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FARMINGTON — A Layton mother who once faced a potential death penalty was given a life prison sentence Monday for the death of her 4-year-old son, Ethan Stacy, in 2010.
"I am entirely responsible because I am his mommy," Stephanie Sloop, 31, told 2nd District Judge Thomas L. Kay, who ordered her to serve 20 years to life in prison for aggravated murder, a first-degree felony, and one to 15 years years for obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony.
He ordered the sentences to be served concurrently as part of a plea agreement.
Sloop wept as she told the court she does not know who she is without her son.
Ethan died in 2010, just days after he arrived in Utah from Virginia to spend the summer with his mother and Nathan Sloop, her then-fiancé, as part of a court-ordered custody agreement. Prosecutors said the child was severely abused, scalded, beaten, overmedicated and not given the medical care that he needed between April 29 and May 8.
Nathan and Stephanie Sloop got married on May 6, but left Ethan at home alone because they didn't want anyone to notice his bruises and swelling.
Sloop initially reported to police that her son had run away from their Layton apartment in the middle of the night. Police searched for Ethan and noticed inconsistencies in her story before eventually finding the boy's body buried near Powder Mountain.
The 4-year-old's body had been disfigured with a hammer and the shallow grave had been sprinkled with dog food. Ethan had also suffered burns over 17 percent of his body.
Stacy's father was also present Monday, but did not make a statement during the hearing.
Plea negotiations had been underway for some time. A preliminary hearing for Sloop was scheduled for Monday, but she accepted a deal instead. In exchange for her guilty pleas to aggravated murder, a first-degree felony, and obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of intentionally inflicting serious physical injury on a child, a second-degree felony, and abuse or desecration of a dead human body, a third-degree felony.
Sloop's case was put on hold while attorneys investigated information tied to the case of her 35-year-old husband, Nathanael Warren Sloop, who pleaded guilty but mentally ill to aggravated murder, a capital offense, and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in February.
Monday, prosecutors placed the bulk of the blame for Ethan's death on Nathan Sloop but accused Stephanie Sloop of covering it up.
The woman's relationship with Nathan Sloop was yet another in her history of bad relationships, defense attorneys said. Nathan Sloop was violent and had mental problems.
Stephanie Sloop was not thinking clearly when she married Nathan Sloop and did not think she could leave, her attorney told the court Monday, adding that she could have done more to protect her son.
