A Pennsylvania woman charged along with her husband in what was characterized as a ritualistic killing and dismemberment of a man in a downtown Los Angeles hotel room pleaded guilty Friday to voluntary manslaughter and other charges.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler sentenced Melissa Hope Garcia to 16 years, eight months in state prison moments after she told family members of the victim, Herbert Tracy White, that she was “so sorry.”
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about what happened,” the 30-year-old defendant said.
Melissa Garcia’s attorney, Pete Waimrin, noted that his client was “very, very upset,” and said outside court, “I think she’s truly remorseful.”
Garcia — awaiting trial for White’s Nov. 28, 2010, stabbing death — pleaded guilty to one count each of voluntary manslaughter with a knife use allegation, residential burglary, robbery and mayhem.
A murder count against her was dismissed as a result of the settlement, in which she agreed to waive credit for nearly five years she has already spent in county jail.
“I thought I had seen the depths of human depravity. I was wrong,” Fidler said, reiterating a comment he made when the defendant’s husband, 41- year-old Edward Garcia Jr., was sentenced Aug. 14 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Edward Garcia was convicted June 23 of first-degree murder, with jurors finding true the special circumstance allegations of murder involving the infliction of torture and murder during the commission of a robbery.
The victim’s widow, Annie Coty-White, told the judge that it is “very hard for me to accept” that Melissa Garcia will eventually be released from prison on parole.
“It’s been hell for us,” the victim’s mother, Elizabeth White- Peterson, said. “I will never not miss my son, Herbert Tracy White. I miss him so much.”
Outside court, the victim’s oldest brother, Anthony DeMarco White, said the 16-year sentence handed down to Garcia was a “slap in the face to my family.”
“I will never forgive them,” he said of the couple.
White, 49, was stabbed to death and dismembered in room 66 at the Continental hotel.
Deputy District Attorney John McKinney told jurors in Edward Garcia’s trial that the couple were carrying out a “fantasy they had about cutting up a human being.” He said the victim’s body had “very little to no blood” left in it as a result of what a prosecution witness had opined was a “ritualistic killing.”
Some of the victim’s remains were later found in a backpack in a corner of the room, while other body parts were found bundled up underneath the blood- stained mattress which had been flipped over and stripped of its sheets, McKinney said.
“The blood is everywhere — in the mattress, in the sheets. It’s everywhere but where it’s supposed to be,” McKinney said, telling jurors that the evidence showed that “some weird stuff” was done.
“Something else is going on here. It’s overkill,” McKinney told the panel.
Edward Garcia’s attorney, Haydeh Takasugi, acknowledged that Garcia was responsible for the killing, but disputed that it was premeditated.
The two initially met White when he gave them money outside a bank in Hollywood, then called him early that morning to pick them up after their belongings got wet in the rain, Takasugi told jurors.
Outside court after Melissa Garcia’s plea, the prosecutor said Edward Garcia was believed to be the “mastermind behind the crime.”
—Staff and wire reports