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(NEW YORK) — The owner of a day care where a 1-year-old boy died of fentanyl poisoning and three other children were sickened pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges, resolving a case that horrified New York City and underscored the scourge of the nation’s fentanyl epidemic.

Grei Mendez pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death and serious bodily injury, one count of possession with intent to distribute narcotics resulting in death and one count of possession with intent to distribute narcotics resulting in serious bodily injury. The three counts carry a minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison.

Prosecutors said the children were poisoned because Mendez, her husband and a co-conspirator chose to operate a large-scale fentanyl packaging and distribution facility inside her day care, which she ran out of a small apartment in the Bronx.

On the afternoon of Sept. 15, 2023, when 1-year-old Nicholas Dominici and another child became unresponsive, prosecutors said Mendez placed a series of phone calls: first to the community center that had referred the children to the day care, then to her husband, and then 911.

Moments after Mendez called 911, but before emergency personnel arrived, prosecutors said her husband was seen on surveillance camera rushing through the front door and then leaving out of the back of the building with two heavy bags.

Nicholas died from the fentanyl and three other children — ranging in age from 8 months to 2 years — were hospitalized and treated with Narcan, police said.

At the day care, authorities discovered a one-kilogram brick of fentanyl, two kilo press machines and two trap doors that revealed concealed compartments under the floor tiles of the playroom, authorities said.

Inside the traps were more than 11 kilograms of drugs, including fentanyl and heroin, as well as tools used to brand, package, distribute and traffic narcotics, the indictment said.

Federal prosecutors said they have surveillance footage and a voice message in which Mendez said that running a day care is not her “thing” in order to prove that the facility was a front for the narcotics operation.

“Grei Mendez has just admitted she conspired to maintain and distribute large quantities of dangerously toxic fentanyl in a Bronx Daycare center, a place where parents expected their children would be protected and safe,” Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement Tuesday.

“This case has shown the senseless collateral damage caused by the fentanyl epidemic, and should remind us all that the demand for illegal narcotics so often puts innocent bystanders at risk while drug traffickers ruthlessly pursue profits,” Williams added.

Earlier this month, Mendez’s husband, Felix Herrera Garcia, was sentenced to 45 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal drug charges. The third co-conspirator has also pleaded guilty.

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(LOS ANGELES)  — Lyle and Erik Menendez are currently serving life behind bars for the murders of their parents in the family’s Beverly Hills home. But after more than three decades in prison, a renewed interest in the headline-grabbing trial has the brothers pursuing two tracks to potential freedom.

The Menendez case dates back to August 1989, when Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, shot and killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.

Prosecutors alleged Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their wealthy parents for financial gain, while the defense argued the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father.

Their first trials — which captured the nation’s attention with cameras in the courtroom — ended in mistrials.

In 1996, at the end of a second trial — in which the judge barred much of the sex abuse evidence — Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.

The sensational case gained new attention this fall with the release of the Netflix drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” and the Netflix documentary “The Menendez Brothers.”

The brothers currently have two potential paths to their release before the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Resentencing

One track involves a review of their sentence based on factors including rehabilitation, which Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is evaluating.

Gascón said he plans to make his resentencing decision this month. If Gascón recommends resentencing, his recommendation will go to a judge to decide whether the brothers will be released, receive a lesser sentence or get a new trial.

Gascón told ABC News in October any recommendation for resentencing would take into account the decades the brothers already served and their behavior in prison.

Mark Geragos, the Menendez brothers’ lawyer, called Erik and Lyle model prisoners who worked tirelessly to reform themselves with no expectation they’d be released.

“Given the totality of the circumstances, I don’t think that they deserve to be in prison until they die,” Gascón told ABC News.

Gascón said since he’s been in office, they have resentenced over 300 people, of which four have reoffended.

The other track concerns the brothers’ petition filed last year for a review of new evidence not presented at the original trial. Through the habeas corpus petition, the court could reverse the conviction or reopen proceedings.

Gascón said his office is evaluating allegations from a member of the boy band Menudo who said he was molested by Jose Menendez, and a letter Erik Menendez wrote to a cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse.

Erik Menendez’s cousin testified about the alleged abuse at trial, but Erik Menendez’s letter — which would have corroborated the cousin’s testimony — wasn’t unearthed until several years ago, according to Geragos.

“The combination of those two we believe provide more than ample basis to set aside the result of the second trial,” Geragos said at a press briefing earlier this month.

Geragos said the district attorney could either oppose the habeas and decide to litigate it, or “they could concede the habeas and say, give them a new trial.”

“I’m hoping that sometime before Thanksgiving, which is when the next response is due, that the DA will either concede the habeas or join us in asking for resentencing,” Geragos said.

The next court date in the case is scheduled for Nov. 26, Gascón said.

Family calls for release

Nearly two dozen relatives have urged the district attorney to recommend the brothers be resentenced and released.

Lyle and Erik Menendez “were failed by the very people who should have protected them — by their parents, by the system, by society at large,” Kitty Menendez’s sister, Joan Andersen VanderMolen, said at a news conference on Wednesday.

