RENO — A former Lake Tahoe-area man on trial for the second time was convicted Wednesday of killing his wife by staging a wreck off a cliff near a Sierra ski resort four years ago.

The Washoe County District Court jury found Peter Bergna guilty of first-degree murder in the 1998 death of his wife, Rinette Riella-Bergna, 49.

Bergna, 49, sat at the defense table shaking his head as the jurors were polled. He was handcuffed and taken immediately into custody.

His elderly mother sat quietly in the front row of the packed courtroom, her face buried in her hand.

The same eight-woman, four-man jury that convicted him returns to the courtroom on Thursday to determine whether he will serve life in prison with or without parole, or 50 years with parole. If given a chance for parole, he must serve at least 20 years before becoming eligible.

“Rinette deserves this day,” Deputy District Attorney Kelli Anne Viloria said afterward.

Riella-Bergna’s family, who had attended both trials, left Reno earlier in the day and were not present when the verdict was announced.

Michael Schwartz, Bergna’s lead defense lawyer, shooed away reporters seeking comment, saying, “Not now.”

Bergna’s first trial ended in November with a hung jury that was leaning 9-3 toward convicting him.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Clifton, who worked on the case for nearly four years, said he was “ecstatic” by Wednesday’s outcome.

“I was just very hopeful we wouldn’t get another hung jury, because that likely would have been the end of this prosecution,” he said.

Though the high-profile case was the biggest of his career, Clifton said he doesn’t view it as a “career-builder.”

“It was just seeking justice,” he said.

Prosecutors accused Bergna of staging the wreck and jumping free of his Ford pickup before his wife crashed 800 feet to her death near the Mount Rose Ski Resort southwest of Reno.

Bergna claimed his brakes failed June 1, 1998, on the darkened, Slide Mountain access road, where he took his wife who had just returned from Europe to discuss their relationship and view the lights of Reno.

He said he was thrown from the window of his truck as it plunged over the mountainside. He telephoned 911 from the side of the cliff with a cell phone he had in his pocket.

The jury received the case late Friday and came back with the verdict shortly after 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Prosecutors characterized Bergna as a calculating killer who committed “almost the perfect crime.”

Defense lawyers said in closing remarks last week that the prosecution’s case “ignores the facts” and hangs thinly on speculation, assumption and “sinister interpretation.”

Prosecutors conceded the case was based largely on circumstantial evidence, but said the string of evidence — from Bergna’s own conflicting statements, to the full, uncapped gasoline cans in the back of his truck — pointed to his guilt.

In her closing statement to jurors, Viloria said Bergna “cared as much about the person he sent over that cliff as he did about the truck — both are replaceable.”

She described Bergna as a man “driven entirely by money and image” who resented his pharmacist wife taking a lower-paying job as an international tour guide and refusing to have children.

Schwartz countered that life and death tragedies are often unexplainable, but that Bergna was not to blame for the wreck.

Clifton said he anticipates an appeal.