SANTA CRUZ — A 51-year-old former Aptos woman found legally insane after smothering her 3-year-old daughter in 2008 requested to return to in-patient state psychiatric care this week.
Veva Virgil, who confessed to killing her daughter Bella in a Watsonville motel room in 2008, appears in court Feb. 24, 2014, on the first day of her murder trial. (Dan Coyro — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
A jury’s 2014 guilty verdict, followed by an insanity designation, sent Veva Virgil into the care of the Department of State Hospitals after a five-week trial. She later progressed to monitored outpatient treatment at several facilities in the intervening years, most recently in Fresno, according to Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Alex Byers. However, after missing required court hearings, a warrant for Virgil’s arrest was issued July 18, he said. She was taken into custody Aug. 30 in Fresno before being transported to Santa Cruz County Jail.
Virgil’s defense attorney, Jaime Longoria, told Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Stephen Siegel on Wednesday that his client had gotten into an abusive relationship where her partner fed her drugs and took her to Los Banos. Longoria said Virgil sought a return to state commitment to “build skills to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
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According to trial testimony, Virgil had been high on methamphetamine for days before she killed and left the body of her daughter, Isabella Grace Martinez, in a Watsonville motel room. A jury found that Virgil’s underlying mental health condition, rather than a meth-induced psychosis, was at fault for the murder. According to evidence presented at trial, Virgil told Watsonville police officers that she had smothered her daughter because she thought the world was ending.
A hearing set for Sept. 30 will confirm the status of Virgil’s return to State Hospitals’ care.