A New Brunswick woman was convicted Monday in Connecticut of being an accessory to murder for the October 1989 beating death of her husband.

Nicole Pelletier, 41, of St. Leonard, New Brunswick, was extradited last July from her home. She now faces a maximum of 60 years in prison in connection with the murder of her husband, Olidor Pelletier, according to a news release from the Connecticut Chief State Attorney’s Office.

Nicole Pelletier is expected to be sentenced in New Britain, Conn., on July 12.

Pelletier was convicted of arranging the death of her husband who died 13 days after he was found beaten in the couple’s Townline Road home in Terryville, Conn., according to Mark Dupuis, spokesman for the Chief State’s Attorney’s Office.

“This was not a lengthy trial, as murder trials go,” Dupuis said. “The defense only called one witness in the trial, an investigator from the Public Defender’s Office.

“The maximum she can get is life in prison,” Dupuis said. “In Connecticut, that’s defined as 60 years.”

The state’s major witness, according to Dupuis, was Jose Rubert, Pelletier’s alleged boyfriend, who pleaded guilty to murder in the case in 1990. Rubert, sentenced to 30 years for the murder, told law enforcement officials in 1995 that Pelletier had conspired with him in killing her husband, Dupuis said.

Other witnesses included relatives of Olidor Pelletier and the inspector who was the original investigator in the case.

Pelletier had been fighting extradition since 1996, but was extradited to Connecticut on July 20, 2001. She had lived in St. Leonard, located across the St. John River from Van Buren, for 12 years. The woman had returned to her hometown, where she raised her two sons, within a month of her husband’s death in 1989.

The case was a long-standing one taken over by the Cold Case Unit of the Connecticut Chief State Attorney’s Office. Pelletier is the fifth person convicted as a result of the Cold Case Unit since it was established in 1998. The unit works with local and state police to investigate crimes that go unsolved for a long period of time.

The trial started on May 6, and the 12-member jury took the case under advisement on May 14. After three days of deliberation, on Thursday, May 16, a member of the jury was removed by Judge Carmen Espinoza for referring to a dictionary for a definition.

The jury, with an alternate named to replace the removed juror, started its new deliberations Monday morning. A guilty verdict was announced early Monday afternoon, according to Dupuis.

Assistant State Attorney John J. Russotto was the prosecutor, and the public defender for Pelletier was Claude Chong.

The Pelletiers had been married about 10 years when Olidor Pelletier, a machine operator who was out of work with a disability, was killed.

Pelletier, 31, was savagely beaten with a baseball bat on Oct. 2, 1989. He was found beaten and bloody by a nephew, Germain Gosselin, and died of massive cerebral trauma without regaining consciousness on Oct. 15, 1989, in a Plymouth, Conn., hospital, Dupuis said.

Gosselin had been asked by Nicole Pelletier to check the house after she repeatedly tried to call there to speak to her husband, who was not answering the telephone.

Rubert, according to Connecticut police, tied Olidor Pelletier hand and foot. The beating victim was found in the cellar of the single-family home.

Rubert was charged with the murder two months after Pelletier’s death and convicted in 1990, five years before telling police Nicole Pelletier was involved.