Mother Gets 25 Years in Slaying

Despite her tearful request for leniency, a Long Beach woman was sentenced Monday to 25 years to life in prison for murdering her 3-year-old daughter and hiding the dismembered body in a block of concrete.

“I did not kill my daughter and I didn’t hurt her,” Rakeisha Lanette Scott, who in April was convicted of murder, said in Los Angeles Superior Court. “I ask you not to sentence me for something I didn’t do. Please help me.”

But Judge Michael E. Pastor responded that the 1999 death of Milan Anjonet Scott Wilson was “so horrific as to leave one speechless.”

“I have no sympathy for Ms. Scott,” Pastor said. “I have tremendous sympathy for Milan and images that will last a lifetime.”

Scott, 24, was ordered to pay $10,000 restitution to the state for Milan’s funeral expenses.

Scott and her boyfriend, Randy Foster, also 24, told authorities that Milan went to bed dizzy one night after falling down in the bathroom.

When the couple awoke the next morning, the girl was dead, they said.

The couple then dismembered Milan’s body, hid the body parts and placed the concrete in the trunk of Foster’s car, according to testimony. The body remained there for months, decomposing.

Body Found in Car Trunk

The child’s body was discovered by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies on June 27, 2000, after Foster’s father, William Foster, told authorities that he had learned from his son that Milan’s body was in the trunk of a car in the backyard of his Willowbrook home.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Victor Rodriguez argued that the couple administered severe discipline on the girl, which led to her death.

Jurors found Scott guilty of second-degree murder, assault on a child under age 8 and child endangerment.

Foster was convicted in April of child abuse but was acquitted of murder. The jury deadlocked on involuntary manslaughter and assault charges.

A retrial on an assault charge against Foster began last week, and jury deliberations continued Monday.

Scott’s lawyer, Alternate Public Defender Rich Sternfeld, had no comment after the sentence.

William Foster said that he hoped other families would “think about this case and can have enough courage to confront their adult kids in regards to how they treat their smaller kids.”