It was a few days after Thanksgiving in 2020 when horror erupted in a Lancaster, Calif., home. Now, more than five years later, parents who decapitated their own children have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
According to CBS News, the LA Times and other outlets, Maurice Jewel Taylor Sr., 39, and Natalie Sumiko Brothwell, 49, were sentenced Monday morning. Both Taylor and Brothwell also received additional six-year terms said CBS, citing the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said.
Last November, a jury found Taylor and Brothwell guilty of two felony counts of first-degree murder “with special circumstance that each defendant was convicted of more than one murder in the same case and two felony counts of child abuse under circumstances or conditions likely to cause great bodily injury or death,” said the DA’s office in a press release.
It said that prosecutors proved during the trial that the parents fatally stabbed and decapitated their 13-year-old daughter, Maliaka T., and 12-year-old son, Maurice T., on Nov. 29, 2020. After the murders, they reportedly forced their younger children (ages 8 and 9) to view their siblings mutilated bodies and then kept them in their bedrooms for days without food.
CBS News said the court issued a 10-year protective order for the surviving victims.
“This was a monstrous act of cruelty that shattered an entire family,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said in November. “Two innocent children were brutally murdered, and their young brothers were left to live through unimaginable horror. The jury’s verdict delivers justice for these victims and sends a powerful message: Those who commit such evil acts will be held fully accountable.”