Beau and Monique Maestas are two siblings from Nevada who would murder a three year old girl
According to court documents Beau and Monique Maestas were upset that a woman had sold them bad drugs so they would go to the woman’s residence
When they realized the woman was not home they would find that the woman had left her ten year old and three year old at home
Beau and Monique Maestas would attack the children leaving the ten year old paralyzed and the three year old girl dead
Beau and Monique Maestas would be arrested
Beau Maestas would be convicted and sentenced to death
Monique Maestas, who was seventeen at the time of the murder, would be convicted and sentenced to forty seven years to life
Beau and Monique Maestas Case
A 20-year-old Utah woman was sentenced Thursday to 47 years to life in prison in a brutal knife attack that killed one little girl and left another paralyzed outside a Nevada casino in 2003.
Monique Maestas read a letter of apology for “lives lost and changed” by the stabbings that killed 3-year-old Kristyanna Cowan and severed the spine of Cowan’s 10-year-old sister, Brittney Bergeron.
Maestas’ brother, Beau Maestas, 23, said nothing before Clark County District Judge Donald Mosley scheduled him to die by lethal injection and tacked on a sentence of up to 75 years in prison.
“This case has to be one of the most horrendous I have ever been involved with,” Mosley said. “It is a tragedy all the way around … brought on by this scourge in our community, narcotics.”
A jury decided in August for the death penalty for Beau Maestas, who previously pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Thursday’s additional sentences were for his guilty pleas to attempted murder with a weapon, burglary with a weapon and conspiracy.
The judge scheduled Beau Maestas to die the week of Dec. 11-17, but that date will be pushed back years while the death sentence is automatically appealed.
Monique, who pleaded guilty to the same charges, was not eligible for the death penalty because she was 16 at the time of the attack. Her brother was 19.
Mosley noted that Monique could apply for parole when she is 63.
Monique Maestas avoided trial by pleading guilty the same day the jury returned the death penalty verdict against her brother. Her plea spared Brittney Bergeron from having to testify about the bloody January 2003 attack, which happened in a trailer parked outside a casino in Mesquite.
It also prevented Monique Maestas’ lawyers from presenting what public defender Alzora Jackson said was evidence of years of sex abuse during an extraordinarily troubled upbringing.
Monique Maestas directed her written comments Thursday toward Brittney Bergeron, who was not in court. Now 14 and living with a foster mother, Brittney is a high school student involved in wheelchair tennis.
“I feel in my heart your future will be better, in spite of your disability,” Monique Maestas said.
As Beau and Monique Maestas were led from the courtroom, Monique Maestas blew a kiss to her oldest sister, Misty Maestas, 26, who sobbed quietly as she sat alone and watched the sentencings. Misty Maestas said outside court that she also was abused as a child.
Now married and caring for her husband’s two children in Clearfield, Utah, Misty Maestas testified during her brother’s penalty hearing that the Maestas children were products of a drug-dealing mother and a twice convicted killer who spent almost all of his adult life in Utah prisons.
“To me, the whole thing is, if they hadn’t been on drugs this wouldn’t have happened,” Misty Maestas said.
Authorities said Beau and Monique Maestas forced their way into the trailer and attacked the girls in retaliation for Bergeron and Schmidt selling them salt in place of methamphetamine.
The attack bloody attack and Brittney Bergeron’s plight mortified a region appalled by allegations that the little girls had been left alone while their drug-addicted mother, Tamara Bergeron, and her then-boyfriend, Robert Schmidt, gambled in the casino.
The case spawned criminal charges against the mother and boyfriend, who now are married. They denied the drug sale allegations, but were sentenced to prison last year for leaving the two girls alone in the trailer. The state has tried unsuccessfully to sever the mother’s parental rights.
