HOULTON – A jury working into the night Friday convicted a northern Maine man in the death of his girlfriend whose body still hasn’t been found 15 years after she went missing.

WAGM-TV reports that jurors found 76-year-old pawnshop owner George Jaime Sr., of Presque Isle, guilty of intentional or knowing murder in the death of Starlett “Star” Vining.

Prosecutors said he stabbed and beat her until she died. The defense argued there’s no evidence Jaime did that because Vining’s body was never found.

The defense rested its case midmorning on Friday without calling Jaime to testify. Jurors got the case in the afternoon and deliberated into the night.

Jaime’s former daughter-in-law, Paris Voisine, testified Wednesday that she heard her husband and a friend describe how Jaime had dismembered and burned the body parts in a furnace before disposing of the ashes.

Voisine was married to Ted Jaime, who testified that the he saw Vining’s bloody body in his father’s apartment and then left to enlist the help of a friend, James Campbell, to help clean up the murder scene.

Jaime has been held without bail since his arrest in July 2012 at The Star City Trading Post, the pawnshop he operated on Presque Isle’sMain Street.

Police said Vining was working at a grocery store in Presque Isle when she simply stopped coming to work in October 1998. She was 38 at the time.

Family members didn’t officially report her as missing until 2006, saying they didn’t do it sooner because she was known to frequently relocate.