In a letter read moments before she was sentenced to 22 years in prison Monday, Reina Gonzales said she was "heart-broken and ashamed" for her role in the deaths of two small children three years ago.
The letter, rife with misspellings and poor punctuation, was read to Pima County Superior Court Judge Paul Tang by Gonzales' defense attorney, Brick Storts. It was later obtained by the Arizona Daily Star.
"My case has painfuly come to a close and I just want you to know how heart-broken and ashamed I am. My actions and and knowlege in my case was way beyond my control due to the severity of my drug use am not tryin to use my drug use as an excsue," Gonzales wrote.
Gonzales went on to say she had given her life over to God and she has "asked him to forgive me and help me to forgive myself now that I realize what I could have done differently if I wuz sober."
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The length of Gonzales' sentence came as no surprise, as it was part of the plea agreement she entered into last August.
Gonzales, 25, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of her boyfriend's two oldest children, Ariana Payne, 3, and Tyler Payne, 4.
According to prosecutors, Gonzales did nothing to help the children after Christopher Payne, 30, locked them up in a bedroom closet and starved them to death over the course of a several weeks.
Once they died, Payne stored the children's remains in garbage bags for months before placing them in a 25-gallon plastic tub and taking them to a storage unit on East Prince Road. An autopsy revealed that Ariana had suffered 12 broken ribs and a broken shoulder bone in the weeks or months before she died.
On Feb. 18, 2007, a storage facility manager decided to clean out a unit that was months overdue on payments. Inside the unit, the manager found a foul-smelling 25-gallon plastic tub that she dumped into a trash bin. She called police, and they found Ariana's remains stuffed inside.
Payne was linked to the storage unit two weeks later. Tyler's body was never found.
Gonzales was required to testify against Christopher Payne as part of her plea agreement.
Jurors convicted Payne of two counts of first-degree murder on March 17 and sentenced him to death after deciding the age of the children, the way they died and the fact that there was more than one victim warranted execution. Payne will be sentenced Thursday on three counts of child abuse and two counts of concealment of a human body. Judge Richard Fields will sentence him in Pima County Superior Court.
The children's mother, Jamie Hallam, was not present when Gonzales was sentenced.
Christopher Payne's stepmother, Patricia Payne, was allowed to speak as a victim representative.
"As far as I'm concerned, the sentence given to Reina is very light," Patricia Payne said.
If anything, Gonzales should have to serve two consecutive 22-year sentences, she said.
When Tang explained that the sentence was part of the plea agreement, Patricia Payne said she understood.
"I also understand she lies," Patricia Payne said of Gonzales. "There was a lot of testimony (at trial) she lied about."
Patricia Payne said every time she looks at Christopher Payne Jr., the son Gonzales bore with Christopher Payne, she is reminded of what's happened.
"It's been devastating," Patricia Payne said.
According to court documents, Gonzales was the youngest of three children born to a hotel janitor and a housekeeper. She described her father as a daily drinker who died in 2000 from cirrhosis of the liver. Gonzales told a pre-sentence report writer that she was molested for years by two cousins, but she never reported it.
After her arrest, Gonzales took three IQ tests, and it was determined she is borderline mentally retarded. She told the pre-sentence report writer she was never placed in special-education classes in school or told she had learning disabilities. She began failing classes in the eighth grade because the classes became harder and because she was skipping classes to hang out with the "wrong people."
Gonzales dropped out of school and at age 16 began using marijuana daily and experimenting with other drugs. In 2005, she began using crack cocaine occasionally and heroin daily.
Gonzales' longest job lasted a year; she kept being fired because she would miss work to use drugs, court documents indicate.
Gonzales told the pre-sentence report writer that Christopher Payne was controlling and physically abusive. After the children died, Gonzales said, she told him she was going to leave him, but he threatened to kill her brother.
When sentencing Gonzales, Tang used words such as "inhumane," "depraved," "unconscionable" and "unforgivable" to describe the treatment Ariana and Tyler received.
The drugs, the abuse and the mental deficiencies?
"None of them sufficiently explains or accounts for the actions or inactions in this case," Tang said.
