The 19-year-old Pomarico, who pled guilty to custodial interference along with sister Kimberly Alvarado last month, faces up to six months in jail and five years of probation.
Mark Fonte, Pomarico’s attorney, told the court that his client had been forever troubled since she witnessed her stepfather shoot her mother, brother and grandparents to death when she was 9 years old.
“Marissa remembers her stepfather turning the gun on her and saying words to the effect, ‘I like you – I am going to let you live,’” wrote Fonte in brief to Supreme Court Justice Leonard P. Rienzi.
Fonte said that Pomarico was still haunted by memories of the murders, had attempted suicide on two occasions, and had to be hospitalized periodically.
Pomarico and her sister abducted the two children, ages 1 and 5, last May, and took them on a seven-month, cross-country journey that ended after the two were featured on “America’s Most Wanted.”
Tips began flooding in, partially because of viewers who had seen the 19-year-old’s appearances on adult websites and in films like “Teen Dream 9” and “Peter North’s North Pole 52” under the aliases “Brittany” and “Jewel Affair.”
Pomarico was eventually convinced to surrender to the FBI by her booking agent, Tara Miali, and was apprehended on Nov. 21.
According to press reports, Alverado had pushed Pomarico into acting as much as possible in order to make money for the fugitive family.
“[Alverado] called me nonstop looking for work for her sister,” one photographer told the New York Post. “Kim’s a real wack job, probably schizoid or bipolar.
“Marissa made a bad mistake listening to her, which is a shame because Marissa is real cool and dependable. If she had been on the up and up, she could have risen to the top,” he said.
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