Beau And Monique Maestas Video
Watch Beau And Monique Maestas Video – Teens Who Kill – Real Cases of Teen Violence
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Beau and Monique Maestas Murders
On the night of January 21, 2003, 19-year-old Beau Maestas and his 16-year-old sister Monique Maestas drove to the CasaBlanca RV Park in Mesquite, Nevada. They were not there to visit friends. According to court documents, they had gone earlier that day to the home of Tamara Bergeron and her boyfriend Robert Schmidt to purchase what they believed was $125 worth of methamphetamine. When they returned home and opened the bag, they found salt, not meth.
They were ripped off and they were infuriated.
What happened next became one of Nevada’s most infamous sibling murder cases. Armed with large butcher knives, Beau and Monique returned to the trailer. Tamara and Robert were gambling at a nearby casino, leaving Tamara’s two daughters home alone: 3-year-old Kristyanna Cowan and 10-year-old Brittney Bergeron. Monique tricked Brittney into opening the door by shouting, “Your mom has been hurt really bad. You need to come with me!” Once inside, the siblings launched a frenzied knife attack.
Kristyanna’s throat was slit and she was stabbed with such brutality that the knife was shoved halfway through her head. Her foot was severed from the tendon. She died at the scene. Beau grabbed Brittney from behind and told her, “We can do this easy or we can do this hard!” He then plunged the knife into her small body a total of twenty times. Two stab wounds to her back severed her spinal cord. When police arrived, Brittney was pleading, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”
Miraculously, Brittney survived her injuries but was left paralyzed from the waist down.
Beau Maestas would later be sentenced to death. Monique Maestas, who was 17 at the time of the murder, would be convicted and sentenced to forty seven years to life.
This is the complete story of the Beau and Monique Maestas murders, optimized for true crime readers searching for facts, not sensationalism.
Quick Facts: Beau and Monique Maestas Case
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Date | January 21, 2003 |
| Location | CasaBlanca RV Park, Mesquite, Clark County, Nevada |
| Victims | Kristyanna Cowan, 3 (murdered), Brittney Bergeron, 10 (survived, paralyzed) |
| Perpetrators | Beau Santino Maestas, 19; Monique Maestas, 16 |
| Weapon | Butcher knives |
| Motive | Retaliation for being sold salt instead of methamphetamine |
| Sentence Beau | Death by lethal injection plus up to 75 years |
| Sentence Monique | 47 years to life, parole eligible at age 63 in 2043 |
Who Are Beau and Monique Maestas?
Beau and Monique were not strangers to violence, but they were strangers to the children they attacked. They grew up in Utah in a family that defense attorneys later described as a multigenerational cycle of abuse, drugs, and prison.
Their father, Harry Maestas, was a twice-convicted killer who spent most of their childhood in and out of Utah prisons. While Harry was incarcerated, he would send ex-convicts to the home to check up on the family. During one of these visits, the ex-convict molested Misty Maestas, Beau and Monique’s 12-year-old sister. Later, when Misty visited her father in prison, he too molested her in the visiting room.
Monique was also sexually assaulted as a child. Between her ninth and 13th birthday, she was molested by her mother’s 6 foot 3 inch, 300 pound boyfriend.
Their mother, Marilyn Maestas, constantly belittled Beau and exposed him to drug and alcohol abuse. As a young boy, his parents used to blow marijuana smoke in his face in an attempt to calm his hyperactivity. While in second grade, his teacher wrote to his parents: “Beau is very smart. He needs lots of help getting his energy in the right direction. He’s still an angry boy. Please get the help you talked about.” By age 12, Beau was using marijuana, alcohol and methamphetamine.
In one disturbing incident cited at trial, when Marilyn didn’t want her children hanging around with a gay man in their neighborhood, she skinned his cat and nailed its head to the door. The man subsequently committed suicide.
By 2000, Beau had attempted suicide. “I felt like killing myself,” he told a mental health professional. “My life is a burden. My life is messed up.”
This background would become central to the penalty phase of Beau’s trial, though prosecutors argued it could not excuse what happened in Mesquite.
The Victims: Kristyanna Cowan and Brittney Bergeron
Kristyanna Cowan was three years old. Her half-sister Brittney Bergeron was ten. They lived with their mother Tamara Bergeron and Tamara’s boyfriend Robert Schmidt in a small trailer at the edge of the Virgin River casino corridor.
