In the Antelope Valley’s stark desert light — where neighbors say quiet can feel almost punishing — investigators walked into a scene they later called one of the most horrifying in recent memory. And at the center of it, prosecutors say, was a mother who helped orchestrate a crime so brutal it defied comprehension.
Natalie Sumiko Brothwell, 48, was convicted this week of first-degree murder and child abuse in the killings of her two oldest children — 12-year-old Maurice Taylor Jr. and 13-year-old Maliaka Taylor — crimes that prosecutors allege she committed with her partner, 39-year-old Maurice Taylor Sr. A Los Angeles County jury delivered the verdict on Nov. 18, finding Brothwell guilty of multiple murder and four counts of child abuse likely to cause great bodily injury or death.
Brothwell now faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But the most searing details, prosecutors say, involve not only the killings themselves — the stabbing and decapitation of the two teenagers in November 2020 — but what came after. For days, Brothwell and Taylor allegedly forced their two younger sons, then ages 8 and 9, to look at their siblings’ bodies. The boys were kept confined in their rooms without food, left to survive inside a house filled with death.
“This was a monstrous act of cruelty that shattered an entire family,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said. “Two innocent children were brutally murdered, and their young brothers were left to live through unimaginable horror.”
During the trial, prosecutors argued that Brothwell was not a passive bystander but an active participant — a mother who not only failed to protect her children but helped terrorize the two who survived. She was charged equally alongside Taylor, whose remote personal-training clients sounded the alarm when he suddenly stopped answering calls and logging into virtual sessions.
Neighbors, too, had begun reporting a smell coming from the family’s Lancaster home. The killings occurred in late November 2020, a moment when schools were closed, jobs were unstable, and millions of households were being pushed to their limits. Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris suggested those pressures “created a stressful environment in the home,” though prosecutors were clear: stress does not explain or excuse murder.
Throughout the trial, Brothwell’s role took on particular significance. Prosecutors painted her as a mother who abandoned every protective instinct. She did not call 911. She did not flee with her surviving children. Instead, the jury heard, she helped force the boys to confront the bodies of their siblings — an act prosecutors described as psychological torture.
Child-abuse specialists who testified said the trauma inflicted on the surviving boys would last a lifetime.
Brothwell and Taylor are scheduled to be sentenced in January 2026. Their attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
The court offered the only answer it could: by declaring her guilty on all counts.
