ELIZABETH -- A Union Township man accused of stabbing three people in what he claimed was a religious mission was convicted today of two counts of attempted murder.

A jury of eight women and four men found Morgan Mesz guilty of attempting to kill Carolyn Bunnell, 58, and her partner Barbara Perrine, 53, on Jan. 7, 2011 when the women found him in the back yard shed of their home on Longview Road in Union.

Mesz, armed with a knife and hatchet, told the victims he was digging a "portal to hell" in their shed, and said he had to kill the women because they were killing babies.

The jury found Mesz not guilty of attempted murder of the third victim, Hernan Agudelo, 42, the women's next door neighbor. Jurors found Mesz guilty of the lesser charge of third-degree aggravated assault on Agudelo. Authorities say Agudelo rescued the women during the attack.

Bunnell and Perrine, after hearing the verdict, hugged each other and their relatives and Union County Assistant Prosecutor Albert Cernadas, who tried the case.

"Good," Perrine said of the jury's decision. "We waited a long time for this. It was very nerve racking. Justice was served," Perrine said. According to testimony in the trial, Perrine was stabbed and slashed and needed 25 units of blood during surgery, having lost so much that she suffered a stroke.

Bunnell, who suffered a skull fracture, multiple stab wounds and a severed jugular vein in the attack, echoed her partner's feelings.

"(Mesz is) going to be punished for what he did," Bunnell said. "Barbara and I have been through a lot of pain. Now we can get on with our lives," she said.

Cernadas, while saying he was happy to see justice for the women, stressed that Agudelo had been a hero in saving his neighbors.

"I can't say enough about Hernan. He's just a hero in every sense of the word," Cernadas said.

Mesz sat still in his seat when the verdict was announced. His attorney, Michael Robbins, when approached minutes later, declined to comment. Mesz sister, Amanda Nixon, who sat through the trial with other relatives, also declined to comment on the verdict as she wiped away tears.

Robbins contended that Mesz had been intoxicated from smoking synthetic marijuana and was unable to understand his actions.

According to police and the victims, Mesz removed all the items in the back yard shed shortly before 6 a.m. When Bunnell and Perrine saw the items in the yard, they went to the shed, opened the door and discovered Mesz, who attacked them.

Bunnell and Perrine were slashed and stabbed about the head, neck and chest. An emergency room doctor who treated them testified during the trial that she was surprised the victims survived.

Agudelo ran from his house in the snow dressed in a tee-shirt and pajama pants, and confronted Mesz in the women's back yard. Agudelo struck Mesz in the head with a miniature baseball bat to get him off Bunnell. Mesz then attack Agudelo, who wrestled Mesz to the ground, forced him to drop the weapons, and held him until police arrived.

Robbins had argued that his client had become psychotic from the synthetic marijuana he had been smoking. During the trial, two psychiatrists who had examined Mesz in the hours and days after the attacks testified to diagnosing him as suffering from psychosis brought on by the designer drugs.

Robbins presented a defense that his client suffered from pathological intoxication, contending drugs made him unable to form the intent to commit the crimes.

Cernadas disputed that claim, noting that Mesz had claimed to hear messages from God since he was a child, and that he had smoked the synthetic marijuana for about four weeks prior to the attack but had not been violent until the assault on the women and Agudelo.

Mesz was also found guilty to two weapons offenses.

Superior Court Judge Stuart Peim scheduled sentencing for April 15.

An attempted murder charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Tom Haydon may be reached at thaydon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Tom_HaydonSL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.