On the night of the attack, Tamara and Robert left the girls alone for several hours while they gambled. That decision would later result in criminal charges against both adults. The girls were not the intended targets of the Maestas siblings’ rage. They were simply home.
Brittney, despite being stabbed 20 times in the arms, chest, back and legs, showed extraordinary presence of mind. She initially refused to open the door to strangers. She only opened it because Monique exploited a child’s worst fear, that her mother was hurt.
The $125 Fake Meth Deal
Authorities said Beau and Monique Maestas forced their way into the trailer and attacked the girls in retaliation for Bergeron and Schmidt selling them salt in place of methamphetamine.
The siblings had driven from Utah to Mesquite specifically to buy drugs. After discovering the rip-off, they did not confront Tamara and Robert directly. Instead, they armed themselves and returned to the trailer where they knew children would be alone.
This fact pattern is critical for SEO and for understanding the legal outcome. Nevada law allows first-degree murder charges when a killing occurs during a burglary, regardless of premeditation against the specific victim. The intent to commit a felony burglary with a deadly weapon satisfied the elements for capital murder.
The Attack: A Minute-by-Minute Breakdown
Based on detective testimony and the siblings’ own confessions, the timeline unfolded like this:
- 8:00-9:00 PM: Beau knocks. Brittney refuses.
- Monique’s ruse: Monique yells that their mother is hurt. Brittney opens the door.
- Immediate assault: Kristyanna is attacked first. Her throat is cut and she sustains a penetrating head wound so deep the knife blade is halfway through her skull.
- Brittney’s attack: Beau grabs Brittney from behind. He stabs her 20 times. Two wounds to the back sever her spinal cord at the thoracic level.
- Flight: The siblings flee, discarding blood-stained clothing and knives in a small Utah town.
After fleeing the crime scene, the siblings discarded their blood-stained clothing and knives in a small Utah town. They were soon apprehended after Beau’s girlfriend was able to place them at the scene that evening.
The Confessions That Sealed the Case
In jail, both siblings wrote letters that prosecutors later read verbatim to jurors.
Beau confessed to “slaughtering those little piggies. I flipped out and went and killed that lady’s youngest daughter and I paralysed the older one. Three used to be my lucky number. Now, when I think of three, I see a little body hanging eye-level from a knife that’s half her size that’s in my bloody hand. That was some of the most brutal shit I’ve ever seen.”
Monique also confessed: “I should have sliced the girl’s neck. I just kept stabbing her. I just kept trying to stab major organs.”
These letters eliminated any claim of accident or self-defense and demonstrated awareness and memory of the crime.
The Arrest and Charges
Beau Santino Maestas, 19, and Monique Maestas, 16, were charged in Clark County District Court with capital murder, attempted murder, burglary with a deadly weapon, and conspiracy. They faced the death penalty in Nevada, which at the time allowed capital punishment for offenders 16 and older, though that would change.
Initial hearings were held in Las Vegas Justice Court in February 2003. The case was moved to Clark County due to the severity.
The Parents Left Behind: Child Neglect Charges
In the wake of the murders, Tamara and Robert denied any involvement in the bogus drug deal. They were charged with child abuse and neglect for leaving the children home alone for several hours at the time of the stabbing. Tamara was sentenced to a minimum of four years in prison.
The case spawned criminal charges against the mother and boyfriend, who now are married. They denied the drug sale allegations, but were sentenced to prison last year for leaving the two girls alone in the trailer. The state has tried unsuccessfully to sever the mother’s parental rights.
This secondary prosecution is often overlooked in true crime coverage, but it explains why Brittney did not return to her biological mother after recovery.
Beau Maestas Trial: Guilty Plea and Death Penalty
Beau pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in a plea deal that did not spare him from a possible death sentence. His defence lawyer, Pete Christiansen, said that his client had pleaded guilty quite simply because he wanted to confess to what he had done and take responsibility for his crime.
