Prosecutors to seek life without parole for West

Kim Smith

Friday, July 20, 2001 | 11:16 a.m.

A long-lost uncle of Brookey West's is expected to take the stand next week as prosecutors begin their quest to obtain a no-parole life term for the convicted murderer.

Chief Deputy district attorneys Scott Mitchell and Frank Coumou said their investigator a few days ago informed Billy Sands that his sister was dead and his niece was about to be convicted of her murder.

The Texas resident had lost contact with Christine Smith a few years ago and had no idea she was dead, the prosecutors said.

Now, Sands will fly to Nevada at the state's expense so he can tell the jury about his sister and his niece.

West was convicted of first-degree murder Thursday after about five hours of jury deliberations. The penalty phase of her trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday.

Jurors must decide whether West, 46, should be given a life sentence with or without the possibility of parole.

According to prosecutors, West killed her 64-year-old mother in February 1998, stuffed her in a trash can and placed her remains in a storage unit.

She explained her mother's disappearance by saying she had gone to live with her son in California, but investigators found out he disappeared three years before Smith died.

Smith's liquefied remains were found earlier this year and although she had a plastic bag over her face, a coroner couldn't determine what killed her.

West's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Scott Coffee, tried to persuade the jury that Smith died of natural causes and the plastic bag was a shroud.

On Tuesday, prosecutors hope they are allowed to tell jurors that West is a suspect in the 1994 death of one of her husbands, Howard St. John, and that she apparently stole her brother's Social Security checks after he, too, became missing.