BROCKTON, Mass. (AP) -It has been more than a quarter century since Ruth Masters was killed in Plymouth in a homicide that horrified the state. Now, her family waits to find out if a jury will convict the man accused of her murder.

The trial of Eric H. Anderson Jr., the man prosecutors have accused of stabbing Masters to death in 1977, ended Friday, but jurors adjourned for the weekend without reaching a verdict. They resume deliberations Monday in Brockton Superior Court.

“We’re just holding our breath right now. That’s all I want to say,” Wayne Masters, Ruth Masters’ husband, told The Patriot Ledger of Quincy. “We’ll try to take our minds off it, but it’s not going to work.”

Anderson, 76, has spent more than three decades in prison for attacks on women. During the trial, his ex-wife, a son, a daughter and a stepson testified against him.

Anderson was charged with murdering the fourth-grade teacher from Hanson on May 14, 1977, after she took a different path while riding her bike with her husband and 9-year-old daughter in Plymouth’s Myles Standish State Forest. Her stabbed and mutilated body was found the next day.

Anderson was indicted in Masters’ slaying in 1998, but it took five years for his case to go to trial as prosecutors appealed a judge’s decision to preclude the jury from hearing about his prior convictions. The state Supreme Judicial Court upheld the lower court’s decision earlier this year.

During the trial, several people testified that they were stalked in the forest the same day Masters was killed by a man who fit Anderson’s description. Three inmates who served time with Anderson said he confessed to killing a woman and cutting her up.

Anderson’s defense attorney, Bruce Ferg, told the jury there is no DNA evidence or fingerprints linking Anderson to the killing. He said the inmates testified to improve their chances of parole or winning new trials.

Anderson was indicted in 1998 after he allegedly admitted to the murder while in prison in Maine, where he was sentenced for aggravated assault and kidnapping in a December 1990 attack on a woman.

Anderson came to Maine after serving 11 years in a Massachusetts state prison for attacking a Plymouth woman at knifepoint and tying her to a tree five months after Masters’ killing.

AP-ES-11-09-03 1657EST