Father sentenced to death for killing 2-month-old daughter

A father convicted of fatally beating his 2-month-old daughter and leaving her remains in an Arkansas storage unit was sentenced Friday to the death penalty, adding to the prison time he’s already serving in Vermont for the earlier killing of another of his children, an infant boy.

A Riverside County judge affirmed the death-penalty recommendation of the jury that found Jason Michael Hann, 40, guilty in December of first-degree murder and assault on a child resulting in death, according to a statement from the Riverside County district attorney’s office.

The mother of the baby girl named Montana, Krissy Lynn Werntz, 34, is also charged with one count of murder. Werntz’s trial is set to begin next month.

The decomposed remains of the baby were found in 2002 in an Arkansas storage unit that had been rented by Hann and Werntz. The contents of the unit were sold when the couple failed to pay their bill, and the person who bought the items made the discovery, prosecutors said.

The couple was arrested nearly three months later at a motel in Portland, Maine. After the arrests, authorities found that another child of theirs, a baby boy who was about 1 month old, had suffered life-threatening abuse, including a dozen rib fractures and retinal hemorrhages, prosecutors said.

During interviews with authorities, Hann said that the girl died in Desert Hot Springs in 2001.

The day after the arrests, investigators found the remains of another child, this time in an Arizona storage unit. The baby, a boy who was about 2 months old, had been killed in Vermont in 1999. The couple kept his remains with them in a plastic container for longer than a year before they rented the storage space.

Hann was convicted of second-degree murder in February 2006 for the boy’s death and was sentenced to 27 to 30 years in prison.

Twitter: @rar

rick.rojas@latimes.com