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OGDEN — Christian Taele faced the families of the two men he murdered one last time Wednesday morning, before spending 30 years to life in prison.
Taele was led into the court with shackles on his feet, cuffed at the hands with chains connecting them behind his back. He briefly stared at the full gallery with timidity and surprise before taking his place at the podium beside defense attorney Randall Marshall.
His hair was cut short and somewhat uneven. He loomed over Marshall in an orange jumpsuit while listening to the proceedings.
Taele — a 30-year-old former Southern Utah University running back — pleaded guilty in June to two separate charges of murder, a first-degree felony, as part of an agreement with the prosecution and defense in both Utah and Weber counties, stipulating the man would serve his sentences consecutively.
Charges related to an incident two months before the killings took place were also dismissed as part of the agreement. In that case, police say Taele was arrested riding a northbound FrontRunner train without buying a ticket, resisted arrest and slapped a Taser out of the hands of an officer.
In the fourth floor courtroom at Ogden's 2nd District Court, the families of both victims and the defendant packed the rows of seats, leaving almost none empty.
The sentencing hearing was for the murder of 23-year-old Tyler Belinti, who grew up on the Navajo Nation reservation in Arizona. He moved to Utah to attend Job Corps and study machining when Taele attacked him from behind at his apartment complex at 2433 Adams Avenue, in Ogden, July 9, 2022.
Video footage showed Taele approach Belinti, who was sitting on his patio, from behind and strangle him with a piece of gym equipment, dragging him and kicking him while chasing off bystanders, according to prosecutor Letitia Toombs.
Belinti died three days later at a hospital.
After Taele's arrest, he admitted to beating and stabbing 49-year-old Ryan Hooley in Spanish Fork the day before. Hooley's body was found near a dumpster behind a business in the early morning of July 8.
He was sentenced to 15 years to life Sep. 9 in Provo for Hooley's murder.
Belinti's sister speaks out
The plea agreement, which effectively took care of the sentencing portion of the hearing, did not prevent Belinti's family from traveling from Arizona to "show up" for Tyler Belinti, as his older sister Thalius Belinti put it.
Thalius Belinti stepped from the rows of chairs and to the bar to address the judge and, indirectly, Taele. She was briefly overwhelmed with emotion, fighting back tears to get the words out, before speaking first in the Navajo language. Muted weeping could be heard across the gallery.
"I've been right by his side for the better part of his life," she said. "Even more than two years down the road, my brain can't accept that my brother is gone."
It was the little things she will miss, Thalius Belinti said, adding, "The way he would tease me for not growing taller since the last time he saw me."
"I will never be able to pick up the phone and ask him about his day," she said.
"We have bargained, we have begged, we have cried together," she said. "I speak for my family when I say — no sentence given ... will feel long enough, just as the wound left by my brother's murder will never fully heal."
"My mother and father should never have had to bury my brother at the age of 23."
Taele did not look at Belinti's older sister while she spoke or when she returned to her seat, crying into the arms of her family.
A downward spiral
Marshall presented Judge Joseph Bean a portrait of Taele before the seemingly random murders, "not to be construed as any type of minimization or excusing Mr. Taele's actions," Marshall said, but instead, to get a "complete and comprehensive picture of the person (the court) is about to sentence."
Utah is one of just five states that "either expressly prohibits the use of a person's mental state at the time of the offense or consider it only in an extremely narrow way," according to Marshall, or else the man's diagnosis may have been a factor in his conviction.
He said Taele's actions were the result of a "complete psychological break," and he was in a "schizo-affective state for days during the attacks."
Marshall said Taele was described by teammates and friends as "upbeat and easygoing." He was a Cub Scout, served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where fellow missionaries called him a "gentle giant," according to a pre-sentencing memorandum.
"He was just a good guy, but things began to change," Marshall told the judge. Taele separated from his wife, they split time with their two kids, and "symptoms began emerging of a mental disorder."
According to Dr. David Burrow, a forensic psychiatrist who conducted two three-hour-long interviews with Taele, the man went from living with a former football teammate in West Jordan to being "essentially homeless" after his paranoia increased, causing conflict.
Taele began regularly sleeping in parks, the doctor's report said, and in May 2022, Taele "began to feel like he was being watched by a government organization called 'the elites.'"
Burrow wrote that two to three weeks before the murders, Taele began sleeping less — he would wake up at 4:30 a.m., work out a nearby gym, shower, do a morning training session at a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school, go back to the gym to work out, do an evening Jiu Jitsu class, return to the gym again and work out until it closed, getting to bed between 12:30 and 2 a.m.
Taele "started believing he was being guided by inanimate objects," according to Marshall, and thought he was being watched because he was developing powers to communicate telepathically.
When Taele killed Hooley and Belinti, "he was doing what he believed he was ordered to," Marshall said. "Obeying a higher order."
With his head down, Taele read a prepared statement of apology to Belinti's family. "There's no excuse for my heinous act," he said. "I can only imagine the holes left in your heart as a result of my delusional actions ... I now know I have a severe mental illness."
Before the man was taken away, to serve possibly a life in prison, Bean told the courtroom, "I hope time will heal the holes in your heart, but I hope time never fades the memories you have of Tyler.
"Don't let his memory fade."
Correction: An earlier version stated Tyler Belinti's sister Sheena Beltini made statements in court. It was his sister Thalius Beltini.
