A jury quickly found Patrick Barrett guilty of second-degree murder for smashing his fiancée’s head with a hammer.

Barrett, 41, admitted he bludgeoned Lucita Charles, 27, to death on May 31, 2010, and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Crown Attorney Jill Cameron rejected the guilty plea and prosecuted Barrett for second-degree murder.

“It was a quick verdict,” Cameron said Friday, noting the Ontario Superior Court jury was charged Thursday afternoon and deliberated for five hours.

“It implies there wasn’t a lot of difficulty coming to a decision,” said Cameron, adding her prayers are now with Charles’ orphaned son, Mateo, 10, who has cerebral palsy and is in the care of Safe Haven in Etobicoke.

On the night of the murder, Charles wrongly thought she was pregnant and told Barrett she no longer wanted to marry and was going to have an abortion.

Barrett, a devout Christian who already had three sons with two other women, thought God was rewarding him with a daughter for helping Charles take care of Mateo.

As he argued with Charles in their apartment bedroom, Barrett left to take cigarette breaks and read his Bible, specifically Ecclesiastes 3.

“There is a time for everything,” that passage begins. “A time to be born and a time to die . . . a time to kill and a time to heal.”

After reading the passage, Barrett returned to the bedroom where Charles was trying to sleep and began pestering her about the abortion again. She asked to be left alone.

Barrett walked to the kitchen, grabbed a hammer, and returned to smash Charles in the head, at least 11 times, as she lay helpless in bed.

Dr. Michael Pickup testified Charles’ skull was shattered along with her jaw, and bone fragments were embedded in her brain which was visible through a hole by her temple.

Barrett ripped pages out of his Bible after killing Charles and pinned them to her body with a knife. Cameron said Barrett chose a specific passage: “That which is crooked cannot be made straight.”

Barrett then withdrew $200 from Charles’ bank account and fled with his mistress to Montreal. Upon his return two days later, he was arrested in Oshawa and confessed to killing Charles, sobbing as he claimed he didn’t want it to happen.

“I mean you keep saying I’m a monster,” Barrett told police, weeping at the end of his interrogation. “It takes, it takes a monster to do what I did.”

Barrett’s conviction carries an automatic life sentence, with a maximum of 25 years and minimum of 10 before he’s eligible for parole.

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Justice Nola Garton asked the jury for parole recommendations; 10 jurors recommended 10 years, one recommended 13 years and one had no recommendation.

Garton will sentence Barrett Nov. 13.