The parents of a 12-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl who were found decapitated at the family’s home in Lancaster were sentenced Monday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murders of the two children.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa M. Strassner ordered Maurice Jewel Taylor Sr., 39, and Natalie Sumiko Brothwell, 49, to serve the life terms consecutively, calling the two children “helpless” and saying that the couple forced their surviving two children to “look at the aftermath” of the Nov. 29, 2020, stabbings and decapitations of the couple’s 12-year-old son, Maurice, and 13-year-old daughter, Maliaka.
Despite an emotional statement from Brothwell in court in which she maintained her innocence and said she “did not murder my children” and had tried to save them, the judge said she found no evidence of “genuine remorse” from the defendants and that there was instead “silence where accountability should be.”…