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In a plea bargain, Candace Clarke, 24, also pleaded guilty to child abuse and other charges. She had been scheduled to go to trial Monday.
Police found Tammie Garlin, 36, buried behind the gang’s rented house in Portage in June of last year. Her 11-year-old son was found in a closet, naked and severely abused.
Columbia County District Attorney Jane Kohlwey said Clarke pleaded no contest to second-degree reckless homicide, reduced from being a party to first-degree intentional homicide.
She pleaded guilty to child abuse, causing mental harm to a child, false imprisonment and other counts, as well as no-contest to a related count. Several other counts, including hiding a corpse, were dropped.
Clarke’s attorney, David Geier, didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.
Investigators said Clarke and her boyfriend, Michael Sisk, led a band of scam artists that traveled across the country.
Garlin, her son and her daughter were part of the gang. The group tortured the boy for bad behavior and at some point turned on Garlin and murdered her, according to a criminal complaint.
Sisk is scheduled to go on trial next month.
Investigators searching for Clarke’s missing 2-year-old daughter, whom they believed Clarke abducted from Florida foster parents, tracked the gang to the rented house in Portage.
Police found the girl at the house, as well as Garlin’s body buried in a shallow grave in the backyard and her son locked in the closet, naked, starving and burned to within inches of his life.
Pediatrician Barbara Knox testified at a hearing last year that the boy looked like “a concentration camp survivor.” Doctors had to amputate several fingertips and three of his toes because they were burned so badly.
The tale of Garlin’s death and the boy’s suffering shocked Portage, a town of 9,700 about 40 miles northwest of Madison. It also spurred the Florida Department of Children and Families to reform its system and assign specific workers to track missing children.
Clarke told reporters in jailhouse interviews last year the boy deserved to be punished severely because he acted so badly.
She denied killing Garlin, but said Sisk and another member of the gang, Michaela Clerc, Garlin’s former lover, turned on her. They were angry after Garlin admitted to having sexual fantasies about Clarke.
According to a criminal complaint, Clarke told detectives Garlin’s daughter and Clerc kicked her June 4, 2007, and Clerc dropped Garlin on her head in the house’s bathroom.
Sisk went into the bathroom and closed the door, Clarke said. He came out a few moments later saying Garlin was dead.
Kohlwey dropped homicide and hiding a corpse charges against Clerc, saying she couldn’t prove Clerc had a role in Garlin’s death. Clerc, 21, later pleaded no contest to child abuse charges. Kohlwey dropped the rest of the counts against her in exchange.
Clarke faces up to 129½ years in prison. She’ll be sentenced after Sisk’s trial ends, Kohlwey said.
Her deal doesn’t require her to testify against him, the district attorney said.
