LOCAL : Pacewitz Convicted of Murder in Stabbing of Anaheim Girl

Michael Robert Pacewitz, who said he killed a 3-year-old girl because he thought she was Satan, was found guilty of first-degree murder this morning.

Pacewitz, 21, was also found guilty of the attempted murder of his mother and assault with a deadly weapon on her boyfriend in a separate incident at their Anaheim apartment in March. That stabbing attack occurred just hours before the little girl was stabbed to death at her Fullerton home.

The jury deliberated less than a day before reaching its verdict.

The jurors return tomorrow to determine whether Pacewitz, a former mental patient, was sane at the time of the killing. If he is found insane, he would be committed to a state hospital for an indeterminate period.

Pacewitz called police in the early morning hours of March 3 and said he had just killed 3-year-old Marcelline Onick at the Fullerton apartment where she lived with her mother and baby brother. Police found the boy crying not far from the girl’s mutilated body in a bedroom. She had been stabbed 44 times and her head nearly severed with a butcher knife.

The mother had left the children in the care of the baby boy’s father, but he turned those duties over to a friend whom Pacewitz had gone to see after he stabbed his mother. Pacewitz, a friend of the children’s mother, Joanne Boydston, ended up the lone baby-sitter for them.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown contends that Pacewitz killed the little girl to get back at his own mother, who considered the girl like a granddaughter. Pacewitz was upset with his mother, Elena Fontaine, because he claimed she had failed to assist him when he told her he needed emotional help.

Pacewitz claimed to his doctors after his arrest that he thought his mother was Satan and was trying to kill him and that he thought Satan had taken over the little girl’s body. But prosecutor Brown claims Pacewitz concocted the Satan story.