Elko District Judge Nancy Porter threw out a relatively lenient sentencing recommendation and sentenced Utah female desperado Angela Hill to 30 years in prison last week.
Hill avoided trial by pleading guilty to robbery, burglary and kidnapping and agreeing to testify against her partner, Logan McFarland. The woman sobbed as Porter effectively more than doubled the sentence recommended by Parole and Probation.
The felonies stem from a bi-state violent and deadly crime spree the Utah Bonnie and Clyde committed over the 2012 New Years weekend.
McFarland and Hill are accused of committing or being involved a host of other crimes over the 2012 New Year Holiday including the double murder of an elderly Mt. Pleasant couple Woody and Ann Fullwood and the attempted killing of Wendover gym owner Rattana Keomanivong.
While it was Hill and not McFarland who was charged with the attempted murder of Keomanivong, in jail house interviews Hill placed almost all of the blame for the shooting and the other crimes squarely on the shoulders of her accomplice Logan McFarland and claimed she was another victim.
In Thursday’s sentencing Judge Porter made it abundantly clear that she was not buying any of it.
Porter said she didn’t know who shot Keomanivong, but said Hill’s involvement led to the attempted murder. Porter also guessed that had the victim not decided to fight her assailant, she likely would have been killed.
Although Porter said she believed Hill was remorseful and had committed to recovery, the judge considered the Division of Parole and Probation’s recommendation of five to 15 years too light. Hill was sentenced to 30 years in prison with parole eligibility after 11.
This ‘good girl in bad company’ defense was aided during the preliminary hearing by the testimony of Keomanivong who failed to remember certain parts of her statement to police at the time of the shooting.
Shot in the head the former Wendover gym owner still suffers from memory loss and other brain damage from her almost fatal wound. Since the shooting she has had to relocate to Las Vegas where she is receiving physical and mental therapy.
In addition to the weak testimony from the victim, Hill’s public defender Fred Lee was also able to cast considerable doubt that the bullet that entered Keomanivong brain was actually fired from Hill’s gun.
While far from conclusively ruling Hill out as the shooter the ballistic tests coupled with the weak testimony from Keomanivong may have forced the Elko DA’s office to reconsider the charge against the Utah woman.
Hill will remain in the Elko county Jail until the trial of McFarland where she will testify against her partner in crime.
Indeed according to Hill’s mother, she has already provided San Pete prosecutors a wealth of information against McFarland in the double murder of the Fullwoods.
In a long, often hostile interview with the High Desert Advocate earlier this year, Abigail Atwood said that her daughter would very soon be transferred to Utah where she would testify against Robert McFarland.
Hills’ efforts to ‘cop a plea’ at the expense of McFarland are not new and in fact date to the minute the couple were arrested after they straggled out of the Pequop Mountains after hiding in the Nevada outback for three days.
According to law enforcement officers present at the time of their arrest, as soon as she was separated from her partner, she accused him of putting her under an almost total mind control. A defense her mother still believes.
“The only reason she went with him to Nevada was because he showed her pictures of our house and threatened her family.” Atwood said. “She never was in any trouble before this and the San Pete police now say she had nothing to do with the murder of the Fullwoods.”
That was not completely true according to San Pete Messenger newspaper publisher Suzanne Dean.
“The police did issue a clarification that the no longer believed that she waited in the car outside the Fullwood home while Robert McFarland killed them,” The publisher said. “Instead she left him off returned to where they were all staying and later picked him up several hours after the crime. She is still a definite person of interest in the crime.”
During the sentencing Atwood implied that her daughter’s innocence was not believed either by the family’s neighbor’s.
Atwood, who lives in a small Utah town, said in the wake of the crimes, her community shunned her. Atwood told the court that she lost her job and her health care.
McFarland did not blame the crime spree on Hill however, but rather the Illuminati.
The odds that a member of that mythical world controlling organization testifying for McFarland are however much less that Hill testifying against him either in Nevada or Utah.
Hill’s testimony against McFarland as well as the ballistic evidence could be enough for a jury to convict McFarland of attempted murder and for the Elko County District Attorney’s office might tie up a very loose end.
As the charges stand now, while Rattana Keomanivong was shot no one is charged with the shooting.
Law enforcement have long hailed Keomanivong as a hero in the case. The owner of the local gym Animal House, Keomanivong won the Wendover Strongest woman contest the summer before.
As soon as the odds evened with only Hill and Keomanivong in the car, Keomanivong attacked her car jacker by “biting her ear, neck and forcing her from the vehicle,”. Hill fired a shot at the woman as she drove away, according to the police report.
Keomanivong was struck in the back of the head, but she was able to drive herself to the police station and give police a description of the two before she was airlifted to Salt Lake for emergency surgery.
“They had already established a pattern of attacking helpless people, robbing them, stealing their vehicles and killing them before anyone knew what was happening” said one detective. “If not for . Keomanivong they could have been well on their way to Reno or San Francisco with a trail of dead bodies behind them.”
Despite the accolades, Keomanivong must now live with injuries for the rest of her life. Early hope that she would completely recover have faded. A recent brain scan suggests that some of the damage may be permanent or take a very long time to heal.
Once again I see a girl blame all her problems on the BUM she hooked up with.
She’s just as responsible as her loser boyfriend and I think she should serve ALL of her 30 year sentence and not be eligible in 11 years.