Woman to be sentenced in infant's 2001 murder

INDIO, Calif. - An Indiana woman who was recently convicted of the 2001 death of her 2-month-old daughter faces 15 years to life in prison when she is sentenced Friday in a Southern California court.

Krissy Lynn Werntz, 34, was arrested along with the child's father, Jason Michael Hann, in 2002 after the infant girl's body was found in a storage unit in Arkansas.

The couple had stopped making rental payments and the unit's contents were sold at auction.

Police caught up with the two in Portland, Maine and quickly learned that the girl, Montana, had died in Desert Hot Springs in California in 2001. Within days, authorities had discovered another infant's body - this time a 2-month-old boy - in a different storage unit in Arizona.

The infant boy's body had been hidden there in 2000, about 18 months after he died, prosecutors said. Police believe the baby died in Vermont and that Werntz and Hann, 39, trekked around the country with the remains in a plastic bin before renting the Arizona unit, Riverside County prosecutors said this week.

During the investigation, authorities also found the couple's third child, a 1-month-old boy, alive but suffering from a dozen broken ribs and retinal hemorrhaging - signs of child abuse.

Hann was convicted of Montana's murder in 2013 and sentenced to death earlier this year.

He was also convicted of second-degree murder in Vermont for the infant boy's death and sentenced to 27 to 30 years in prison.

Werntz was not charged in the infant boy's death.