Friday, June 03, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

MURDER TRIAL: Detective describes stabbings

Girl told how pair tricked her into opening door, then attacked

The knives used to stab Brittney Bergeron and her sister, Kristyanna Cowan, are seen in a courtroom photo Thursday. Photo by Isaac Brekken Sabrina Bantam points out her former boyfriend, Beau Maestas, during his capital murder trial Thursday. Photo by Isaac Brekken

As he bore down on 10-year-old Brittney Bergeron with a huge knife in a darkened trailer, Beau Maestas grabbed the child from behind and told her, "We can do this easy or we can do this hard," a detective said in court Thursday.

Nevada Department of Public Safety Detective Myra Medina, testifying during Maestas' capital murder trial, said she interviewed Brittney the day after the girl and her 3-year-old sister, Kristyanna Cowan, were attacked by Maestas at a Mesquite RV park in January 2003.

Brittney told the detective that on the night of the stabbings, she and her sister were home alone when she heard a knock on the door.

"Someone had knocked on the door, telling Brittney that she needed to go with him to see her mom," Medina said. "She said, 'I don't ever leave my house if I don't know the person.' "

Moments later, a woman who authorities say was Beau Maestas' sister, Monique, knocked on the door and pleaded with the child to let her in.

"Your mom has been hurt really bad," Monique Maestas told the child. "You need to come with me."

Medina said Brittney reluctantly opened the door.

"She (Brittney) said, 'I'm going to go ahead and put my shoes on,' " Medina said. "She (Brittney) said, 'Can you take my little sister?' "

The detective, fighting back her own emotions, described what happened next.

Beau Maestas "grabbed her from behind and said, 'We can do this easy or we can do this hard,' " Medina said. "Stabbed her, kicked her, socked her, punched her.

"As she began to scream, the female (Monique Maestas) helped to hold her down," Medina said.

"After the male was done kicking, hitting and cutting her sister (Kristyanna), they left the trailer and she (Brittney) screamed," Medina said. "She screamed for her mom, but her mom never came."

The disturbing account was offered during a riveting day of testimony in the capital murder trial of Beau Maestas, now 21. Authorities said he and his sister, now 19, stabbed the two children on Jan. 22, 2003.

Brittney was paralyzed from the waist down, and Kristyanna was killed.

Authorities said the Maestas siblings, of Utah, attacked the children in revenge for a bogus drug deal orchestrated by the children's mother, who has denied any involvement in a bogus drug deal.

Beau Maestas pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Prosecutors are asking the jury in the courtroom of District Judge Donald Mosley to sentence Beau Maestas to death.

Sabrina Bantam, the former girlfriend of Beau Maestas, testified she provided the knives on the night of the stabbings.

The 20-year-old Mesquite resident, who has never been charged with any crime, said she had no idea the knives would be used to butcher two little girls.

"I had asked him what he wanted them for, but he said it didn't matter," Bantam said. "I assumed it was for his drug use."

Bantam said she had dated Beau Maestas for about two years, and on the night of the stabbings, Beau Maestas showed up at the doorstep of her father's RV at the CasaBlanca RV park asking "for something sharp."

"Scissors, knives, something like that," Bantam said. "He was a little anxious."

Bantam said she went and retrieved her father's set of culinary knives, and Beau Maestas asked her if she "wanted to go for a ride."

Bantam said she got in a vehicle with Beau and Monique Maestas, and they told her about the bogus drug deal.

"They had stated that someone had ripped them off of $200 in drugs," she said.

She rode with the Maestas siblings to a nearby parking lot, where Beau Maestas parked the car and got out. He returned about 10 minutes later.

"He said the little girl wouldn't let him in," Bantam said. "He said that she (Brittney) had stated her mother wasn't home. She (Monique Maestas) then said to let her go, that the little girl would probably let her in the house."

Bantam said Beau and Monique Maestas left the car for about 10 minutes. When they came back, "they were bloody," and Monique Maestas apologized to her brother for accidentally stabbing him in the hand.

"They were frantic, saying, 'Hurry up and unlock the doors,' " Bantam said. "He said the police were going to be coming soon, that they had to hurry."

Bantam said she rode with the Maestas siblings to their grandmother's house in Mesquite, where the two tried to wash the blood off.

"Beau got into the shower with the knives, washing himself off, and Monique was washing her hands in the sink," Bantam said.

Eventually, the trio drove to Utah, and Bantam said Monique and Beau Maestas both described the stabbings to her during the ride.

"She (Kristyanna) was kicking and screaming, and the little girl had bit him," Bantam said, quoting Beau Maestas.

She said Monique Maestas told her, "I should have sliced the girl's neck."

"She was trying to hit the major organs. She was trying but she couldn't," Bantam said.

Bantam said their car soon was stopped by Utah police and they were arrested. Detectives with the Nevada Department of Public Safety told her that, as far as they were concerned, she was an accessory to murder.

Bantam gave detectives a complete statement about the events surrounding the stabbing.

Bantam's cooperation proved crucial to the investigation, because she was able to lead detectives to the knives and bloody clothing that Beau and Monique Maestas had discarded in a small Utah town.

Blood on the pair's clothing was identified as the children's.

Authorities did not charge Bantam with anything, and Bantam was adamant in court Thursday that she had no idea the Maestas pair planned to stab the kids.

"Absolutely not," she said.

But Bantam said that, after the stabbings, she and Beau Maestas continued to write letters to one another. Under questioning from the defendant's attorney, Pete Christiansen, Bantam talked fondly of the defendant.

"He was very good with kids," Bantam said. "He used to watch my 3-year-old nephew."

District Attorney David Roger, appearing irked at the testimony, then produced a letter Beau Maestas wrote to his sister about Bantam while in jail.

In the letter, Beau Maestas wrote: "Promise me you'll punch Sabrina's teeth out, kick her lips off, rip her tongue out and wipe your ass with it."

Beau Maestas signed the letter with a sketch of a pitchfork.

Outside of court, Kristyanna's father, David Cowan, said he was skeptical of Bantam's claim that she didn't know what the knives were for.

"How would you not realize what was going on?" Cowan said. "Go get the knives. What's he going to do, go cut some cake?"

Also in court Thursday, jurors were shown gruesome autopsy photos of Kristyanna and photos of Brittney in the hospital. One juror's eyes appeared to be welling up with tears.

Kristyanna had suffered a massive stab wound in her head and stab wounds on her neck and leg. Her foot had been severed from the tendon in another stab wound on her lower leg.

Brittney's body had nearly 20 stab wounds, but a doctor who operated on Brittney said the little girl was more concerned about her dead sister than herself.

"Her attention was focused on her little sister," Dr. Jay Coates said. "It was kind of moving."