Reina Gonzales testified Monday that she did nothing to stop Christopher Payne from starving his children and keeping them locked in a closet until they died.
Gonzales' tearful account of Ariana and Tyler Payne's last two months of life was heard during a change-of-plea hearing in Pima County Superior Court.
Gonzales, Christopher Payne's live-in girlfriend, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder as part of a plea agreement that could help prosecutors obtain the death penalty for Payne and guarantees her freedom someday.
Gonzales, 24, will be sentenced to two concurrent prison terms of 22 years sometime after Payne's trial, which is set to begin on Jan. 27.
Authorities contend Payne, 30, and Gonzales killed Ariana, 4, and Tyler, 5, sometime between March 9, 2006, and Sept. 1, 2006.
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Ariana's remains were found on Feb. 18, 2007, stuffed inside a plastic tub in a trash bin. Tyler's body has never been found, but police believe he is dead as well.
An autopsy showed that in the days and months leading up to her death, Ariana Payne had half of her ribs and her right shoulder broken. She also suffered a fracture to one of the vertebrae in the middle of her back, at or near the time of her death.
Pima County prosecutors charged Payne and Gonzales with first-degree murder and had intended to seek the death penalty for both.
Monday's hearing was attended by Payne's attorneys, along with members of the Payne and Gonzales families. In court, Gonzales was asked to provide a "factual basis" for her guilty plea.
Gonzales told Judge Paul Tang that when Ariana and Tyler first came to live with the couple in January 2006, Payne treated the children well.
But as time went on, Gonzales said, Payne kept the children in a closet for punishment and denied them food and water.
She told Payne it wasn't right, but Payne continued to abuse the children, Gonzales said.
"I was getting high on heroin more and more, so I could block what was happening," she said.
Gonzales did not mention how Ariana could have suffered any of the injuries described in her autopsy. However, she said Payne struck Tyler in the head with a belt. The wound became infected and was left untreated, she said.
Ariana died first and was placed in a plastic tub that was kept in a storage closet at their apartment, Gonzales said.
After Tyler died, both children were placed in the tub, Gonzales said. Gonzales admitted that she accompanied Payne when he took the tub to a rented storage unit.
Police records indicate Ariana's remains were found because the couple defaulted on payments for the storage unit. Storage facility employees threw the tub and other items into the trash bin while cleaning out the unit and then decided the next day that they ought to report the smelly tub.
Tucson police spent several days at Los Reales Landfill after Ariana's remains were found, but they were unable to locate Tyler's remains.
At the time, Capt. Bill Richards of the Tucson Police Department said a detective searched the trash bin and recovered some evidence, but the bin wasn't emptied.
Investigators were shaken by the discovery of the young girl's remains and had no reason to think that there might be a second body in the trash bin, Richards said, explaining the failure to search the trash bin more thoroughly.
Also on Monday, Tang announced that he had decided Gonzales is not mentally retarded. The judge has presided over a number of hearings where doctors testified about Gonzales' IQ and mental disabilities. The United States prohibits the execution of mentally retarded defendants, and Gonzales' attorneys, Brick Storts and Maria Davila, had been trying to prove Gonzales is mentally retarded.
Ariana and Tyler's mother, Jamie Hallam, settled her lawsuit against Arizona's Child Protective Services for $1 million in June, but the portion of the lawsuit pertaining to the Tucson Police Department is ongoing.
The lawsuit contended that even though Hallam had been given sole custody of the children, CPS and the police allowed Payne to keep them.
The lawsuit says that CPS officials never investigated Payne or Gonzales, nor did it check on the children's well-being. If officials had, they would have discovered that Payne physically abused Gonzales and that he had been arrested on a drug-paraphernalia charge while the children lived with him.
The death of the Payne children, along with the death of 5-year-old Brandon Williams, resulted in a number of new laws designed to revamp CPS.
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