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Draper • A woman who fatally stabbed her boyfriend in front of her three young children in 2007 while arguing about a pagan religious ceremony said Tuesday at a parole hearing that at the time, "I was not functional at all."
Monika Ann Dilmaghanian, who is serving up to life in prison, said she was drunk almost all the time during that period in her life, including when she and Nathan D. Harris were in an argument over "something so asinine" at a campground near Ogden.
But she has been sober for more than a decade and is a different person now, the 44-year-old inmate told Chyleen Arbon, a hearing officer for the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. She is preparing to be baptized as a Jehovah's Witness, has taken numerous life skills classes and is working from behind bars to build family relationships, according to Dilmaghanian.
Prosecutors said Dilmaghanian stabbed Harris, 24, once in the heart with a knife she wore in a scabbard around her neck. The then-34-year-old woman allegedly became upset because she felt Harris had improperly performed a "cleansing ceremony" on another knife he had recently acquired.
Dilmaghanian was charged in 2nd District Court with one count of first-degree felony murder and three counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child, a third-degree felony. She pleaded guilty in August 2007 to the murder charge and the other counts were dropped.
Defense attorney Bernie Allen, who believed Dilmaghanian was guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter, said at the time his client refused to go to trial and seek a lesser conviction because she did not want her children — ages 8, 9 and 10 — to have to testify against her.
At the sentencing hearing, Allen asked Judge Ernie Jones to reduce the conviction to manslaughter. But the judge said he was locked in by the law and imposed a sentence of 15 years to life behind bars, the penalty required for murder.
Albon noted Jones had written a letter to the parole board after the sentencing indicating the offense was a classic case of manslaughter and asking for leniency for Dilmaghanian. She said a decision on whether to grant parole, which will be made by a majority vote of the five-member board, will be issued later.
Charging documents say the couple began arguing while they were at Weber Memorial Park and Dilmaghanian said she told her children to get in their vehicle. She claimed that as she also began walking toward the vehicle, Harris pushed her down twice and threatened to kill her.
"Monika stated she remembered grabbing her knife, which she kept on a chain hanging around her neck," a police affidavit says. "The next thing she remembered was pulling the knife from Nathan's chest."
After the stabbing, Dilmaghanian loaded her children into the car and drove until she flagged down a U.S. Forest Service officer, charging documents say.
On Tuesday, Dilmaghanian said the argument had begun the day before the stabbing, when Harris told her he had stolen a knife from one of his friends. When her boyfriend pushed and threatened her the next day, she said, she just wanted to get away.
Dilmaghanian also said she pleaded guilty to murder because she did not want to put Harris' family through a trial.
"I just didn't want to cause any more pain," she said Tuesday.
Frank Glasscock, who described himself as Harris' best friend, said at Tuesday's hearing that Dilmaghanian "did a heinous thing."
"We lost so much when she killed him," he said. "All we have is memories."
Glasscock, who said Harris' mother had asked him to speak at the hearing on behalf of the family, added that Dilmaghanian deserves to be released from prison one day but that now is not the time.
"It's going to be real hard to forgive her," he said.
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