‘Messenger of Lord’ Convicted in Attacks on Women : Crime: The ex-graduate student was found guilty in the series of sexual assaults in Long Beach and San Pedro.

A Long Beach jury Monday convicted a former graduate student, who called himself the “Messenger of the Lord,” on 20 felony counts of sexual assault, kidnaping and robbery in a series of attacks on women in Long Beach and San Pedro.

Joseph Brian Socha, 29, faces a maximum sentence of 231 years in prison for the ritualistic attacks on five women, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ken Lamb said. In four of the cases, Socha cut off the victim’s hair and carved upside-down crosses in their backs, the prosecutor said. Socha told some of his victims that he was “St. Peter” and was acting as a “messenger of God.”

Socha coaxed the women into his car at dusk, authorities said. He was found guilty of forced oral copulation, anal penetration with a foreign object, sodomy, kidnaping and robbery.

Deputy Public Defender Carl Kandel said he hopes to persuade the jury that Socha was insane when he attacked the women last year. The jury will begin considering the insanity plea today. Socha would be committed to a mental hospital, probably for life, if the jury finds that he was insane, Kandel said.

Socha, who has been found to be a paranoid schizophrenic, attacked the women, Kandel said, to purify them and to stop them from being prostitutes.

“I’m going to seek to show that my guy is controlled by voices in his paranoia,” Kandel said. “He had no control of his behavior.”

Kendal did not contest most of the allegations against Socha. He did successfully contest the rape charge.

“My client said he had no sexual intercourse with anybody,” Kendal said. “He thought that area was their working area and he thought that was unclean.”

Lamb declined to comment after the verdict because of the ongoing trial.

Socha, who was enrolled in a master’s business administration program at Cal State Dominguez Hills, was arrested last October in a rented room in a Rancho Palos Verdes home. He is being held without bail at the Los Angeles County Jail hospital.

The Superior Court jury acquitted Socha on one count of rape and one count of kidnaping.