Montgomery IT manager convicted in failed plot to kill lover's husband "One of the strangest trials I have ever seen - in this courthouse or on TV," added Stephen Chaikin, the lead prosecutor. Cipriani, 44, posed as a building inspector to lure his target to a home the man was having renovated in Bethesda. Alone with him inside the house and wearing the fake beard, Cipriani pulled out a gun. But a contractor showed up, the target dashed out the door and Cipriani's plan fell apart. Among the other details to surface during the trial: sex in a Census Bureau parking garage, party games with blind-folded players and a drive to Ohio to get a gun. It all amounted to a murder plot that was as specific as it was bungled, as comical as it was terrifying. Cipriani faces the possibility of life in prison - a remarkable turn for the mild-looking married contracting officer, who supervised 16 people. He speaks Italian and Spanish, recently listed "playing with my kids" as a favorite activity, and considers Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Ghandi as sources of inspiration. His wife supported him to the end, sitting in the front row of the courtroom and watching him sadly as he was led off in handcuffs. Cipriani is due back in court June 7 for sentencing before Circuit Court Judge Robert Greenberg. After the verdict, the judge said he had little doubt Cipriani intended to shoot his intended victim in the head. Jurors were warned at the start that they would be in for an interesting trial. In her opening statement, defense attorney Jenny Page said Cipriani was only trying to scare the man. Page said the sexual affair fueled her client's odd behavior, that it was hard to understand but hardly criminal. Such were his feelings for the woman who worked for him - and her toward him, Page said. "She had to change her schedule so that she could get the most remote spot in the garage so that these two lovebirds could recklessly have sex at work whenever they wanted," Page said. Elements of the story she and Chaikin told, along with witnesses, go back to October 2010. At the Census Bureau headquarters in Suitland, Cipriani began flirting with one of his subordinates. That led to long walks on Census grounds, lunches at Wegmans and eventually, starting in March or April, 2011, an affair. "Hope you know how often I think of you," Cipriani wrote to her on a card submitted as evidence. It's hopeless, I am truly taken and smitten by you, you're very special to me. and I wanted to say I love you. In June, the woman broke off the romance but not the contact. She'd buy him a shirt or bring him lunch. Hope was still alive in this defendant's mind, and that's what drove him to do this," Chaikin said.