Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Mother Pleads No Contest in Deaths of 2 Infants : Courts: Pleas to 2nd-degree murder charges stem from discoveries of dead newborns in 1987 and 1992.

A woman accused of killing two infant children in a case that helped draw attention to the Antelope Valley’s child abuse problems, has pleaded no contest to second-degree murder.

Sharon F. Conley, 37, of Quartz Hill, and Ronald E. Wesselmann, 40, were arrested in February, 1992, after a dead newborn boy was found inside a trash bag in a dumpster near the couple’s apartment.

In the wake of that incident, investigators reopened a 1987 case in which the remains of another infant were found stuffed in a shoe box in the garage of a Lake Los Angeles house the couple had been renting.

Last year, Wesselmann was sentenced to 11 years in state prison after pleading no-contest to one count of voluntary manslaughter. In exchange, prosecutors said they would drop a murder charge involving the first baby and would not file additional charges that he sexually abused his daughters.

Conley was about to stand trial in San Fernando Superior Court in Van Nuys when she entered her own no-contest pleas--equivalent to pleading guilty--before Judge Meredith C. Taylor on Wednesday. Sentencing was set for April 13.

“I would have liked to have tried it, but I’m not sure we would have gotten a better result,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Smalstig.

Conley had been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with special circumstances, meaning she could have faced the death penalty if convicted. Smalstig said a district attorney’s death-penalty case review committee approved the reduced charges if she entered a no-contest plea.

Under the agreement, Conley will be sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. She will be eligible to apply for parole in about nine years, Smalstig said.

If the case had gone to trial, Conley’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Earl R. Siddall, said he was prepared to challenge some of the medical test results concerning how the infants died. But he said his client agreed to the plea, partly because she feared a death sentence.

“There was a substantial risk,” Siddall said.

The 1992 death of Conley’s newborn was among a string of seven killings of Antelope Valley infants and toddlers over a 14-month period, allegedly by their parents or guardians. The deaths raised awareness among community leaders regarding the severity of child abuse problems in the area and led to calls for expanded services and information programs.

Investigators said many of these deaths were linked to adults using the drug methamphetamine, commonly called speed. Prosecutor Smalstig said Conley used the drug and that traces of it were found in the body of the newborn in the trash bag.

In the 1992 incident, a man looking for valuables in a dumpster at a Quartz Hill apartment complex ripped open the bag and found the dead boy. Sheriff’s investigators asked nearby residents if anyone had recently been pregnant, and several pointed to Conley.

“She initially denied it,” Smalstig said. “Then, after a physical exam determined she had recently been pregnant, she admitted the baby in the trash was hers but said it was stillborn.”

The prosecutor said medical tests showed the baby was born alive but died a short time later from exposure.

After arresting Conley and Wesselmann, investigators reopened the case involving the baby found in a shoe box in 1987, which Conley had also denied was her child. A cleaning crew had found the box after the family moved out of the house.

Smalstig said new DNA testing techniques showed that Conley was almost certainly the mother of that child.

The prosecutor said the couple’s eldest child, now 22, was prepared to testify that her mother gave birth at that time and that the baby mysteriously disappeared.

County officials removed the couple’s seven surviving minor children from their parents’ custody in 1986 and 1987 because of a child cruelty complaint and the discovery of the baby in the shoe box, but the children were returned to the parents after both incidents.

After Conley and Wesselmann were arrested in 1992, their six children who were still minors were again removed and placed in foster homes, where they appear to be thriving, Smalstig said. “They’re doing great in school,” he said. “They’re healthy, happy, putting behind them the hellish nightmare they grew up in.”