LAS VEGAS — Brittney Bergeron, a sweet girl with brown hair and a shy smile, learned early on to survive.
The daughter of parents battling drugs, alcohol and each other, Brittney bounced between her mom and dad during a bitter, four-year custody dispute. By the time her half-sister, Kristyanna Cowan, was born, Brittney was older than her 7 years.
"She was more the mother than the big sister," said Dorenda Phillips, a former neighbor at the CasaBlanca RV Park in Mesquite. "If Kristyanna fell, Brittney brushed it away, kissed away the hurt. . . . They never yelled, 'Mom.' "
Life with their mother, Tamara Bergeron, and her boyfriend, Bobby Schmidt, was less than stable. In a matter of weeks, the family moved from California to Utah and then to Mesquite, a small gambling town about 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The couple was soon cited for possession of drug paraphernalia.
Friends and neighbors said Bergeron and Schmidt often left the children behind when they went to buy methamphetamine or to gamble at a nearby casino.
Brittney missed three weeks of school to care for Kristyanna, by then a precocious blond-haired, blue-eyed 3-year-old she called "Kissy."
"These babies were by themselves all the time," said Phillips, who lived across the street.
So, it was not impossible to foresee trouble for the girls — though no one could have imagined what a prosecutor would call "the most heinous, despicable crime a human being can commit."
As darkness fell the night of Jan. 21, 2003, Bergeron and Schmidt were once again at the casinos. The girls fell asleep in the comforting glare of the TV set.
The knock came after midnight.
A teenager stood outside the door. He wanted Brittney, then 10, to come with him. But minding her mother's words about strangers, she refused and the visitor disappeared into the night. Brittney, in her pink pajamas, tried to go back to sleep.
Minutes later, a second knock came. The teenager was back and a girl was with him.
"Your mother's been hurt," the girl told Brittney, "and she needs you."
Brittney opened the door and went to find her shoes. She told the visitors to wake Kristyanna.
As Brittney bent down, the young man grabbed her from behind. Screaming, Brittney felt a hand cover her mouth.
"We could do this easy, or we could do this hard," he whispered, reaching for a knife.
The pair began punching Brittney. Fighting back, the young girl kicked and bit her attackers. Then a knife plunged into her chest, back, arms and legs. In the bloody haze, Brittney tried desperately to reach her little sister.
Eight long minutes later, Brittney and Kristyanna lay in pools of blood, the intruders gone. Brittney screamed for her mother, and then silence descended on the small trailer.
Blood everywhere when they returned home, Bergeron and Schmidt called for help at 1:55 a.m. While waiting for police, Bergeron tried desperately to stop Brittney's bleeding while Kristyanna lay unconscious in the arms of Schmidt's mother.
"I don't want to die," Brittney whispered to officer Brad Swanson.
At the hospital trauma unit Brittney cried and asked about Kristyanna.
Both girls were rushed to surgery. The long knife used in the attack passed less than a centimeter from Brittney's heart, piercing her stomach and liver. A knife wound to the back, one of 20 wounds she suffered, severed her spinal cord. She would never walk again.
Kristyanna could not be saved. The long knife had pierced her skull and brain. Her jugular vein was slashed, and a knife wound to the face sliced through her cheek and cut her tongue. Multiple wounds marked the 3-year-old's 32-pound body.
Miles away, a Utah state trooper pulled over a Honda sedan driven by 19-year-old Beau Maestas. Inside were his 16-year-old sister Monique and his 18-year-old girlfriend Sabrina Bantam.
Police took the three into custody, and a story began to emerge of drugs, revenge and unspeakable rage.
A week earlier, the Maestas siblings had arrived in Mesquite to visit their grandmother. For much of his childhood, Maestas had bounced from relative to relative, never quite fitting in.
His father was a convicted murderer serving time in a Utah prison. His mother had been urged by the boy's second-grade teacher to get him help, calling Maestas "a very angry boy."
At 10, he began to drink heavily. Three years later he was using methamphetamine. He attempted suicide.
