A Houston jury this afternoon found Lucas Coe, 28, guilty of raping his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter shortly before her June 2009 death.

Jurors in visiting state District Judge Doug Shaver’s court deliberated Coe’s fate for three and a half hours before convicting him of super aggravated sexual assault of a child.

Prosecutors argued the former handyman spent weeks babysitting his girlfriend’s children, then raped the pre-schooler as other children swam in a backyard pool.

“He’s not going to go right in there and rape her,” Assistant Harris County District Attorney Colleen Barnett said in closing arguments. “He’s going to groom her.”

In a whisper to jurors, Barnett said Coe worked to lure the child, then cleaned up the crime scene.

“That little girl probably bled everywhere,” Barnett said.

Coe stood silently as the verdict was read. After hearing the decision, Coe sat and shook his head at his family members, who sobbed.

Coe’s lawyers had argued that the girl suffered vaginal trauma from of a straddle fall.

Coe’s attorney, Rick DeToto, pointed to testimony that Emma Thompson’s vaginal area had abrasions consistent with a fall.

Coe faces a maximum punishment of life in prison as jurors begin the punishment phase of the trial Wednesday. Because of the heightened charge, Coe will serve every day of whatever sentence the jury hands down.

Prosecutors said Emma died from abdominal trauma, including a severed pancreas, at Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital on June 27, 2009.

In the weeks before the girl’s death, Coe was dating her mother, Abigail Young, a former registered nurse. Young was sentenced in July to 20 years in prison for failing to protect her child.

The girl died with more than 70 bruises on her body and a vaginal tear.

“She was dying a slow, painful death due to blunt force trauma to her abdomen,” Barnett said.

She noted that the girl and her mother were diagnosed with genital herpes, a sexually transmitted disease, weeks before the death.

DeToto had argued that the disease could have been transmitted by casual contact with Coe or Young.

The doctor who discovered the child had genital herpes a month before she died notified Texas Child Protective Services.

Prosecutors said Young lied to investigators about whether Coe had been living with her and babysitting the girl.

Coe was not charged in Emma’s death. Barnett told jurors Coe was prosecuted for the super aggravated charge rather than murder because it carries a potentially stricter punishment.

brian.rogers@chron.com