A man who fatally beat a Coachella Valley woman during a robbery that went unsolved for four decades was sentenced Friday to seven years to life in prison.
Michael Jerome Hayes, 66, was convicted last month of first-degree murder for the 1972 slaying of 23-year-old Mary Elaine Costa.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Charles Koosed imposed the sentence required under the California penal code at the time of the crime.
Hayes was also given credit for time served, totaling 859 days in county jail. He will be eligible for parole in January 2020.
Last month, a nine-woman, three-man jury found 66-year-old Michael Jerome Hayes guilty of first-degree murder in the 1972 slaying of 23-year-old Mary Elaine Costa.
Costa's son, who was 7 years old when she was killed, spoke in court Friday.
"I've been where my mother's body was found, I've been to her grave site, and I still can't figure out why she had to die," Jimmy Stellflug said.
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"She would never know the son that never gave up," he said of a woman described as a loved and loving mother, who would now be a grandmother.
In the case, Hayes' first wife, Diana Clark, was the prosecution's key witness. She testified that the defendant took her to see Costa's remains.
Clark recalled Hayes pulling her out of bed on a late February night, when she was five months pregnant, and driving her away from the Indio mobile home park where they lived and heading out into the desert, eventually stopping on an unpaved road where no lights were in sight.
Laying less than 20 feet from the roadway, Clark testified, was a woman's body, clad in a "multicolored dress" and facedown in the dirt. Clark recalled seeing a bloodstained rock nearby. She said she demanded to know what had happened, and Hayes told her that he had killed the young woman for money.
"I said, 'What do you mean you killed her for money?' And he said, 'Yeah, and I only got $7,'" Clark testified.
The witness alleged that Hayes admitted beating Costa over the head because she fought him when he attempted to take her purse.
The defendant told his then-wife that he'd met Costa on a Palm Springs street after leaving his bartending job at the Biltmore Hotel. He knew the victim was a hooker, so he picked her up under the guise of wanting to go somewhere secluded for sex, Clark said.
She described Hayes as physically and emotionally abusive throughout their cohabitation in Riverside County.
"One of his favorite sayings was, 'Just remember what happened to the woman in the desert,'" Clark testified.
Costa's body was found several weeks after the deadly assault when a real estate investor scouting development opportunities in the area of Avenue 20 and Cottonwood Road in Desert Hot Springs stumbled upon the badly decomposed remains, according to Deputy District Attorney Chris Cook. He said that, with few leads for investigators to follow, the case quickly went cold.
In December 1976, Clark decided to contact sheriff's investigators about what she knew, feeling less threatened after Hayes moved to Florida.
The case was reopened but the investigation concluded within a few months after apparent difficulties gathering enough evidence to justify filing charges. The sheriff's cold case squad renewed the investigation in 2011, culminating in the filing of a criminal complaint.
An Indio judge tossed the case in 2012, saying the four-decade delay undermined the defendant's right to a fair trial. However, prosecutors prevailed in having the charges reinstated after arguing the matter before a state appeals court. Hayes' first trial ended in a hung jury in February.
The defense maintained that he never knew Costa and that Clark, as well as two other ex-wives who testified against him, lacked credibility.
"I can tell you my mother was a beautiful Portuguese woman and always smiled like she got the lead part in the movies opposite Elvis," Stellflug said.
"When (Hayes) chose to live the past 43 years with no regard for his crime, and continued using my mother's death to hurt other women, I find not only reprehensible but beyond a shadow of a doubt proof he is remorseless, emotionless and deserves a sentence of life without a chance of parole and to be given the same compassion he gave my mother — none," Stellflug said.
"And I would like him to know, your honor," Stellflug continued, "if he ever does see a chance of parole, he will see me there with a picture of my mother, and I will do everything in my power to see it is denied."
