A Redwood City man who admitted breaking into the home of a Sonoma family days after the parents and two children died in a horrendous car crash was sentenced Friday to at least eight years in state prison for the Nov. 30 burglary.
Michael Vincent Gutierrez, 27, could have two years added to his sentence, depending on the outcome of a pending San Mateo County case, Sonoma County Deputy District Attorney Mike Li said.
Gutierrez also is charged in the November 2009 burglary of a Santa Clara County house that was unoccupied and for sale when it was struck by burglars, Li said.
Both Gutierrez and his co-defendant and one-time girlfriend Amber Marie True, 30, pleaded guilty in the Sonoma case in July.
Still in dispute is whether either knew why the Fryer Creek Drive home of John and Susan Maloney was empty the night they crept into the garage through a doggy door last fall, then kicked in a kitchen door and ransacked the place.
The break-in was discovered the morning after the burglary and three days after a teen-age motorist struck the Maloneys' minivan at Highway 37 and Lakeville Highway on their return from a Thanksgiving vacation in Hawaii.
Both parents and their children, Aiden, 8, and Grace, 5, were killed.
The other driver, Lakeport resident Steven Culbertson, 19, died early the next day.
The subsequent break-in at their home proved devastating to John Maloney's surviving daughter Molly, then 19, as well as other family members and friends who struggled to fathom how anyone could exploit such a tragedy.
Valuables from the house were taken and the thieves drove away in John Maloney's Nissan 350Z sportscar.
In pre-sentencing statements, Li said both defendants contended it was the other who initiated the break-in that provoked outrage around the greater Bay Area.
Gutierrez said that True had an inside line on unoccupied properties listed for sale that might make good targets because of valuables inside.
But he admitted the Maloney home did not appear to be for sale or in foreclosure.
True's attorney, Stephen Weiss, said there's no evidence either one knew what had befallen the family.
"Obviously, if you know that you're going into a house where a family has just been killed under tragic circumstances, then it makes the act more callous," he said. "But there's really no evidence that Amber understood those circumstances. ... They had an expectation of a vacant house, but I don't think they had any knowledge, any real knowledge, beyond that."
The case broke open the day after the burglary when True was pulled over in San Mateo on a traffic violation. She was driving with a suspended license, and was discovered with a credit card and jewelry belonging to Susan Maloney, as well as a Blu-ray disc player in the car.
Police found the family's stolen car parked in the driveway of a hillside house outside Redwood City where Gutierrez and True lived.
Gutierrez was arrested backing the car out of the driveway and exhibited distress when told of the family's deaths, according to court records. In a jailhouse interview, he said it was the first he'd heard of the tragedy.
Li said the question of who knew what about the owners of the Sonoma house was not an issue in Gutierrez's sentencing because his criminal history was substantial and justified extensive prison time.
A long-time drug user whose criminal record dates back more than half his lifetime, Gutierrez was just 15 when he was found to have forced sex on a 13-year-old girl in a classroom, according to the presentencing report. There was also a battery case, later auto theft and grand theft cases, as well as subsequent felony cases, in addition to the pending San Mateo County case, for which he faces prison time for possession of drugs, stolen property and a revolver.
Judge Arthur Wick Friday cut about a year from the sentence recommended by the Sonoma County Probation Department, noting that Gutierrez cooperated in helping investigators recover stolen property, that he entered an early guilty plea and that he admitted his involvement publicly even before any evidence was presented.
Gutierrez, who also was charged with committing the Maloney burglary while on bail for a felony, could still have two years added to his sentence if he's convicted of that felony in San Mateo County, Li said.
It remained unclear Friday whether he would head next to San Mateo or Santa Clara County for prosecution.
True, who is out on bail, is scheduled for sentencing in the Maloney burglary Oct. 27. She faces a maximum six-year prison sentence in the case.
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