the family's house, which was being sold as part of the couple's impending divorce.Prosecutors say Yisrael wrapped the body in a tent, loaded it into Samuel Vacante's Kia Cadenza and hauled it out to Penn Forest Township, where he ditched it in a clearing off Petrarch Trail.During closing arguments Tuesday morning, Yisrael's defense accused Lisa Vacante of lying when she testified that she had agreed to sell the house and asked jurors to consider who really stood to benefit from Samuel Vacante's death."Who wanted the house? Who had the motivation to get the house?" defense attorney Allyson Kacmarski asked. "Not Eleazar Yisrael."She reminded jurors of the "unique opportunity" they had to hear Yisrael's version of events when he testified Monday and asked them to believe his story. Assistant District Attorney Daniel Zola, however, noted that Lisa Vacante was the one who was working and supporting Yisrael - meaning he would be able to get out of the rundown double-block home where he lived in Hazleton."He was the one who stood to benefit because there was value in that house," Zola said."It was big, it was beautiful, and it was something that he wanted." Zola said there was "no evidence whatsoever" that Lisa Vacante was involved in a murder conspiracy - video surveillance showed she was at work at the time Samuel Vacante was killed - and that all the defense had offered was "wild speculation."The prosecutor noted the "mountain of evidence" jurors have seen against Yisrael alone, saying the explanations the defendant offered from the stand on Monday didn't make any sense."The guy has an excuse for everything," Zola said. "None of his testimony passes the smell test." Butler Township police testified to stopping Yisrael as he walked in the direction of Samuel Vacante's home in the dead of night, wearing camouflage fatigues, early the day of the shooting. From the stand, Yisrael claimed he had just decided to go out for a walk to clear his head. The reason he didn't use his own cellphone for 22 hours starting shortly before that encounter was because he just didn't want to speak to Lisa Vacante, who was trying to hook up for sex, Yisrael claimed.The defendant, who was recorded getting out of Samuel Vacante's Kia on the surveillance system of a Blakeslee gas station a few hours after the shooting, claimed he was interested in buying the car from a friend and was out for a test drive.Yisrael also claimed his thumb print was found on the back of Samuel Vacante's license plate - which police found in the spare tire well in the car under a mat stained with the victim's blood - because he touched the plate while it was sitting on a garbage can at the friend's house. As far as the victim's blood that police found on Yisrael's pants, the defendant claimed it came from a transfer when he laid them in the Kia to do some asbestos work at the friend's place.The keys to Samuel Vacante's car, which police found in a speaker in his bedroom, must have belonged to Lisa Vacante, Yisrael claimed. Zola, however, said the evidence showed that Yisrael had been on a calculated hunt the day he killed Samuel Vacante. But things hit a snag early on because the victim was on the phone with his girlfriend when Yisrael shot him center-mass in the back "like a coward," piercing his spine and heart, Zola said.In a rush to get rid of the body, Yisrael went to Penn Forest Township and left the body in a clearing like trash next to a septic mound in a familiar area, about a half mile from where he used to live, he said.The story Yisrael told on the stand was just "an excuse by a desperate man" who thought he could talk his way out of a lifetime in prison, Zola said. "To believe his version of events you would have to disbelieve all of our evidence," he said. "It's completely unreasonable and it's completely unbelievable."