UPDATED::2 girls died on farm where "spiritual leader" was in charge: affidavit - CBS News

 UPDATE::  Mother of Norwood double-homicide victims receives life in prison

“I’m talking now,” Yoder said. “That’s what happened. They were treated no better than garbage. They were stripped of their identities, dehumanized. They were left to rot in a vehicle with no food or water. The buck stopped with you, Miss Bramble. You were their mother. They were helpless children; maybe even more helpless than most, given their background. … When they cried out to you, you did nothing. You just let them sit there, day after day.”

UPDATE:  Mother convicted of deaths of 2 girls found on Colorado farm

A jury in southwest Colorado has convicted a mother of two girls who died after they were banished to a car without food or water by members of a doomsday religious group because the girls were thought to have been impure.

Nashika Bramble was found guilty Wednesday of two counts of first-degree murder in the 2017 deaths of 10-year-old Makayla Roberts and 8-year-old Hannah Marshall, KMGH-TV in Denver reported . The sisters' bodies were found in a car parked on a San Miguel County farm near Norwood in September 2017. Authorities said they died of heat, dehydration and starvation.

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Ceus has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of child abuse resulting in death. Another group member, Ashford Archer, was sentenced in June to 24 years in prison after he was convicted of two counts of fatal child abuse and being an accessory to a crime.

UPDATE:: 3 in cult go to trial in August

Three members of a doomsday cult suspected of involvement with the deaths of two children last year in southwestern Colorado are scheduled to take their cases to trial this summer.

Madani Ceus, 37, Ashford Archer, 51, and Ika Eden, 54, were among five people arrested on a remote farm outside Norwood where authorities discovered the bodies of 10-year-old Makayla Roberts and her sister, 8-year-old Hannah Marshall, last summer.

The bodies of the two girls — whose mother, Nashika Bramble, was a cult member — were found Sept. 8, mummified in the car in which they apparently died of heat, thirst or hunger after being segregated from the group as it awaited the end of the world.

Ceus, who has been cast as the group's ringleader and who claimed to be a deity, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, and two counts of child abuse resulting in death.

A woman acting as a "spiritual leader" to a small group of people living on a Colorado farm ordered two girls kept in a car without food or water weeks before their bodies were found, according to one member of the group.

Madani Ceus faces murder charges along with Nashika Bramble, the girls' mother, for the death of 10-year-old Makayla Roberts and 8-year-old Hannah Marshall. Three other adults also face charges of fatal child abuse.

Officials investigating the case have been tight-lipped about how the girls died and how they came to the farm. Court records unsealed by a judge at the request of KOTO Community Radio and the Telluride Daily Planet revealed the group members' belief that Ceus was a spiritual leader and allegations that she ordered the girls punished while the group was living on the property outside Norwood, about 30 miles west of the ski resort town of Telluride.

2 girls died on farm where "spiritual leader" was in charge: affidavit - CBS News