DA tries to link West to shootings

Kim Smith

Thursday, Sept. 6, 2001 | 10:47 a.m.

Prosecutors say a Las Vegas woman convicted in July of murdering her mother and storing her in a trash can may have orchestrated a January 1985 shooting over a custody dispute, court records say.

Brookey West, 46, was convicted July 19 in the February 1998 death of her mother, Christine Smith, 68.

Smith's remain were found inside a 55-gallon trash can in a storage unit on Feb. 5. The remains were found with a plastic trash bag tied tightly around Smith's nose, mouth and chin.

Next week District Judge Donald Mosley will decide if West should receive a 20- to 50-year sentence or a life sentence with or without parole.

In a pre-sentencing report filed Tuesday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Frank Coumou said that West asked the father of her 8-year-old daughter to waive his parental rights in 1985 because she wanted to give the child up for adoption.

Ronald Ray Viramontes refused, saying he wanted to raise the child. Days later, after Viramontes received a letter filled with Satanic verses from West's father, an unknown man came to his house asking for him, Coumou said.

When told Viramontes wasn't home, the unknown man pulled out a gun and shot his grandmother in the chest, Coumou said. The next day, West called and asked about the health of everyone in the home.

The grandmother recovered, and no one was charged in the shooting, Coumou said.

Viramontes didn't fight the adoption and the child went to an adoptive home. The daughter re-established a relationship with West a few years ago.

The court documents also reveal a motive for another homicide in which West is a suspect.

Coumou said that five days before West's husband, Howard St. John, was found shot to death in Sequoia National Forest in California in June 1994, he told insurance investigators that he had burned up a Jaguar owned by West for $19,000 in insurance money.

St. John also told insurance investigators that West had shot him in the neck a few weeks before because she didn't want him to divulge the plot.

West has never been prosecuted for the earlier shooting of St. John, nor for his slaying.

Deputy Public Defender Scott Coffee has said West had nothing to do with the shooting of Viramontes' grandmother or her husband's death.