By Andy Furillo
afurillo@sacbee.com
A couple of convicted killers sobbed in stereo when a judge sentenced them to life in prison with no chance of parole for the robbery murder of a prostitution trick they lured into an alley.
Rebecca Dawn Brousseau, 32, heaved tears and needed a second tissue box to mop them up on Friday when Sacramento Superior Court Judge Russell L. Hom refused to grant her even a sliver of parole hope.
Cristo Luis Lopez, 23, looked into the audience through reddened eyes and over a teardrop tattoo that he told a probation officer "represents the sadness I feel because I killed somebody."
Lopez apologized to nearly 20 friends and relatives of the 32-year-old victim, Khet Saelee, including his 3-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son.
Saelee said he was going to a friend's house the night of Nov. 22, 2008, investigators said.
Sacramento sheriff's deputies found his body the next day in his vehicle in an alley between Baker Avenue and Roosevelt Avenue, just west of a heavily-trafficked Stockton Boulevard prostitution stroll.
His pants were unbuttoned and his zipper was down, according to a probation report on the case.
Investigators broke the case about four months later when they got word that Lopez, a Norteno gang member with the nickname "L'il Listo," had been bragging about the killing.
Detectives also tracked down a witness who said she heard Brousseau and Lopez discuss the prospect of a trick robbery the night before Saelee was killed.
Lopez admitted his involvement in an interview with detectives, according to his probation report. The 10th-grade Hiram Johnson High School dropout with a record of convictions for spousal abuse, assault with a knife, car theft and burglary said he was a daily methamphetamine user at the time of the killing, the report said.
Brousseau also did crank every day, according to her probation report. She is an 11th-grade dropout from Bella Vista High School.
She said she'd been working as a prostitute for six years, "and that's what I was doing that evening," she said in the probation report.
She denied robbing anybody.
In sentencing the pair, Hom said it was an unprovoked murder. The judge told Lopez he shot a man who was "no threat to you."
Hom told Brousseau that it was "unfortunate you're in this situation." He noted six letters written on her behalf and described her parents as victims of "the drugs and the life you participated in."
Call The Bee's Andy Furillo, (916) 321-1141.
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