LANCASTER, Calif. (Gray News) – Authorities in California say a mother and father have been convicted of murdering their teenage daughter and young son while abusing their two younger boys.

According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, a jury found Maurice Jewel Taylor Sr. and Natalie Sumiko Brothwell guilty of two felony counts of first-degree murder and two felony counts of child abuse.

The DA’s office said Taylor and Brothwell fatally stabbed and decapitated their 13-year-old daughter, Maliaka, and 12-year-old son, Maurice, inside the family’s Lancaster home in 2020.

The parents then forced their two younger sons, ages 8 and 9, to view their siblings’ bodies and remain confined in their bedrooms without food for several days, authorities said.

“This was a monstrous act of cruelty that shattered an entire family,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said. “Two innocent children were brutally murdered, and their young brothers were left to live through unimaginable horror.”

Taylor and Brothwell face a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole plus a consecutive sentence of six years and four months in state prison.

The parents are scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 13, 2026.

“This prosecution would not have been possible but for the tremendous efforts of Deputy District Attorneys Alexander Lara and Kirsten Brown of the Sex Crimes Division, who, along with investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Lancaster Station, pieced this gruesome case together and presented it compellingly to the jury,” Hochman concluded.

A mug shot of Taylor was not made immediately available by law enforcement.

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