DNA helps convict woman who suffocated little boy, 5, in 1997, when she was just 15

A Florida woman who admitted to killing a 5-year-old boy when she was 15, was given a 30-year sentence behind bars on Monday, after DNA linked her to the crime.

The Sun Sentinel reports that Karla Michelle Sevilla, 35, put a garbage around Michael (Mikki) Malcolm Jr.’s face and suffocated the little boy to death. She then drug his body behind a West Palm Beach apartment dumpster, with the bag still wrapped around his head.

Mikki’s mother, Michie Robinson, agreed to allow Sevilla to plea to second-degree murder instead of first-degree murder. However, the distraught mother said she would never have closure regardless of how many years Sevilla spends in prison. She also admitted she agreed to second-degree murder charges since a trial would have been “risky.”

“It will never give me closure. I still don’t know the reason….I’m not happy or pleased. But at the same time, I don’t want her to walk from my son’s murder. It was a 50-50 chance she could.”

In October 1997, Sevilla told authorities she found the little boy’s body behind a dumpster, but she denied having anything to do with his death. Years later, forensics experts found Sevilla’s DNA under Mikki’s fingernails. She still hasn’t given a reason why she killed him.

Sevilla was initially arrested and charged in 2008, but was later found mentally incompetent, which delayed her trial.

[Feature Photo: Handout]