A 35-year-old woman convicted of murdering her 72-year-old mother in 2023 in Lake Forest was sentenced to 16 years to life on Friday, Nov. 7.
Courtney Elizabeth Baker was found guilty of second-degree murder and use of a deadly weapon on Sept. 25, 2025.
Baker, 32 at the time of the killing, was arrested on March 1, 2023, shortly after Orange County sheriff’s deputies responded to the home of her parents on the 22000 block of Bellcroft Drive around 2:00 a.m.
Elizabeth Mary O’Leary, 72, had been stabbed repeatedly in an upstairs bedroom and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The night before, Baker had called her father to ask him to pick her up from a motel in Brea, Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark Birney said. He brought Baker back to the family home that night.
Baker later testified that her mother was sitting in a chair in the bedroom, and had not said or done anything to her in the hours leading up to the attack, court records said.
It was later determined that Baker had used seven different weapons to attack her mother: a small screwdriver, five different pairs of scissors and a dinner fork, according to court documents. O’Leary sustained 450 to 500 injuries to nearly the entirety of her body, from head to toe, front and back, Birney said. She also suffered multiple fractured ribs and fractures to the back of her skull.
During the attack, O’Leary sought shelter under a bed, Birney said.
“It is an extremely violent murder of an extremely vulnerable victim,” the prosecution said.
O’Leary was described as small in size and had unnamed health issues, Birney said.
O’Leary had filed for a temporary restraining order against her daughter in September 2015, alleging Baker physically abused and threatened her inside their house when no one else was home, court records show. In August 2015, O’Leary said she had been “punched several times in the head, body and extremities” by her daughter.
“I am only attacked by Courtney when no one else is here to protect me and I am defenseless,” O’Leary wrote. “Courtney has threatened me, saying that she wants me and my dog to die.”
The order was granted by the court but dropped the following month after O’Leary and Baker both failed to appear for a court hearing, according to court records.
Baker had previously been charged with several misdemeanors, including charges of violating a protective-stay-away order and drug possession. At the time of her arrest for her mother’s death, Baker tested positive for PCP, methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Judge Gary S. Paer, who said he has been on the bench for nearly three decades and previously practiced law for more than a decade, called the case “one of the worst” he had ever seen.
“We’re not talking about one or two stab wounds,” Paer said during sentencing. “We’re talking about the complete obliteration of the victim’s life.”
Paer denied the defense’s request for probation, as well as motions to reduce the conviction to voluntary manslaughter and for a new trial.