Four members convicted in Taos compound case sentenced to life; a fifth gets 15 years in prison

Mar. 6—The spiritual and ideological leader of a group of would-be terrorists who abducted a special needs boy and allowed him to die at a Taos-area compound in the winter of 2017 was suffering from "acute schizophrenia," according to testimony at her federal sentencing hearing Wednesday.

In expressing her remorse and apologizing to her victims and the four co-defendants who had believed in her, Jany Leveille, 41, received a 15-year prison sentence based upon a plea agreement with the government. After completing her sentence, Leveille, a Haitian national in the country illegally, is expected to be deported.

Four others convicted in the conspiracy were sentenced to life in prison by Chief U.S. District Judge William Johnson. The four, who had trained with weapons for a coming "war" and "the cleansing of society's corrupt institutions," rejected the government's plea offer after their arrest in 2018, according to court records.

All five were alleged to have removed the 3-year-old son of one of the defendants, Siraj Wahhaj, from his mother in Georgia. With their other children, the group fled to New Mexico.

After arriving in late 2017, they set up a heavily fortified, militarized compound in Costilla Meadows, about a mile from the Colorado border. The boy was denied his anti-seizure medication and ultimately died. Before his death, prosecutors said, he was subjected to hours of painful and distressing exorcism rituals on a daily basis, and Leveille convinced the others to wait for his resurrection on Easter Day.

Meanwhile, the group was hiding out and preparing to kill law enforcement, particularly the FBI, if agents came to arrest them.

On Aug. 3, 2018, Leveille interceded with Wahhaj when law enforcement officers, including those with the Taos County Sheriff's Office, came to check on the welfare of the children living there. Wahhaj had armed himself with multiple firearms and was prepared to engage in a shootout, according to federal prosecutors. But no violence occurred.

Officers that day removed 11 children from the compound. Eventually, the badly decomposed remains of the boy were discovered in an underground tunnel on the grounds.

Wahhaj, who represented himself in court, was Leveille's partner. They, along with his two sisters and brother-in-law, Lucas Morton, contended they were being targeted as defendants in the case because of their Muslim religion.

"The facts are horrendous," Johnson said during the sentencing hearing, but he said Leveille's acceptance of responsibility and apology are "significant." The U.S. Attorney's Office asked for a 17-year sentence as set out in the plea agreement, while her lawyer, Aric Elsenheimer pushed for 12 years.

Leveille, according to Elsenheimer, underwent a radical transformation after physicians at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons diagnosed her mental illness while she was awaiting trial and put her on medication to treat her to "competency."

In a short statement, Leveille told the judge, "My heart hurts for all the victims. I take full responsibility. I was not in my right mind."

"She understood that, because of her schizophrenia, the voices she was hearing were not real," Elsenheimer said. "At its root, this case is about her schizophrenia." If not for that, he said, "We wouldn't be here."

The others, whom she referred to as family, went along with her claim that the 3-year-old Abdul Ghani was actually her child stolen from her womb, that she was Mary, the mother of Jesus, and that she was receiving messages from Allah, or his messengers.

Earlier on Wednesday, Wahhaj, his sisters Hujrah Wahhaj and Subhanah Wahhaj, and Subhanah's husband, Lucas Morton, were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

On Oct. 17, 2023, after a three-week trial, a federal jury convicted Siraj Wahhaj and Morton of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder an officer or employee of the United States, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Hujrah Wahhaj, Subhanah Wahhaj and Morton were additionally convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping resulting in death and kidnapping resulting in death.

Leveille pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and being in possession of a firearm while unlawfully in the United States on Aug. 8, 2023.

U.S. Attorney for New Mexico Alexander Uballez said after the sentencing, "The horrifying events of 2017 and 2018 played out in graphic detail during this trial: from radical ideologies to violent extremist beliefs, the banality of everyday life centered around the corpse of a dead child within a fortified compound in rural New Mexico."

But, he added, "The heart of this case was the senseless death of a 3-year-old."