She Promised to Care for Her Niece and Nephew. Then Police Found Their Bodies Decaying in Her Trunk

A Maryland woman will spend up to 50 years in prison after the badly decaying bodies of her niece and nephew were found in her trunk, where she had kept them for months.

On August 13, 2024, Nicole M. Johnson, 36, pleaded guilty in Baltimore County Circuit Court to two counts of first-degree child abuse involving the death of a victim younger than 13, online court records show.

On Monday, Feb. 10, Judge Nancy Purpura sentenced her to life in prison, suspending all but 50 years, Fox 5 News reports.

As PEOPLE previously reported, the crime came to light during a routine traffic stop on July 28, 2021, when Baltimore officers found the bodies of two children in Johnson’s trunk, police said.

They had stopped Johnson because the car was unregistered, uninsured and had a fake temporary West Virginia tag, police said, WMAR2 News reported.

Officers were arranging to have the car towed and told her to take anything she needed out of the car when one of them noticed a strong odor, police said. That’s when Johnson pulled a maggot-filled plastic tote and a garbage bag out of the trunk, police said.

When they opened the bag, they found the remains of Johnson’s niece, 7-year-old Joshlyn Johnson, inside. They found the body of 5-year-old Larry O’Neil III, her nephew, inside the tote.

The siblings’ mother had left them in Johnson’s care in 2019, Fox 5 News reports.

Joshlyn weighed 18 lbs. when she died, an autopsy found, according to Fox5 News. Larry weighed only 21 lbs.

According to charging documents obtained by PEOPLE, Johnson told detectives she had been driving with the children’s bodies in her car for a year.

She said she put Joshlyn’s body in the trunk in May 2020 after she struck her repeatedly, causing the child to fall and hit her head, the documents alleged.

She said Larry fell asleep in the back of the car in May 2021 and never woke up, so she put his body inside the trunk with his sister’s, the documents said.

The victims’ mother, Dachelle Johnson, wrote online that she was in the process of getting her children back from her sister when the woman “just disappeared.”

“It was supposed to just be a family helping family situation,” Dachelle wrote on a since-deleted GoFundMe page.

“I trusted her I was mentally broken from losing the woman that raised me … I’ll never get to see my kids because a mistake I made in trusting my sister. I wish I could take it back but I can’t.”

“I still trusted her and didn’t want to think the worst,” the grieving mom continued. “This is my blood sister, she was my family. The mistake I made in trusting will always fall on me but I never could imagine this outcome. I just needed a mental break, I lost the woman that raised me, I was tired and depressed and down I’m sorry.”

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.