A Suffolk Superior Court jury today convicted a Dorchester man of murder for the shooting death of George “Jeffrey” Thompson last year, reaching its verdict just a few hours into deliberations, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

Jurors found OMAY TAVARES (D.O.B. 4/24/89) guilty of first-degree murder under the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. Tavares faces a mandatory life term without the possibility of parole at a sentencing hearing tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. in courtroom 808.
“We hope this verdict allows Mr. Thompson’s family some sense of satisfaction,” Conley said. “The evidence was clear and the testimony conclusive. This was the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed man who posed no threat to his assailant. If there can be closure for those who loved him, perhaps it can begin here.”

Assistant District Attorney Gretchen Lundgren proved during seven days of trial testimony that Tavares called Thompson repeatedly on the day and night of Jan. 7, 2010, then visited his Rosseter Street home at about 8:45 p.m.

After identifying himself to a departing witness as “O,” the evidence showed, he went inside the residence, shot Thompson, and fled, pulling the front door shut behind him. Witnesses at the scene described the assailant as light-skinned, 19 to 21 years old, standing under 6’1” tall, with a slim build – all characteristics that describe Tavares.

Cell phone and tower records proved that Tavares made the calls from his own cell phone, with those calls hitting towers close to Thompson’s house and not near the Greenbrier Street location where he claimed to have been. A “pristine” fingerprint matching Tavares was recovered from the doorknob at Rosseter Street, showing that he was the last person to have touched it before Boston Police froze the scene.

A photograph recovered from Tavares’ phone depicted a hand holding a Taurus Model 917 9mm semiautomatic handgun. Based on the rifling characteristics of that weapon’s barrel and the qualities of the projectiles recovered from Thompson’s body, prosecutors alleged that it was the murder weapon.

Katherine Moran was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Tavares was represented by attorney John Himmelstein.