It took a Schuylkill County jury less than two hours Wednesday to convict a Coaldale man of third-degree murder in the January 2014 beating death of Corey M. Samuels.

The jury, which deliberated from 11:15 a.m. until 1:05 p.m., also convicted Stanley E. Kralik, 18, of aggravated assault, robbery, conspiracy and theft.Jurors found him not guilty of first and second degree murder.Judge John E. Domalakes scheduled sentencing for 9:30 a.m. Aug. 16, after he reviews the results of a pre-sentence investigation.The verdict followed two days of testimony, including that of Kralik and his co-defendant, Oliver L. Trizarri.Trizarri, 23, of Reading, pleaded guilty on Feb. 19 to conspiracy and third degree murder, getting a lighter sentence in exchange for testifying at Kralik's trial.Each man has claimed the other was responsible for the crime.Police say they lured Samuels, 24, a Marine, into the woods at the end of Miner Street in Coaldale on the night of Jan. 20, 2014.There, they beat him to death with a shovel, and stole his cellphone, wallet and rosary pendant.One motive may have been that Kralik's former girlfriend told him that Samuels raped her in May 2013. She never reported the rape to police.The three had been friends.Samuels' remains were found on Sept. 6, 2014, by a borough man who was looking for mushrooms with his children.Police recovered the pendant and shovel from Kralik's house on Jan. 11, 2015.On Wednesday morning, defense attorney Claude A. Lord Shields said in his closing argument that the shovel was never proven to be the murder weapon. There was no DNA, blood or fingerprints on it, and it was never given to the forensic anthropologist to compare to the wounds on Samuels' head.Assistant District Attorney Keith D. Hoppes leaned on that shovel, gestured with it, and even demonstrated how it was swung as he presented his closing argument.Hoppes, who prosecuted the case with Deputy Assistant District Attorney Jennifer N. Lehman, told jurors Kralik had brought the shovel to the woods, used it to kill Samuels, then took it back home. It was the only shovel recovered from his house.Shields also told jurors Trizarri was "goofy" and a liar, and suggested he killed Samuels and framed Kralik because they rejected his romantic advances.Trizarri in his testimony launched into a complex, fast-paced theory of numbers, unity, infinity and the universe. Shields suggested that, and Trizarri's previous statements about angels and demons, as indicators that he is mentally ill.Shields also at one point asked Trizarri if he is homosexual. Trizarri without hesitation said yes.Hoppes said he Googled part of Trizarri's numbers theory, and found he was accurate. He also said there was no testimony about the romantic advance rejection idea until Trizarri's former cellmate, Edward Rivera, testified that Trizarri told him he was framing Kralik for rejecting him.Hoppes described Rivera as a "convicted liar" who was jailed for theft by deception.Shields also said Trizarri lied on the stand.But Hoppes pointed out that Trizarri told several people about killing Samuels, every time consistent, while Kralik's story changed eight times between Sept. 7, 2014, and March 16, 2015."Lies are difficult to remember, especially over time," he said.