AUBURN – Amanda Fogg never met her father, James Vining. She never will. Liane Micks will never again get to visit her disabled son John Graffam, bringing him groceries.

A jury decided Monday that Vining, 43, and Graffam, 30, were murdered by Thomas Dyer and Gary Gauthier Jr.

The victims’ lives ended during a drunken late-night encounter in the woods near abandoned railroad tracks off Foss Road in Lewiston.

A medical examiner said the two Auburn men died from blunt force trauma to the head. The murder weapon: an aluminum baseball bat.

A jury of six men and six women came to agreement Monday after about four hours of deliberations. Androscoggin County Superior Court Justice Thomas Delahanty II sent the jury home Friday after three hours of deliberation. Jurors reached their decision after they resumed Monday morning for only one additional hour.

After the jury was dismissed, Dyer, 21, and Gauthier, 26, stood and were handcuffed. Gauthier turned to the back of the courtroom as he was led out by law enforcement authorities. He put two fingers to his lips and blew a kiss to his new wife, Kim, who stood at a bench in the second row, weeping.

Members of the victims’ families huddled, hugging and crying over the verdicts.

Outside, on the courthouse steps, Alice Keene, Vining’s girlfriend and longtime friend, said she hoped her boyfriend’s killers would be sent to prison for life.

“Neither one of them had a conscience. They shouldn’t be on the streets,” Keene said.

She talked about Dyer’s decision to leave her boyfriend bleeding to death at the scene while Dyer and Gauthier went to Wal-Mart to buy shovels to bury him.

Dyer “could have helped Jim at some point,” she said. “He knew there was going to be trouble before they went out there” to the train tracks.

Vining’s death also robbed her of the life she had, Keene said.

“I cried for 10 days. I cried before I went to sleep. I cried when I woke up. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t take care of my kids, my animals, my house.”

Her doctor put her on medication to keep her from crying, she said. But the tears leaked out Monday after the jury returned its verdicts.

“As you can see, it hasn’t been working.”

One of Vining’s two daughters, Amanda Fogg, 22, stood on the steps with Keene.

“They took someone away from me,” she said. Had Vining gotten help after the beatings with the bat, “my dad probably still would have been alive,” she said.

Keene said Fogg, tall, red-haired and freckled, is the “spitting image” of her father, whom she never got to meet.

Vining’s younger sister, Tina Veinott, said her brother was a gentle man.

“Jim enjoyed life,” she said. “He would never hurt anybody.”

The defendants await sentencing. Both defense lawyers held out the possibility of appeals.

Assistant Attorneys General Fernand LaRochelle and Lisa Marchese built their case on DNA swabs from clothing found buried on a vacant lot in Pownal. The clothes were found by chance by the caretaker of the vast property.

Blood on the bat that was buried in the hole matched that of the victims. Also buried was a bag of clothes stained with blood matching that of the victims. Prosecutors tested the clothes to determine who wore the Red Sox jersey, blue jeans, shorts, T-shirts, socks, a sweatshirt and sneakers. Most were linked to Dyer and Gauthier.

But it was on the fourth day of the trial and after prosecutors rested their case that one of the defendants painted a picture for the jury of what happened the night of Sept. 23, 2005. That testimony might have helped convict both defendants.

Dyer testified for hours, detailing the night of drinking that led to the killings.

He pointed the finger at Gauthier as instigator. Dyer said Gauthier had a feud with Vining over his assertion that he had served in the U.S. Marines.

LaRochelle said the two defendants, after they were thrown out of a house, lured the two victims out to the killing spot with the promise of marijuana plants.

Dyer said Gauthier beat the two men, then held a foot-long knife to Dyer’s throat and threatened to kill him if he didn’t join in.

Dyer’s lawyer, Peter Rodway, said after the trial that he only put Dyer on the stand after Gauthier’s lawyer announced unexpectedly that he planned to have a Maine State Police detective who investigated the case testify about Dyer’s confession to police last January.

Gauthier’s lawyer, Robert Ruffner, said he had to defend his client after Rodway told the jury that Gauthier was wearing the most incriminating clothes and set about to prove it using DNA.

Both defense attorneys said there may be grounds for appeal on the indictment, which charged each of the defendants with a single count of murder including both victims. While instructing jurors, before they were sent out to deliberate, Delahanty had told them each defendant was charged with causing the death of Graffam “and/or” Vining. That doesn’t agree with the indictment, the defense attorneys said.

Gauthier never testified during the trial. Afterward, his wife, Kim, blamed Dyer for her husband’s conviction.

“I just want everyone to know that Tommy’s lies brought Gary down, because he did not do this.”

Ruffner, who earlier had sought separate trials for the defendants, said having both Gauthier and Dyer at a single trial made it more difficult to defend his client, a ruling he may appeal.

“It’s pretty clear from the evidence that the jury allowed Tommy Dyer’s lies to claim yet another victim in this tragedy,” he said.