The walls of a family home are supposed to be a sanctuary of safety, but for four siblings in California, those walls became the boundaries of a living nightmare. In a case plunged into a darkness few can even fathom, one couple didn’t just commit the unthinkable by stealing the lives of their two children, they weaponized the trauma against their surviving siblings in harrowing murders straight out of a horror flick.
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It was Nov. 29, 2020, when parents Maurice Jewel Taylor Sr., 39, and Natalie Sumiko Brothwell, 49, fatally stabbed and decapitated their 13-year-old daughter, Maliaka, and 12-year-old son, Maurice, inside their Lancaster, California, home on the 45000 block of Century Circle, CBS News reported. Their terror didn’t stop there.
The pair then forced their 8 and 9-year-old sons to view their siblings’ beheaded bodies and remain confined in their bedrooms for days on end without food, Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.
Neighbors had called authorities over reports of a foul odor, according to KTLA 5. When the Los Angeles County Fire Department went to investigate a possible gas leak in the couple’s home, that’s when the horrific discovery was made. Maliaka and Maurice’s bodies were found in separate bedrooms.
Taylor, a former personal trainer, was charged with murder and child abuse four days later. Meanwhile, Brothwell was arrested in September 2021 at her Tucson, Arizona, home one day after authorities issued a warrant for her arrest.
A jury found Taylor and Brothwell guilty of two felony counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances and two felony counts of child abuse under circumstances or conditions likely to cause great bodily injury or death on Nov. 18, 2025.
Brothwell maintained her innocence in court and claimed she “did not murder my children” and actually had tried to save them, local news channel NBC 4 Los Angeles reported. However, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa M. Strassner said the suspects had zero “genuine remorse” and that there was instead “silence where accountability should be.” Now, they just learned their fate.
The pair were sentenced to six years in prison, plus two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole on Monday. The court also issued a 10-year protective order for the surviving victims.
“This was a monstrous act of cruelty that shattered an entire family,” District Attorney Hochman said. “Two innocent children were brutally murdered, and their young brothers were left to live through unimaginable horror.”
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