The image of his murdered daughter’s face — frozen in terror — will never leave him, a Connecticut lawyer wants a Manhattan judge to know.

Lynde Coit, a Cornell-educated lawyer from Greenwich, brought his raw grief to open court today in hopes that the jealous, monstrous boyfriend who butchered his daughter dead in the Lower East Side last year will never see the light of day.

“When I identified Sarah’s body in the basement of the morgue,” he told the judge, “her injuries — the look on her face, the terror, will haunt me for the rest of my life and haunt the rest of her family,” the father testified, his voice choking with emotion.

Sarah Coit was just 23 years old, and working her big-city dream job in marketing for Lacoste, when her boyfriend and admitted murderer, Raul Barrera, 33, brought months of broken bones, black eyes, and kicked-down doors to a climax, stabbing her some 30 times in her apartment.

Lynde Coit had traveled to the city expecting to face his daughter over a brunch table at San Marzano, her favorite neighborhood pizza restaurant.

The face he saw instead, at the city morgue, was criss-crossed by gashes. Her perfect teeth were bared in a grimace, according to autopsy photos that will be shown in court later in the hearing. The tip of one of her kitchen knives had broken off into her skull.

“Love you,” the father testified of his final text to his daughter, sent as he prepared to set out for the city.

“She had already been dead for eight hours, unknown to him,” the prosecutor told the judge.

Barrera, who pleaded guilty four days ago in hopes of a sentencing break, had ended the woman’s life with “breathtaking viciousness,” prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Richard Carruthers, who will decide the slaughterer’s fate.

“There were so many soul-shattering screams that half-a-dozen New Yorkers got out of their beds at 2:30 in the morning,” Bogdanos said. These neighbors roamed their hallways, calling, “Where are you? Where are you?”

“Help! Help me!” Sarah kept screaming, according to witness testimony.

Because of the way sound echoed in the walk-up, tenement apartments that line the block, neighbors thought her screams were coming from the building next door to hers, at 61 Clinton Street.

It was 35 minutes after her first screams when an officer finally knocked on her apartment door as part of a canvasing of 63 Clinton Street. “Are you OK?” asked the cop.

“A voice called back weakly, ‘No,'” the prosecutor told the judge. “Can you come to the door,” the officer asked. Again weakly came the response, “No,” the last word Sarah ever spoke.

“Sarah Coit was still alive in a puddle of blood,” the prosecutor told the judge of that moment, as cops broke down her door.

One of Barerra’s stab wounds had partially eviscerated her.

The floor was littered with spent knives — bent and broken knives now on the prosecution table, in five cardboard evidence boxes, for the duration of the several-day-long hearing.

Barrera can be sentenced to anywhere from the mandatory minimum of 15 years to life in prison to the maximum allowed by law, 25 to life in prison. The judge will set his sentence based on testimony by prosecution witnesses and defense witnesses. The DA’s office has an additional reason for pursuing a hearing — making a record of the heinousness of the murder that can be used against Barrera at any future appellate and parole proceedings.

Defense lawyer Paul Feinman is expected to argue that Barerra deserves a cut in time because of mental health issues.

Barerra has only a minor, misdemeanor assault in his criminal history. Additionally, a woman with whom he’d had a child had called the cops on him several times, but never pressed charges.

“Domestic violence is not just a criminal justice issue, it’s a national health crisis,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance told reporters after sitting in on the father’s testimony.

“Enforcement alone is not going to be the answer — we need prevention and outreach,” he said. His office is collaborating on a multi-agency “Family Justice Center” that would offer victims counseling and social services in addition to the opportunity to meet with prosecutors, he said.

There were 92 domestic violence-related homicides city-wide last year, he said.