*MEDIA RELEASE*
MURRIETA MAN CONVICTED OF MURDERING HIS WIFE FOR FINANCIAL GAIN

FRENCH VALLEY - Jurors today convicted a Murrieta man of first-degree murder for the brutal killing of his wife for financial gain.

It took the six-man, six-woman jury less than three hours of deliberating to decide that Kelle Lee Jarka, 41, had murdered his wife in the couple's Murrieta home on April 28, 2008. The jury also found true that Jarka committed the murder for financial gain.

"The innocent victim in the case was murdered for no reason other than the greed of a selfish killer," said Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco. "Justice was done with this conviction."

Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky, who prosecuted the case, said: "This jury was able to see through Mr. Jarka's lies and fabrications and find the sad but inescapable reality that he brutally murdered his wife of 20 years and the mother of his two children."

Isabelle Jarka, 40, was struck in the head with a blunt object nearly a dozen times the day she was murdered. The couple's youngest child was in a nearby crib when Isabelle was murdered.

Within a month of the murder, Kelle Jarka had taken out three insurance policies on his wife totaling $1.3 million and naming him as the beneficiary. A forensic examination of a laptop computer used by Kelle Jarka revealed dozens of Web searches involving how to inflict death and insurance polices.

Jarka is scheduled to return before Judge Timothy Freer at 8:30 a.m., Nov. 6, 2009, in Dept. S302 at the Southwest Justice Center in French Valley to be sentenced.

Jarka faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in the case, SWF025646.