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On Wednesday, more than five years after a Roy mother and son were murdered in their home, Jeremy Lee Valdes admitted to killing Pamela Knight Jeffries and Matthew Roddy.
Valdes pleaded guilty Wednesday in 2nd District Court to two counts of first-degree felony murder, according to court officials.
The crimes carry penalties of 15-years-to-life in prison.
Sentencing is set for March 10 before Judge Mark DeCaria, who will decide whether Valdes will serve the two sentences concurrently or consecutively.
The pleas came just two weeks before Valdes' trial was scheduled to begin and one day after prosecutors told a judge that they no longer wanted to seek the death penalty in the double-murder case.
"We've been talking off and on over the years about a potential resolution in this case," Deputy Weber County Attorney Branden Miles said Wednesday afternoon. "This plea allows us to give finality to the family of Pamela Jeffries and Matthew Roddy. And [finality] for us, the taxpayers. It won't be coming back on appeal and the result at the end of the day would be largely the same."
Miles said prosecutors' decision to take the death penalty off the table was not connected to Valdes' decision to plead guilty.
He said that prosecutors are required to declare their intent to seek the death penalty early on in a case — in Valdes' case, they declared in 2010 — and as a case progresses, they may receive additional information that provides a more complete picture about a defendant's mental state or other factors that would mitigate a death sentence.
With Valdes, fMRI testings and information about Valdes' possible diminished mental capacity had a "direct impact on the likelihood of actually getting a death sentence," Miles said.
"They are rare to obtain," Miles said of a death sentence. "Rarer to keep. They result in much more scrutinty ...Probably, he would serve just as long and die of natural causes before he ever got executed. Those cases are never done. You just are never never done. There's no closure for the family and no closure for the state."
The 36-year-old defendant also was facing charges of second-degree felony obstructing justice, joyriding and two counts of abuse or desecration of a human body, but those charges were dropped, according to Miles.
In court Wednesday, Miles said the defendant told the judge, "I did what I had to do and only what I had to do."
Valdes' girlfriend, Miranda Statler, testified at a 2010 preliminary hearing that she and Valdes were homeless heroin addicts who had been staying with Roddy and Jeffries before their deaths.
During a fight over stolen prescription drugs the morning of Nov. 25, Valdes stabbed Roddy with a butcher knife, according to Statler.
Statler testified that Valdes then kicked Jeffries in the head hard enough to knock her unconscious, and later duct-taped a trash bag over the woman's head.
Valdes claimed Roddy "pulled a knife on him, so he had to kill him," Statler testified. A medical examiner found Roddy was stabbed 31 times.
After failing to find any drugs in the home, Valdes and Statler drove Roddy's car to a convenience store for cigarettes, Statler testified.
Returning, Valdes taped the bag over Jeffries head and rolled Roddy up in a rug before leaving to buy some heroin, Statler said. Later, they stacked the two bodies in a closet and cleaned up blood before leaving the trailer for good, she said.
Statler was charged with moving the bodies, stealing Roddy's car and lying to police. She pleaded guilty in 2010 to second-degree felony obstructing justice and was sentenced to prison for up to 15 years. She was released from prison in July.
Valdes' trial would have been the first death penalty trial in Utah since 2008. The next trial where prosecutors are seeking a death sentence is a re-trial of a 1985 case, where Doug Lovell is accused of killing Joyce Yost to keep her from testifying that he had raped her.
Lovell pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, and was sentenced to death. But in 2010, the Utah Supreme Court ruled he could withdraw the guilty plea because he should have been better informed of his rights during court proceedings. His trial in Ogden's 2nd District Court is expected to begin in March.
Twitter: @jm_miller