A Los Angeles socialite who killed two young boys after hitting them with her car was sentenced to 15 to life in prison for her crimes.
The sentence came after Rebecca Grossman made a plea for the judge to “consider her suffering” as he handed down the sentence.
Grossman, 60, said she was “not a murderer” and said the pain she has caused her family and the family of the two dead youngsters were “punishments I already endure.”
She was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of Mark Iskander, 11, and his brother Jacob Iskander, 8, after a six-week trial. She learned her prison fate during a Monday court hearing.
Grossman was engaged in a “high-speed game of chicken” with her lover, former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Scott Erickson. The pair had been drinking cocktails at a nearby bar prior to the incident.
“I am not a murderer, and I ask you to recognize that true fact,” Grossman wrote in a letter to Superior Court Judge Joseph Brandolino, obtained by The New York Post.
“My pain, my recognition of the pain the Iskanders suffer, and the pain I watch my family endure, are punishments that I already suffer and will for the rest of my life. Please consider this suffering when you consider what more punishment to impose on me in this case.”
Her lawyers have argued she should be let off with probation.
“I can only imagine the pain that (the boys’ parents) Nancy and Karim Iskander feel minute by minute,” Grossman wrote. “I will carry my pain for the rest of my life.”
The socialite also sent a bizarre letter to the Iskanders, obtained by the Daily Mail, in which she said she would have driven her car “into a tree” if she’d had the chance, to avoid the tragedy.
Despite her claims, the boy’s mom Nancy Iskander said the socialite had treated her family as “the number one enemy in the world,” having fought to delay the sentencing multiple times.
According to Iskander, the socialite had used multiple “strategies” including creating conflicts of interest to delay the hearing, which was originally scheduled for April 10.
“The issue became that every time we try and move on and move on to that next step, the legal system or Ms Grossman, or both, take us back into the fight, back to the fight for justice,” Ms Iskander said, speaking to Fox News Digital last month.
“It’s horrific to say the least. She has not expressed remorse but more importantly, she has not even shown mercy… I felt that she had many opportunities to show mercy, plead guilty or figure out a way to just shorten the process of the fight, and not having to take me back again and again into that courtroom.
“But she didn’t. She’s had many opportunities to show mercy and she did not show any mercy on my family, in fact, she only shows hate… as if we’re as if we’re number one enemy in the world.”