He resigned in 2005, halfway through his four-year contract and months after the suspicious contract scheme was revealed in The Baltimore Sun. In addition to making $250,000 a year, Hornsby received a $125,000 severance payment when he quit the system, the second-largest in the state.
During both the November 2007 trial that ended with a deadlocked jury and last summer's retrial, Owens testified that she had split a $20,000 share of her LeapFrog sales commission with Hornsby by placing $10,000 in cash on the bed they shared in his townhouse in Mitchellville. He scooped up the money without a word, she told jurors.
In the months leading up to that action, she said, Hornsby occasionally asked her, "Where's my cut?"
Ultimately, a grand jury brought felony charges against Hornsby after investigators concluded that he illegally steered contracts not only to LeapFrog but to E-Rate Manager, a shell company run by Hornsby's business partner, Cynthia Joffrion.
Hornsby covertly arranged to get thousands of dollars from the proceeds of the lucrative contracts he helped push through for both companies, according to the indictment.
Jurors watched surveillance tapes in which Hornsby, sitting in a hotel room with a glass of wine, is heard advising Joffrion how to pay him a $145,000 kickback by buying antiques, classic cars, paintings and other valuable items that could then be sold.
"If I give you cash ... how in the [expletive] are they going to know that?" Joffrion asked Hornsby during the Dec. 20, 2004, meeting. "I'm not telling anybody. I'm not going to jail."
"Me either," Hornsby replied. The tape then shows him stuffing a $1,000 down payment into his pocket.
Prosecutors said Hornsby ordered school employees to destroy e-mail messages that might have implicated him. One employee kept a copy of the e-mail backup tapes, giving prosecutors a timeline for the deals.
