No parole for wife in Vegas slaying of US airman from Guam

LAS VEGAS — A 34-year-old mother of four was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole for getting her ex-convict lover to kill her husband, a U.S. Air Force service member from Guam, so they could collect $650,000 in life insurance.

Michelle Antwanette Paet sobbed and apologized during an emotional court hearing that pitted her family’s pleas for her to someday have a chance to see her children again against her husband’s family’s calls for her to remain forever behind bars.

“As a woman of faith, I forgive you, because your soul clearly needs forgiveness,” said Carmelita Paet, mother of Staff Sgt. Nathan Paet and now legal guardian of the Paet grandchildren. They ranged in age from 2 to 9 when their father was shot dead and their mother was arrested in December 2010.

Carmelita Paet described the children, even after months of therapy, as jumpy about loud noises and afraid that their mother might do to them what she did to their father.

“Life without the possibility of parole, and nothing less,” she urged the judge.

Paet didn’t face the death penalty because she pleaded guilty in October before trial.

Michelle Paet’s mother, Constance Quintanilla, also traveled from Guam for the hearing. She sought a chance at parole for her daughter so the children might one day “hear from their mother the things a mother needs to say.”

Clark County District Court Judge Douglas Herndon used the words “incomprehensible,” “devastating” and “unfathomable,” and said he wondered how Michelle Paet could spend weeks plotting the murder with boyfriend Michael Rodriguez while tucking her children in at night and sleeping next to Nathan Paet as if nothing was wrong.

Herndon said he wasn’t convinced by the defendant’s claim that she’d been duped by Rodriguez and became powerless to stop the slaying. Prosecutors said Nathan Paet’s life insurance was worth $650,000.

“You were much more involved than you’re willing to admit,” he said.