She told them she had invited him over to her home, convinced him to take part in "choke play" and strangled him, first with her hands then later with the cord attached to a sex toy.
But when the question of murderous intent was put to jurors, they found there was none.
Instead, they voted to convict her of manslaughter — a conviction that carries a maximum of 20 years in Victoria.
In the Victorian Supreme Court, where Dolheguy spent much of her trial smiling and drawing pictures with coloured pencils in the dock, jurors heard how Dolheguy's borderline personality disorder played a role in Rathod's killing.
They heard the police interview with detectives on the night Dolheguy killed Rathod. It included a series of disclosures about her split personalities.
She said the "bad side" came out when she was dressed in a cosplay outfit on the bed with the 24-year-old.
She desperately wanted police to come over so they would believe what she was capable of - because she didn't want to do it again and knew she needed help.
"One's mean, one's nice, they're both me," she told detectives of her two personalities. One is caring and the other is destructive, she said.
On her bed, the "bad side" took over, she said. She asked Rathod if he was happy to learn about choke play and he said he was.
"I told him that I … that I wouldn't let him out of the house and he said he didn't care," she told detectives.
"I said that I'm into choke play and he said that he's happy to learn anything so I said that I have, like, psychopathic tendencies in my head and I'm not really that safe and he said he's not scared.
"I said (to him), 'Do you realise how close my hands are to your throat?' and he said, 'Yeah,' and then I was like, 'What if I – what would you do if I were to never let go, are you strong enough to pull me off?' and he was like, 'I'm pretty strong,' and I'm like, 'Could we test the theory?' and he's like, 'Yeah, as long as you don't hurt me.'"
Dolheguy said she moved behind Rathod on the bed, choked him with her arms and then wrapped her legs around his body so he could not move.
As she strangled him, she whispered in his ears: "It'll be OK. It'll be over."
She told detectives she doesn't know if he heard her.
During her trial, the court heard Dolheguy had googled the words: "I'm going to kill someone tonight for fun."
She landed on a web page that offered advice and "10 steps to committing a murder and getting away with it".
But when speaking to detectives, she admitted things might have gone differently if Rathod was larger in stature.
"If it was a big man I would probably — I know this sounds stupid but I bite and I am into vampire fantasies and I would probably either get him to run away or latch onto his neck, one or the other," she said.
Dolheguy's lawyer, Sharon Lacy, told the court, "Ms Dolheguy was so damaged, and her mind was in such chaos, that you couldn't be satisfied she had murderous intent."
Her mind was a was "a torrent of terrifying thoughts and emotions", she said.
The 20-year-old will face a pre-sentence hearing in April next year before a judge decided how long she should spend in jail.
