‘I hope she haunts you’: ‘Jailbird,’ gunman get life terms in brutal 2017 killing at Surf Motel

A Sacramento judge sentenced Rebecca Irene Temme and James Martin Baca to life in prison Friday for the execution-style killing of Temme’s wife at a Arden Arcade motel in 2017.

Leonora Montoya was killed March 19, 2017, at the Surf Motel along Auburn Boulevard with a gunshot to the face. Baca and Temme then fled for the Bay Area. Deputies found the 53-year-old Montoya’s body at the motel after a report of gunfire. Authorities would later find and arrest Temme and Baca in Redwood City, chasing down the pair after a car and foot pursuit.

A Sacramento Superior Court jury convicted the pair in May of first-degree murder and robbery with special circumstances. On Friday in separate hearings, Baca hummed to himself as he was led to the defense table. Teeme brightly greeted a female sheriff’s bailiff as she sat to await her fate.

Both will soon spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

“It’s a just and proper sentence. She participated in the execution of a friend – an intimate friend that she had an intimate relationship with,” Sacramento Superior Court Judge Ernest Sawtelle said from the bench.

Sacramento County prosecutors said Temme, Baca, Montoya and a fourth person met at the motel for tattoos before Baca turned a gun on Montoya and friend and demanded their cell phones and Montoya’s car keys. Montoya refused to hand over the keys and Baca shot her dead.

Teeme’s detailed description of the violent scene from jail at Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center as she awaited trial marked the fourth episode of the Netflix documentary series “Jailbirds.” The series depicting life behind bars in Sacramento County’s jails has since been criticized as exploitative of jail inmates and has raised questions about the role Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office played in allowing violence to escalate during filming inside its lockups.

Temme, known on the show as “Baby Girl,” stopped short of saying she killed Montoya but described to producers how she died.

“The victim happened to be my wife,” Temme told producers. “She was a good person. She just made some f---ed up decisions. Prior to that, me and her had a really big falling out. She was a very outspoken person. That was her downfall. She got shot execution style. ... I can’t really discuss it because I’m still fighting it. I regret it. I feel like you can never forget someone’s face when you see them die. And I’ll never forget her face. Like I’ll never forget the look she gave me.”

From the bench on Friday, Sawtelle filled in the grim details Teeme left out while meting out the life sentence as Montoya’s family looked on from the gallery. Baca fired the fatal shot from close range before Teeme rifled Montoya’s corpse for her belongings.

“He executed her right in front of you. As she lay there bleeding out, you went through her pockets. It’s one of the most callous things I’ve ever heard,” Sawtelle said.

In the end, Sawtelle said, Teeme received “exactly the sentence she should – life without parole.”

Baca with defense attorney Keith Staten maintained the deadly shooting was in self-defense, that Baca and Teeme were being set up to be robbed at the motel. Sawtelle flatly rejected the defense theory and Staten’s argument for a new trial.

Baca remained unrepentant to the end. He stayed seated at the defense table as he addressed Sawtelle a final time before he was taken away by sheriff’s deputies.

“Foremost, I will not apologize for surviving. I will apologize for the loss of life - there’s no replacing a life,” Baca said. “But I can’t apologize for surviving. I’m a soldier, straight up.”

Montoya’s daughter, Julia Martin, reading from notes, remembered a woman who was “a mother and a friend, a loving person who had the largest heart;” a woman who was fascinated with ghosts and the paranormal, and “who may not have been perfect, but loved her family fiercely.”

Martin then directly addressed Baca as she repeated her mother’s name.

“Leonora Montoya,” Martin said. “I hope she haunts you. Mostly, because she’d get a kick out of that.”

This story was originally published June 28, 2019 at 5:16 PM.