LAS VEGAS — A Utah woman has pleaded guilty in the stabbing of two little girls in a trailer outside a Mesquite casino in 2003.
Monique Maestas, 20, accepted a plea agreement that could make her eligible for parole at age 57, prosecutor David Schwartz said Wednesday. Her plea came minutes after a jury decided Tuesday that her older brother, Beau Santino Maestas, should die by lethal injection for his role in the January 2003 attack.
Monique Maestas pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the slaying of 3-year-old Kristyanna Cowan and attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon in the stabbing of Cowan's half-sister, 10-year-old Brittney Bergeron. Brittney was left paralyzed from the waist down in the attack.
Beau Maestas, 22, had pleaded guilty in May 2005 to first-degree murder and attempted murder in the attacks.
Because Monique Maestas was 16 at the time, she was not eligible for the death penalty. She could have been sentenced to life without parole if convicted at trial.
Her plea agreement lets Clark County District Judge Donald Mosley decide whether to combine her sentences, which would let her seek parole in 2043, or sentence her consecutively, keeping her in prison until at least 2059. A sentencing hearing is set for Sept. 22.
"We're going to argue for the maximum," Schwartz said. "We think they were both equally responsible."
Special public defenders Alzora Jackson and David Schieck have argued that Monique Maestas had less involvement in the slayings than her brother, who was 19 at the time.
Beau Maestas also tried to take sole responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for the girls' mother, Tamara Bergeron, and her then-boyfriend, Robert Schmidt, selling them salt in place of methamphetamine.
But Schwartz said Monique Maestas was the one who convinced Brittney to open the door of the trailer with a ruse that the girls' mother had been hurt and needed them.
Tamara Bergeron and Schmidt, who now are married, denied the drug sale allegations. They were sentenced to prison last year for leaving the two girls alone in the trailer.
Beau Maestas apologized in court last week, and his defense lawyers tried to convince the jury of that he had such a horrific childhood that he should be spared the death penalty. His formal sentencing is Aug. 30. His sentence will be automatically appealed.
Brittney Bergeron, now 14 and living with a foster mother, did not testify in Beau Maestas' penalty trial. Jurors viewed a video of her struggling to get in and out of her wheelchair.
Schwartz said Monique Maestas' plea spared Brittney from having to testify.
"Brittney starts high school next Wednesday," he said. "It would be horrible to have her have to relive what went on in that trailer."