Suicidal Blond Found Guilty, Mentally Ill

— -- A suicidal ex-model from Illinois was found guilty but mentally ill for killing three beloved local musicians in an attempt to end her own life.

"She never touched her brakes, she never attempted to maneuver around the other car," said Cook County Judge Garritt E. Howard, according to the Chicago Sun Times. "The evidence is overwhelming the defendant was trying to commit suicide."

Howard ruled Jeanette Sliwinski was guilty of three counts of reckless homicide and one count of aggravated battery. She faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

"I believe the defendant was being truthful when she said she only intended to hurt herself and no one else,'' said Howard, who heard the case without a jury.

Defense attorneys had argued that Sliwinski, then 23, was suffering from delusions when she struck a Honda Civic stopped at a red light in a northern Chicago suburb in July 2005. The car was carrying Michael Dahlquist, 39; John Glick, 35; and Douglas Meis, 29, three musicians who worked day jobs together at an audio electronics company.

Sliwinski will be transferred to a mental institution, and if at some point she is deemed mentally competent, she'll be moved to a prison, according to The Associated Press.

For the family of one of the victims, Sliwinski's actions still engender the kind of bitterness so common to grieving relatives.

"The one thing that would have brought this thing to closure would have been had she been successful in what she set out to do that day," David Meis, brother of victim Douglas Meis, told ABC News at the start of the trial, referring to the suicide attempt.

"She left this big, open-ended, ironic twist, in that she took three wonderful, beautiful lives and walked away with a broken ankle," Meis said. He said that his father was a Navy pilot and that the family moved often.

"A lot of time when you move like that, your best friends become your brothers. We were a very close-knit family."

The crash and subsequent arrest brought Sliwinski Internet infamy. Many blogs and Web sites have posted modeling pictures of Sliwinski since she was arrested.