“Their actions, while tragic, were the desperate response of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable cruelty of their father,” she said of the murders. “As their aunt, I had no idea of the extent of the abuse they suffered.”

Behind bars, the siblings “persevered,” Anamaria Baralt, niece of Jose Menendez, said. “They have sought to better themselves and serve as a support and inspiration for survivors all over the world. Their continued incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose.”

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(MOSCOW, Idaho) — The wheels of justice turn slowly, and it’s not cheap to keep them grinding.

Still more than nine months before Bryan Kohberger’s capital murder trial is scheduled to begin — and still without a definitive answer on where in Idaho it will be held — local government leaders in the area where four students were stabbed to death in 2022 do know one thing: The trial will cost taxpayers a lot of money, so the county requires a cash infusion, officials have decided — wherever it ends up taking place.

To that end, Latah County District Court has been granted a significant increase for next year: The county’s Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved boosting the trial expense budget to $150,000 for fiscal year 2025 — more than 40 times their 2024 budget of $3,500.

It’s not the first time the financial impact of the case has come up. In 2023, prosecutors leading the case against Kohberger requested a $135,000 budget. Even then, they said, their part could cost more than eight times what’s typically allotted annually.

Prosecutors allege that in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, Kohberger, then a criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University, broke into an off-campus home and stabbed four University of Idaho students to death: Ethan Chapin, 20; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21.

After a six-week hunt, police zeroed in on Kohberger as the suspect, arresting him in December 2022 at his family’s home in Pennsylvania. He was indicted in May 2023 and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. At his arraignment, he declined to offer a plea, so the judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

His lawyers have said Kohberger was driving around alone and not near the crime scene on the night the killings occurred, and say they’ll have expert cellphone analysis to back that up.

The trial is currently set for June 2025.

Kohberger could face the death penalty, if convicted.

With the pretrial process creeping forward, the financial line items associated with the case continue to accrue.

Once the trial kicks off, according to the approved Latah County budget, expenses could include travel and lodging costs for jurors and bailiffs. Since jurors in the complex and high-profile case will need supplies, including meals, the court also requested a large increase in its jury supplies budget: from $3,500 to $50,000.

The approved budget to cover witness fees is also substantially higher than last year’s, primarily to pay for the travel costs of witnesses scheduled to testify in court, according to the budget.

The commissioners also approved $20,000 in contracts and labor in preparation for a trial in Latah County.

If the trial is held in Latah County, this money would be used to hire extra workers for jury management, according to Latah County Clerk Julie Fry.

But whether the trial will stay in Latah County remains to be seen, and has become a point of pretrial contention. Kohberger’s lawyers argue the “pressure to convict” their client in the area showed to be “so severe,” those jurors couldn’t possibly be impartial. In fact, they argue, the “mob mentality” of the tightknit community is the “exact reason” the trial should be moved to another area of Idaho, where it could be heard by people with less of an emotional connection to what has been nearly two years and counting of news coverage about it.

“The traumatized town of Moscow is understandably filled with deeply held prejudgment opinions of guilt,” Kohberger attorney Elisa Massoth said in a recent court filing in their push to move the trial to Ada County, and the state capital of Boise.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, contend that people in Boise have TVs and newspapers too, so moving it would be futile — and the focus instead should be on “crafting remedial measures” to ensure a fair and impartial jury can be seated right where they are.

Both sides have attempted to cite frugality to support their opposing positions.

“Any consideration related to costs of prosecution and defense make Ada County a logical choice with the largest airport in the state,” Kohberger attorney Anne Taylor said in a July filing. “There will be a number of witnesses traveling into Idaho and Ada County is a more cost-effective option,” she said, adding that keeping the trial in more far-flung Moscow “will require most witnesses to travel to Spokane, Washington and rent a car to drive to the Latah County Courthouse.”

In arguing against the change of venue, prosecutors have also pointed to court coffers.

“The transfer of trial to Ada County would come at an extraordinary cost,” prosecuting attorney Bill Thompson wrote in a filing earlier this month. “Whether out-of-state witnesses fly into Lewiston, Spokane, or even Boise, the cost of rental vehicles for a handful of out-of-state witnesses is only a fraction of the total cost picture.”

Were the trial to move to Boise, he said, the need for more witness hotel rentals would skyrocket, as would pulling police and emergency dispatch witnesses from their work “for days, rather than hours, creating a ripple effect of inconvenience.”

“While Defense counsel took this case on a contract basis and will have to travel whether the trial is had in Ada County or in Latah County, the same is not true for the Court, the court reporter, the court clerk, and the Court’s staff attorney,” Thompson said.

“The State, which has the burden of proof and must deal with the logistics of juggling witnesses and trial exhibits would have to relocate both of its lead attorneys, as well as its support and victim services staff, for weeks and likely months,” Thompson continued. “This would come at great expense for lodging, transportation, and per diem.”

A hearing on whether to change the trial’s venue is set for Thursday.

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