20-year Sentence for Woman Involved in Plot Leading to Realtor’s Death
Photo via Hennepin County Jail
A woman involved in the 2019 murder of Minneapolis realtor Monique Baugh has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors.
Elsa Segura, 40, pleaded guilty to kidnapping to commit great bodily harm or terrorize in Hennepin County District Court on Tuesday.
In exchange, she was sentenced to 240 months, an upward departure from the state sentencing guidelines due to the cruelty of the crime and involvement of multiple co-defendants.
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Prosecutors said Segura played a "significant role" in the crime and that the sentence holds her accountable for her actions. "Our thoughts remain with Monique Baugh's family, who continue to grieve her loss," Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a written statement.
According to prosecutors, Segura lured Baugh, 28, to a home in Maple Grove on Dec. 31, 2019, under the guise of a real estate showing. Segura had used a burner phone to contact Baugh, which was purchased by one of her co-defendants, Cedric Berry.
When Baugh arrived at the property, Cedric Berry and another man, Berry Davis, kidnapped her, bound her with duct tape, and forced her into a moving truck. They then drove to Baugh’s Minneapolis home, where one of the men used her house keys to enter and shoot her boyfriend multiple times in front of their two young daughters. He survived the attack but was seriously injured. About an hour later, Baugh was shot three times and left to die in a Minneapolis alley.
Berry and Davis were convicted of murder and kidnapping in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison without parole. A third co-defendant, Shante Berry, was sentenced to probation for aiding an offender.
Segura was previously convicted by a jury in 2021 of first-degree murder and kidnapping and had been serving a life sentence, however the Minnesota Supreme Court vacated that conviction in a ruling earlier this year. The justices ruled pthat prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to uphold a first-degree murder conviction because they didn’t prove that Segura knew that Berry and Davis were planning to kidnap and kill Baugh.
The justices also stated the jury instructions on accomplice liability were erroneous and could have swayed the jury’s verdict.
Segura chose to plead guilty to new charges rather than face a retrial after her original conviction was overturned. Segura's former partner, Lyndon Wiggins, is also awaiting retrial after his conviction was overturned.
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