At one time Donald Joseph "DJ" Fernandes was a nice Catholic boy from Fair Oaks who respected his teachers at St. Mel's Church and graduated from San Juan High School with good grades and worked as a carpenter and got married and raised a son.

On Friday, the Donald Joseph Fernandes on display looked like such a man raised up on faith and family values as outlined in a letter his aunt, Bobbie Aguon, wrote on his behalf. He expressed sympathy and empathy and sorrow and remorse. His tears showered sincerity and pain.

Somewhere in between was a 15-year period when the young man turned into a bludgeon killer, committing what Sacramento Superior Court Judge David De Alba described as "probably the most heinous and brutal act of murder" he had ever encountered.

Sent off to prison for 26 years to eternity, the dark-haired man in the orange jumpsuit represented a weeping testimonial to a life spun out of control by the crankshaft of methamphetamine.

He'd been in and out of jail and prison since 1996 for meth, meth paraphernalia, meth, car theft, meth, evading police and receiving stolen property. In his probation report, Fernandes acknowledged he was a daily user of methamphetamine up until the Jan. 24, 2010, day when he inflicted fatal injuries on his on-again off-again girlfriend, Karen Ann Curtin.

It hardly describes the atrocity to say Fernandes, now 37, killed Curtin, 50. He took a hammer and beat her over the head and in the eye with it 10 times. Then he stuffed a sock in her mouth and wrapped a black plastic trash bag over her head, in his words, "to put her out of her misery."

"The repeated blows to Ms. Curtin were obviously not only an attempt to kill her, but were truly in the court's view extreme acts of torture," De Alba said.

At trial, Fernandes testified he had blacked out and had no recollection of what he did. The blackout defense could have allowed him to walk out of court a free man. Instead, the jury convicted him of willful and deliberate first-degree murder.

The judge's invocation of torture raised the question of why it had not been included as a special-circumstance allegation, which could have produced a death penalty or life term in prison without parole.

Deputy District Attorney Ruanne Dozier said that establishing the strict legal elements of torture "would have been tough."

Evidence at trial showed that Fernandes took the hammer away from Curtin after she threatened him with it. It also showed the brutal attack took place in a span of seconds.

The stuffing of the sock and Fernandes' statement about putting Curtin "out of her misery" suggested the opposite of his wanting to string out the killing to maximize her pain.

"The victim suffered a horribly brutal death and the 26-to-life sentence is very well deserved," Dozier said.

Curtin's sister, appearing in court via Skype from her home in Connecticut, said the victim's family wanted the judge to hit Fernandes with every available second in prison allowed by law.

"My final memories of my generous, loving, spirited little sister will always be her beautiful face swollen and distorted from Fernandes' repeated crushing blows to her right eye and head," Nancy Curtin Billington told the court.

Billington read a statement from their mother. In it, Mary Jane Curtin said her slain daughter took in stray cats and lit up "every room she entered. Her personality was magical. She was the spice of life."

Karen Curtin suffered from an unspecified "chronic illness," her mother said. The prosecutor declined to describe the malady. The probation report said Karen Curtin, who resided in a North Sacramento residence where she was beaten, lived on monthly Supplemental Security Income payments.

Donald Fernandes listened to the family's words.

"I want to apologize for all of the pain I put your family through," he told them, as he wept. "I wish I could turn the time back so that none of this ever happened. I wish so bad I could do that."

About a half dozen of his relatives sat in the courtroom while Fernandes spoke.

They got a glimpse of the person they knew – off meth. He looked like the one who "led a good childhood, adolescent years and adulthood," in the words of his Aunt Bobbie's letter, "until his encounter with drugs and its environment."

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Call The Bee's Andy Furillo, (916) 321-1141. Follow him on Twitter @andyfurillo.

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