EVANSTON — Michelle McWhorter was sentenced to a minimum of 60 years and a maximum of 140 years in prison for the 2016 murders of Evanston residents Christina Caves and Dean Corlett.
District Judge Joseph Bluemel handed down the sentence Thursday, after denying a request to withdraw her guilty pleas to two counts of second-degree murder.  
When Thursday’s sentencing hearing began, McWhorter said she objected to the pre-sentence investigation report that concluded she had committed the murders with purpose and malice. She said she was in a state of psychosis when the crimes were committed.
“I wish I would have fought that,” she said. “I just didn’t want to go through a trial.”
At that point, a recess was called to afford McWhorter an opportunity to confer with her attorney, public defender Kent Brown, who was also surprised by McWhorter’s sudden change of heart. Following the brief recess, Brown entered a formal motion to withdraw McWhorter’s previously-entered guilty plea.
“She’s reflected on it a lot,” Brown said, “and she feels she was not in a state of mind at the time to have had the intent.”
Uinta County Attorney Loretta Howieson said, “The sole purpose of the plea agreement was to provide some finality for victim’s families, but if she wishes to proceed to trial for two counts of first-degree murder, the state has no objection.”

However, Judge Bluemel said he did object to a withdrawal of plea as the court had already established intent during the change of plea hearing in February.
“I’m not at liberty to just willy-nilly withdraw a plea,” he said.
Brown spoke on behalf of his client, saying, “This has been a laborious process for Michelle. She has suffered with mental illness her whole life and feels she was not in a state of mind at the time to formulate malicious intent.”
When asked to explain her thinking, McWhorter again said she felt like she should have stuck up for herself at the February hearing.
“I’m not some cold-hearted killer,” she said. “I was sick in the head. I thought things were going on that weren’t going on.”
At that point, Bluemel formally denied the withdrawal of plea motion and asked for the state to proceed with its case in favor of the plea agreement. Howieson said several of Caves’s family members wished to speak.
Caves’s brother, sister and daughter all spoke, and said their comments were intended for McWhorter. Michael Caves said McWhorter wouldn’t be the only one in prison since “I will forever be incarcerated in a prison of grief.”
Choking back tears, Caves’s sister Angela Holloway said the family had chosen to spare McWhorter’s life and not ask the prosecution to pursue the death penalty. Kayla Stewart, Caves’s daughter, also full of emotion, said she wanted McWhorter to know how her actions had torn a family apart.
“I’ve been so lost,” Stewart said. “Some days it takes every fiber of my being to just get out of bed. I hope you live with regret and that it consumes you.”
Howieson then spoke about the extensive communication between her office, local law enforcement and the victims’ families in reaching the plea agreement. She also spoke about Dean Corlett’s son, Dylan, saying that even after an offer of having travel expenses paid so he could be in court for sentencing, he didn’t feel that he could emotionally handle doing so.  
“The brutality of the murders has been life-changing for the families and friends of the victims,” said Howieson. She added the case against McWhorter was very strong, including extensive DNA evidence at both crime scenes and the fact that McWhorter had gone to great lengths to hide the crimes in both situations.
When Brown again spoke, he said, “Part of Michelle’s problem with the agreement is she’s really concerned what these folks think of her. She’s a different person than she was on that day. What she did was so terrible she doesn’t understand how she could have ever done it.”
Bluemel said he was going to accept the agreement and feels the consecutive sentences provide for a reasonable length of separation from society. He added he feels the sentence also provides opportunities for both rehabilitation and punishment for McWhorter.
McWhorter’s sentence is a minimum of 25 and maximum of 60 years for the second-degree murder of Caves and a minimum of 35 and maximum of 80 years for the second-degree murder of Corlett.