The night of the attack, Maestas, already high on meth, wanted more. He says he paid $125 for drugs, buying them from a couple at a casino — Bergeron and Schmidt.
But Maestas soon discovered he'd been duped. Instead of methamphetamine, he had salt.
"Give me my money back or else," Maestas said, confronting the couple.
After a brief shoving match, security guards forced Maestas and his sister to leave the casino.
As Bergeron and Schmidt returned to the slot machines, Maestas went to his girlfriend's house, where he asked to borrow her dad's kitchen knives. Later, he headed to the CasaBlanca RV Park — "to collect the money," he would tell police. "That's when it got out of hand, I guess."
He said he intended to see Schmidt, "not necessarily to kill him, but you know maybe cut him or scare him or whatever."
Bantam stayed in the car, telling police later she had no idea what the brother and sister planned. When they returned, they were out of breath and covered in blood.
At Maestas' grandmother's house, brother and sister changed clothes, then drove to Utah with Bantam, whom they told what had happened in the trailer. As they worried about whether Brittney survived, Monique Maestas apologized to her brother.
"I should have sliced the girl's neck," she said, according to prosecutors. "I just kept stabbing her, trying to hit major organs."
In the past two years, Brittney has endured hundreds of hours of physical therapy and counseling. She's learned how to use a catheter. She's adjusted to life in a wheelchair.
Other adjustments may prove more difficult.
Shortly after celebrating her 13th birthday in April, Brittney found herself in a courtroom pleading with a judge to let her stay with her foster family. Brittney has been in foster care since the attack, and the state filed a petition to terminate her mother's parental rights.
"If my mom couldn't take care of me before, she can't take care of me now," Brittney told the judge. "There will be a lot more things she will need to do to take care of me. It doesn't mean I don't love her."
The judge went against the girl's wishes and said the state had not made enough of an effort to reunite Brittney and her mother, whom he praised for kicking her drug habit and holding down a steady job.
For now, Brittney will remain with her foster family. Her father did not contest the state's petition.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have charged Bergeron and Schmidt, who are now married, with child abuse and neglect. Both have pleaded not guilty. Their lawyer, Steve Caruso, said the pair deny the bogus drug deal and cannot be blamed for the attacks. But he said the girls' mother has learned bitter lessons about being a parent.
"Knowing what she knows now would she have left the girls alone? No. Would she ever do it again? Not a chance," Caruso said. "Even with that, it's wrong to blame her for what these two murderers did."
In a Las Vegas courtroom last month, a home video showed Brittney struggling to get in and out of her wheelchair.
Jurors wiped away tears, as Beau Maestas averted his eyes from the large screen. Now 21, he was awaiting a decision on whether he will live or die. He pleaded guilty and faced the death penalty after prosecutors refused to cut a deal. Monique Maestas has pleaded not guilty and will be tried later.
During the recent sentencing hearing, Brittney's foster mom, Judy Himel, told jurors about the frightened girl who arrived at her home needing sedatives to fall sleep.
"Nights were hard for her," Himel said. "She wanted the TV on, the lights on. She didn't want to be in the dark."
In the years since, Brittney has persevered. She's made the honor roll at school and competes in wheelchair track and field events.
"Brittney has been through more traumatic situations than any child should have to go through in life," said District Attorney David Roger, who prosecuted the case. "Yet she continues to go through each day with a positive attitude."
Her spasms have lessened, and she no longer needs sedation. The CasaBlanca resort has agreed to give the girl $5.5 million to help pay for future medical care.
But the memory of that night when she opened the trailer door is never far away. On the anniversary of the attack, Brittney released a balloon in memory of Kristyanna.
"Think of the guilt this little girl must feel," Deputy District Attorney David Schwartz told the jury. "Think of Brittney protecting her little sister and not being able to do so."
In the end, jurors couldn't decide on life or death. A mistrial was declared, and another jury will be convened.
"I feel justice was not served," juror Debra Lee said after the mistrial. "I feel like we let this little girl down."