Beau Santino Maestas is a Nevada death row inmate who pleaded guilty to the January 2003 stabbing murder of three-year-old Kristyanna Cowan and the attempted murder of her ten-year-old sister, Brittney Bergeron, in Mesquite, Nevada. He and his teenage sister carried out the attack after a $125 methamphetamine buy turned out to be salt. A jury sentenced him to death in 2006, and the Nevada Supreme Court has twice upheld that sentence.
What Happened in Mesquite
In January 2003, Maestas was 19 and in Mesquite with friends and his 16-year-old sister, Monique. The group had been using methamphetamine and ran out. They arranged to buy 1.75 grams from Tamara Bergeron and her boyfriend, Robert Schmidt, paying $125 for a package handed over at the CasaBlanca Casino. When they opened it, the substance inside was salt.
Beau and Monique drove to Bergeron’s trailer in the CasaBlanca resort’s RV park to confront her. Bergeron and Schmidt were not there. They were inside the casino gambling, having left Bergeron’s two daughters alone in the trailer.
Around 2:00 a.m. on January 22, the siblings knocked and told ten-year-old Brittney her mother had been badly hurt. When the girl opened the door, Maestas forced his way in and attacked both children with a knife. Kristyanna was stabbed six times, including a wound to the head that penetrated halfway into her brain, and suffered a severed jugular vein. She was airlifted to University Medical Center in Las Vegas and pronounced dead at 5:26 a.m. Brittney was stabbed more than 20 times in the arms, legs, chest, and back. Her spinal cord was severed, leaving her permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
Maestas, Monique, and a third teenager fled north on Interstate 15. Utah Highway Patrol troopers stopped their car near Nephi, Utah, roughly 260 miles from Mesquite, at about 7:45 a.m. Police later recovered five knives wrapped in a towel at an abandoned gas station in Fillmore, Utah.
The Guilty Plea and Death Sentence
Maestas pleaded guilty to first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon, attempted murder with the use of a deadly weapon, and burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon. The defense strategy was to accept responsibility in hopes of avoiding the death penalty.
It did not work. The first penalty hearing ended with a deadlocked jury. A second jury returned a death sentence, and in October 2006 Judge Donald Mosley affirmed it. Jurors acknowledged mitigating factors, including Maestas’s troubled childhood, his lack of a prior criminal record, his admission of guilt, and his remorse. The court observed that “it is difficult to imagine a more horrendous killing than Kristyanna’s.”
His Sister and the Girls’ Mother
Monique Maestas pleaded guilty to the same charges. Because she was 16 at the time of the attack, she was ineligible for the death penalty. Judge Mosley sentenced her on October 5, 2006, to 47 years to life in prison.
Tamara Bergeron, the victims’ mother, pleaded guilty in July 2005 to one count of felony child abuse and neglect resulting in substantial bodily harm for leaving her daughters unattended while she gambled. She was sentenced in October 2005 to a minimum of four years and a maximum of 12 years in prison. Robert Schmidt was sentenced to at least two years for his role in the neglect.
Appeals
2012 Direct Appeal
Maestas challenged his death sentence before the Nevada Supreme Court, arguing that the statute allowing a second jury to impose death after the first jury deadlocked violated the Eighth Amendment. His appellate attorney, Anthony P. Sgro, also alleged that a police dispatcher who served on the second jury had improperly influenced other jurors by claiming she had “heard of convicts going free and committing other crimes.”
Oral arguments were held on October 3, 2011, in Las Vegas. On March 29, 2012, the court unanimously affirmed the conviction and sentence. It held that Nevada’s sentencing statute adequately channels juror discretion and does not violate the Eighth Amendment. On the juror-misconduct claim, the court found “nothing in the record indicates that the jury acted under any improper influence in imposing a death penalty.”
2018 Postconviction Appeal
Maestas later filed a postconviction petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He argued his guilty plea was involuntary because the trial court failed to ask whether the plea was voluntary and failed to discuss the specific rights he was waiving. He also alleged ineffective assistance of counsel: that his attorney advised him to plead guilty despite the risk of a death sentence, waived his right to a preliminary hearing without tactical justification, failed to seek a change of venue, and failed to inform the jury that Nevada does not grant furloughs to inmates serving life sentences.
The district court denied the petition. After oral arguments on April 3, 2018, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the denial in a ruling dated July 26, 2018. Looking at the totality of the circumstances, including the signed plea agreement and testimony at an evidentiary hearing, the court concluded the plea was entered freely and voluntarily. It rejected each ineffective-assistance claim under the standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington, finding that Maestas failed to show either deficient performance or resulting prejudice.
Where the Case Stands
Maestas remains on Nevada’s death row. Nevada retains capital punishment and is one of 27 states that permit it, though the state has not carried out an execution since 2006. As of 2025, 59 people were on the state’s death row with no active execution warrants pending.
A 2021 bill to abolish the death penalty, Assembly Bill 395, passed the state Assembly 26 to 16 but died in the Senate without a committee hearing. Governor Steve Sisolak said there was “no path forward” for the legislation, stating that while he favored using the death penalty less often, he believed “there are severe situations that warrant it.” Before 2021, no bill to repeal Nevada’s death penalty had ever moved out of committee in either chamber.