DULUTH — A Cloquet man has been convicted for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend and her toddler son — murders that, before he was arrested, he told several people he had committed.

A Carlton County jury deliberated for less than a day before finding Sheldon Thompson guilty Tuesday on eight counts of murder in the 2020 killings of Jackie DeFoe, 27, her unborn child, and Kevin Shabaiash Jr., who was 20 months old.

Sentencing is set for June 15.

The victims were found in their Cloquet home on the Fond du Lac Reservation in March 2020 after a neighbor called for police to check on them. Thompson, who was identified as having a relationship with DeFoe, had several domestic assault convictions in his past and, at the time of the murders, was on unsupervised probation for a felony violation of a domestic no-contact order from 2017.

DeFoe, who was stabbed, was 13 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. Her toddler suffered "blunt force trauma," according to the Midwest Medical Examiner's Office, which ruled the deaths as homicides.

Thompson was charged with three counts of first-degree premeditated murder, two counts of first-degree murder in connection with domestic abuse, and three counts of second-degree murder.

According to the charges, Thompson told a number of people he had killed DeFoe and her toddler, "and in one instance he made a strangling gesture when describing the incident."