DENVER -- A jury on Monday found a Colorado Springs woman guilty of three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her three children.

The jury returned the verdict after three hours of deliberation. Deborah Nicholls was found guilty of burning her three children in a fire at her home in March 2003.

Prosecutors argued she and her husband planned the fire to collect insurance money. Timothy Nicholls was convicted of three counts of murder in a separate trial and is serving life without parole, prosecutors said.

Nicholls decided not to take the stand in her own defense.

Prosecutors Said Woman Burned Kids For Money

Prosecutors said Nicholls and her husband set fire to the house and killed the children, hoping the insurance payment would get them out of financial problems caused by drug use.

Deborah Nicholls doused a couch with a flammable solvent and left for a bar, and Timothy Nicholls lit the fire, prosecutors said.

Deborah Nicholls had said the fire was accidental and was started by candles. Her attorneys said she was a loving mother and a good homemaker, and that the day she lost her children was the worst day of her life.

The fire killed Jay, 11, Sophia, 5, and Sierra Nicholls, 3.

Firefighters Clark Gaddie, Eric Umenhofer and Bryan Starkey testified during the trial that flames were shooting out the front of the house when they arrived that night. Umenhofer said Timothy Nicholls was standing on the lawn wrapped in a blanket, looking distressed and like he had been "beaten with a baseball bat."

The three firefighters crawled beneath a partly opened garage door, kicked down a door and groped through the house on their hands and knees, looking for the children as other firefighters poured water on the flames.

Starkey said the front room, where the fire started, looked like it was "painted in flames," with a blanket of fire up to 2 feet thick on everything in the room. Gaddie said he could feel the heat through protective clothing meant to withstand a temperature of 2,000 degrees.

Umenhofer said he found what he thought was a doll in the master bedroom, but learned later it was Sierra.

"It didn't feel like a human," he said, later adding, "It felt like a rubber doll. She was swollen."

Umenhofer said he left the bedroom, found Jay lying on a pile of laundry and dashed out of the house with him.

Starkey then found Sierra, ran out with her and laid her on the lawn next to Jay, who was being attended to by medical personnel.

Gaddie, meanwhile, found Sophia behind the door in another bedroom and brought her out.

The firefighters said Jay was badly burned and showed no sign of life. Sierra, dressed in pajamas with a cartoon character on the front and "footsies" that enveloped her feet, appeared unburned but with smoke smudges on her face. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.

Sophia died later at a hospital.

The firefighters told jurors the intensity of the fire was great.

"Usually we lose a couch or a chair," Gaddie said. "We don't have that type of destruction."