During the penalty phase in 2005, defense lawyers urged jurors to show mercy, presenting the extensive abuse history detailed above. Prosecutor David Schwartz pushed hard for death, telling jurors the death penalty was the only adequate punishment for such a cruel crime perpetrated against two defenceless children. “When you have a young child, 3 years old, who was never given a chance to enjoy all that life has to offer, that is very sad. Going in there with a butcher knife and doing this to those girls over $125 was horrific. Those little girls were no match for him,” he said.
During sentencing, Beau addressed the court in his first public statement: “I’m sorry for the heartache. Because of my actions, Brittney will forever be confined to a wheelchair, and she has lost her sister. I’m sorry. I can’t believe this happened.” Addressing his own family, Beau said he was “sorry for the heartbreak, and I’m sorry for the shame I’ve brought.”
Neither his mother or father were in court. When asked to testify, Harry declined and made it clear “he would have nothing to do with these people,” referring to his children.
A jury decided in August for the death penalty for Beau Maestas. Judge Donald Mosley formally sentenced him to die by lethal injection and tacked on a sentence of up to 75 years in prison for the additional counts. “This case has to be one of the most horrendous I have ever been involved with,” Mosley said. “It is a tragedy all the way around … brought on by this scourge in our community, narcotics.”
The judge scheduled Beau to die the week of Dec. 11-17, but that date was automatically stayed for appeals. As of 2026, Beau Maestas remains on Nevada’s death row at Ely State Prison.
Monique Maestas: Life Instead of Death
Shortly after the verdict was announced, Monique Maestas agreed to plead guilty to the murder of Kristyanna and the attempted murder of Brittney as part of a plea deal.
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that people who were younger than 18 when they committed their crimes cannot be sentenced to death. Since Monique was 17 at the time of the murders, she was spared.
She was sentenced to life imprisonment with parole eligibility after 40 years. In practical terms, a 20-year-old Utah woman was sentenced Thursday to 47 years to life in prison. Judge Mosley noted that Monique could apply for parole when she is 63.
Prosecutor Schwartz was blunt: “From my perspective, she deserves to be on death row with her brother, but the United States Supreme Court saved her.”
Monique read a letter of apology for “lives lost and changed” by the stabbings that killed 3-year-old Kristyanna Cowan and severed the spine of Cowan’s 10-year-old sister, Brittney Bergeron. Addressing Brittney, who was not present, she said: “My heart goes out to you. I’m sorry for everything. The only positive aspect of this entire situation is the courage and perseverance you’ve demonstrated.”
Monique avoided trial by pleading guilty the same day the jury returned the death verdict against her brother. Her plea spared Brittney Bergeron from having to testify about the bloody January 2003 attack.
As of 2026, Monique Maestas is incarcerated at the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in Nevada. Her earliest parole eligibility is in 2043.
Where Is Brittney Bergeron Now?
In the wake of the attack, Brittney was fostered by Judy and Bill Himel. In 2008, Tamara granted Brittney her long-life wish when she relinquished her parental rights and signed an open adoption agreement with the foster parents who had taken care of her following the attack.
Now in her early 30s, Brittney is a high school graduate involved in wheelchair tennis and adaptive sports. She has given limited interviews, choosing privacy over true crime fame. Her foster family has described her as resilient and determined to live a full life despite being paralyzed from the waist down since age 10.
Were Beau and Monique Maestas the parents of the children?
No. This is a common misconception from early headlines. The victims were the daughters of Tamara Bergeron. Beau and Monique were siblings from Utah seeking revenge for a drug deal.
Why did they kill the children?
Prosecutors proved the motive was retaliation for being sold salt instead of methamphetamine. They targeted the home of the alleged dealers, found only children, and attacked them.
Is Beau Maestas still alive?
When will Monique Maestas get out?
Monique was sentenced to 47 years to life. She becomes eligible for parole in 2043 when she is 63 years old. She is not guaranteed release.
What happened to the mother Tamara Bergeron?
She was convicted of child neglect for leaving the girls alone and served a minimum four-year sentence. She later relinquished parental rights to allow Brittney’s adoption.
