Kurt A. Flood, 27, was convicted on Thursday in Columbus, Ohio of murder, felonious assault, child endangering, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse in the 2014 killing of 14-month-old Cameron Beckford.
Cameron's mother, 28-year-old Dainesha Stevens, testified that the boy died two days after Flood repeatedly struck him with a hair brush 'to beat the demons out of him' on
Christmas Eve 2014, the
Columbus Dispatch reported.
Stevens previously pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence and agreed to testify against Flood in exchange for a recommended sentence of 12 years.
Flood maintained throughout the trial that he didn't beat Cameron, but did help Stevens dispose of the body.
'(Flood) kept telling me that my son had demons in him and that’s why he was crying like that,' Stevens testified, according to
ABC6.
Flood's attorney called Stevens a 'pathological liar' and urged jurors not to believe her testimony.
Stevens, her six-month-old daughter and Cameron had moved to Columbus from Maryland less than a month before the murder, to escape an alleged abusive relationship with the children's father.
Stevens initially told police she left her son on a stranger's porch.
She later changed her story and pointed authorities to the Big Walnut Creek, where they found Cameron's body stuffed inside a backpack on New Year's Eve.
The toddler had bruises on his lower back, kidneys and lungs, and bruises and scarring on his buttocks, according to the county coroner.
Prosecutors maintained that Flood beat the child, and that Stevens was responsible for failing to intervene.
The prosecution of Flood was delayed when in April of 2016 a judge found him incompetent to stand trial and ordered him to a state psychiatric hospital for treatment aimed at restoring competency. The trial returned to the docket after a judge ruled Flood competent.
The jury returned guilty on all counts.
Flood faces a mandatory life sentence, with no chance of parole for as many as 19 years, when he is sentenced February 22. Stevens is to be sentenced in June.