Orrin West and Orson West appear on placards, identified by their birth names, at a press conference in Kern County, Calif. (Screengrab via YouTube/KBAK.)
A California couple will likely spend decades in prison for murdering one of their young adoptive sons and seriously abusing another – though the second boy is also presumed dead and law enforcement insist the defendants are responsible for his death as well.
Trezell Phillip West, 36, and Jacqueline Gabrielle West, 33, were each sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, plus four years, on Thursday for the late summer or early fall 2020 death of Orrin West, 4, as well as the extreme and violent cruelty meted out to Orson West, 3.
In May, the Bakersfield couple were convicted on five of seven counts they each faced over the disappearances and presumed murders of the two children, who were first reported missing in December 2020.
“This case was prosecuted because the evidence was overwhelming that Trezell and Jacqueline West murdered those two boys,” Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer said during a press conference after the sentencing by Judge Charles Brehmer.
Sentencing in the case had been repeatedly delayed – it was originally slated for July. A gag order in the case also prohibited a great deal of information being released for most of the present year.
The defendants were initially charged with two counts each of murder in the second degree — one for each child — two counts each of willful cruelty to a child, and one count each of false report of an emergency. After an indictment, they were tried on two counts of second-degree murder, one count of conspiracy to commit murder, one count of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of willful cruelty to a child, and one count of false report of an emergency to law enforcement.
Trezell West and Jacqueline West were each found guilty of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter as to Orrin, both counts of willful cruelty to a child, and false report of emergency. Jurors could not reach a verdict on the second-degree murder charge and conspiracy to commit murder charges related to Orson. Those remaining counts were dismissed.
The DA decided not to retry the two defendants on those extant charges – though she could have – largely because of the toll such an enterprise would have taken on other children in the Wests’ orbit.
Some of the most “impactful” testimony during the trial came from the defendants’ own children, Zimmer said.
“It was very difficult on them and since they had to testify against their parents, we didn’t want to put them through that again,” she explained.
The county’s trial attorney who prosecuted the case, Eric Smith, was also adamant about the guilt the state could not prove.
“[The victims] were provided to Jacqueline Trezell by the state,” Smith said during the press conference. “And, ultimately, they were not treated appropriately and they were killed by them.”
During the trial, prosecutors revealed that law enforcement initially came to suspect the defendants after Bakersfield police conducted interviews with the four other West children. Defense attorneys unsuccessfully argued in response that such interviews were improper and unreliable because the children – all of whom were under the age of 11 at the time – were goaded by loaded questions and gave somewhat confusing and contradictory answers.
In one likely powerful piece of testimony, the Wests’ eldest child, who was 10 at the time the two boys disappeared, testified that he found Orrin dead and was told by his parents to keep quiet or he and his siblings would be taken away. As for Orrin’s body, the boy told jurors he did not know what had happened to it.
On Thursday, prosecutors referred to the slain boys by their birth names: Cinsere Pettus and Classic Pettus.
“They were babies,” the district attorney said. “And I am so proud that the community embraced these children and cared.”
The boys’ bodies are still missing.
“We will never give up hope that the bodies of these precious children will be found and can be brought home,” Zimmer concluded.
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