Maestas not only punched, kicked and choked Donna Lou Bott, he jumped on her chest hard enough to rupture her aorta and used a knife to cut a deep slash in her cheek, said Judge Paul Maughan in a written statement.
Maughan ruled, therefore, that Bott was killed in an "especially heinous, atrocious, cruel or exceptionally depraved manner." That means Maestas, 50, can be tried on a charge of capital murder, which is punishable by death, for the Sept. 28, 2004, slaying. Defense attorney Davis Mack said he would appeal Maughan's decision to the Utah Supreme Court. A status hearing is set for Oct. 16 before Maughan.
Claiming Bott's death did not rise to the level of a horrifying torture-murder, the defense cited the notorious 1974 Ogden Hi-Fi Shop murders, in which five victims were forced to drink Drano before they were shot. One of the two survivors had a pen kicked into his ear canal.
But Maughan said Bott's slaying was similar "in all relevant respects" to the Hi-Fi murders because Maestas allegedly inflicted "wholly unnecessary suffering" on Bott.
In any case, the judge said it was not necessary to find that Maestas' conduct "rises to the most egregious level possible." Noting that Utah's murder statute only requires him to find that suffering was inflicted needlessly, Maughan said Maestas attacked Bott "in a manner that maximized her suffering." The judge also agreed that prosecutors had properly charged Maestas with capital murder based on two alternative theories: the slaying occurred during the commission of an aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery; and that Maestas committed forcible sexual abuse by tearing off Bott's underwear during the attack.
The judge, however, sided with defense attorneys by ruling that Maestas had not committed forcible sexual abuse during his alleged attack on a second elderly victim, who survived a beating at her Salt Lake City home the same night Bott died.
Maestas allegedly pulled the second woman's shirt up over her head while punching and slapping her and demanding money, according to court documents. But Maughan found there was no evidence as to whether the woman was wearing underwear, and no evidence that Maestas took "indecent liberties." Maestas allegedly committed the burglaries with two 19-year-old men who testified against him at a November 2005 preliminary hearing.
William Hugh Irish and Rodney Roy Renzo - charged with first-degree felony murder - claimed Maestas said he knew a house where they could get money.
After entering Bott's home through a window, Maestas attacked the sleeping woman in her bedroom, according to testimony.
But because the trio left Bott's home with only a handful of change and a cell phone, they entered the second woman's residence by breaking a window with a brick, according to testimony.
Again, they gleaned only a small amount of money, but the second victim's purse was later found in Maestas' car, which was towed after he ran out of gas and abandoned it, prosecutors said.
Police linked the three men to the crimes through Bott's cell phone, which was used by Irish and Renzo to make calls.
