Pacewitz Found Guilty of First-Degree Murder : Trial: The former mental patient had said he thought the 3-year-old Fullerton girl he stabbed to death was Satan.

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

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 full day before reaching its verdict. The jurors return today to determine whether Pacewitz 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 was 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 Pacewitz had gone to see after he stabbed his mother. Pacewitz, a close friend to the children’s mother, Joanne Boydston, ended up the lone baby-sitter.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown contended 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, prosecutors said.

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 said Pacewitz concocted the Satan story.

Pacewitz walked into the courtroom with his head down to avoid photographers’ cameras. He kept his head bowed when Superior Court Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon’s clerk read the verdicts.

Pacewitz was found not guilty of the attempted murder of Juan Marin, his mother’s boyfriend. While Fontaine suffered serious stab wounds to her neck, Marin’s wounds were minor. Pacewitz had attacked his mother with a knife he obtained from the kitchen.

Marin testified that Pacewitz stabbed at him with the knife when he intervened in an attempt to save Fontaine.

The victim’s mother was not present at the verdict. But she told reporters at the preliminary hearing that she has forgiven Pacewitz for what he did.