Convert Is Suspect in Slaying of Little Girl : Stabbing: Church officials say the model churchgoer suspected of killing the daughter of a friend recently backslid into drug use and strange behavior.

Michael Robert Pacewitz was a model convert at Jacob’s Well Christian Center, a fundamentalist church for young people trying to get off the streets. But about three weeks ago, church officials said, he quit his job at a local T-shirt shop and slid back into drug use.

On Saturday--two days after mooning the church congregation during a service--the 21-year-old Fullerton resident allegedly confessed to police that he had fatally stabbed the 3-year-old daughter of a fellow church member.

While Pacewitz on Sunday was held without bail in the Fullerton City Jail on suspicion of murder, friends and fellow churchgoers blamed Pacewitz’s actions on his renewed use of methamphetamines.

“The devil really ripped him off,” said Andy St. Pierre, 21, an usher at the church and a housemate of Pacewitz’s. “Apparently he just went over the edge.”

According to Fullerton police, Pacewitz had called from a pay phone at 5:54 a.m. Saturday to say he had just “killed a baby.” Officers broke into the apartment of Pacewitz’s church friend, Joanne Boydston, and discovered her daughter, Marcelline Boydston, dead from numerous stab wounds. Boydston’s 9-month-old boy was found unharmed and placed in protective custody.

Funeral services for the daughter are pending later this week, after an autopsy.

Police said Pacewitz was baby-sitting for Boydston at the time of the killing. Boydston, 25, who is separated from her husband and works in a doctor’s office, did not learn of the death until later in the day, at which time officials said she became hysterical. She was questioned and released Saturday night at the Fullerton Police Department.

“It’s a tragic thing, man,” said church Pastor Robert Town. “I just pray for her (Joanne Boydston).”

On Sunday morning, Boydston and her estranged husband briefly attended the Jacob’s Well services inside a Fullerton warehouse but left quickly as Town began to conduct a wedding of two church-goers. She spent much of the rest of the day at the La Habra home of her brother, Rick Boydston.

“I just want people to know that she’s hurting right now,” said Rick Boydston, 32, a chemist. “She misses her daughter very much.”

Boydston added that he too felt uncomfortable discussing the tragedy.

“It’s a lot of grief to have to have your dirty laundry airing in public like this,” he said. “I guess this is something that doesn’t happen all the time. It’s like something you hear about on Donahue.”

Boydston said late Sunday that his sister had gone to a friend’s house and did not want to comment on the stabbing of her daughter. He said both he and his sister are upset, however, about what he called media implications that she was a bad mother.

“It’s not like she was neglectful,” he said. “She’s had her problems being a single parent, but she has a job now and she had her own place. She seemed to be doing OK.”

Boydston added that his sister did not leave her children under Pacewitz’s care Friday night but with another church friend who left Pacewitz in charge after leaving later in the night. Boydston said his sister’s estranged husband usually baby-sits the children.

John Robinson, an usher at the 6-year-old Jacob’s Well church, said he helped convert Boydston and Pacewitz a year ago while they lived in separate rooms of a low-rent Anaheim motel. Pacewitz was living with his mother, while Boydston lived with her family. The two were friends before they joined the church, churchgoers said, and both were suffering from drug addiction before being “saved” in a Bible study class.

Until recently, usher St. Pierre said, Pacewitz was a highly regarded member of the congregation of about 250 people, including many former drug addicts, prison convicts and gang members who were enticed to the church by an outreach program.

“Mike had always been a good guy,” said St. Pierre, a recovering cocaine addict. “He was always at church helping to clean up and mop floors.”

However, a non-church friend who asked not to be identified said that Pacewitz became so “brainwashed” by the Jacob’s Well church that he stood on street corners preaching and warned her that “you could go to hell” for smoking a cigarette.

“He was one of the nicest people I had ever met before he joined that church,” said the woman, a friend in an Anaheim townhome complex where Pacewitz lived before moving to the motel about two years ago. “He came over after being in the church, and he was like a totally different person. He would tell us: ‘You need to be saved.’ ”

The friend speculated: “When he got back on drugs, he probably felt some guilt. I think his mind just snapped.”

In addition to helping clean the church, Pacewitz, a painter and handyman, also worked for a church-operated painting company until he tired of the job about two months ago and took up St. Pierre’s offer to work with him at Expressions Screen Print and Embroidery in Anaheim, St. Pierre said. He worked there until about three weeks ago, when he resigned after making a series of mistakes in embroidering T-shirts, St. Pierre said. “He had printed a couple of numbers on a shirt upside down and the next day said he would not be working anymore,” St. Pierre recalled.

That is when Pacewitz began using methamphetamime, or “crystal,” and became increasingly distant while living at a church-operated home for congregation members, St. Pierre said. Pacewitz moved out to another church home about a week ago and showed up for services last Thursday, during which, Town said, Pacewitz dropped his pants and “mooned” the congregation.

Times staff writer Maria Newman contributed to this story.