Edwards woman, accused of several felonies connected to hit-and-run death, is considering plea offer
Attorney Mark Rubinstein told Eagle County Judge Inga Causey on Tuesday he has received a final plea offer in the case involving Stephanie Whitmarsh, the mother of hit-and-run suspect Sidney Whitmarsh.
But Rubinstein said he needed to ask for one last delay in the case while he worked out the final details. Causey set the case over to Jan. 7.
Whitmarsh is accused of several felonies in connection with the case involving her daughter. The case stems from a January incident in which Edwards resident Mario Romero was found dead near Highway 6, approximately 21 feet off the north side of the road down an embankment.
Colorado State Patrol investigator Colin Remillard said he believes Romero’s body was moved. Text messages exchanged between Sidney and Stephanie Whitmarsh, obtained by Remillard, suggest that Stephanie was aware of the moving of the body, Remillard said in an affidavit for Stephanie Whitmarsh.
In the text messages, Stephanie Whitmarsh suggested she was going to visit the crime scene, while Sidney Whitmarsh cautioned against that action.
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“Idk if you should momma,” Sidney Whitmarsh said in a text message, according to the affidavit.
“You don’t worry about that,” Stephanie Whitmarsh responded. “I have a good plan. Just trust me.”
In an April court appearance, the prosecuting attorney said the evidence showed that Stephanie Whitmarsh “drove by the scene to, quote, ‘make sure you can’t see anything from the road,'” and that “she was not only aware of his death, she was aware his body was hidden, and did nothing.”
Stephanie Whitmarsh is facing felony charges for accessory to a crime, tampering with physical evidence and concealing death.
Also accused of felony embezzlement
Causey, on Tuesday, also set a Jan. 7 court date for Stephanie Whitmarsh in a separate felony case in which she is accused of stealing from her employer. Whitmarsh’s attorney was not able to attend court on Tuesday to discuss that case.
The accusations in the embezzlement case date back to a year before the hit-and-run case.
According to an arrest affidavit, Avon Police Detective Theresa Reno first contacted Stephanie Whitmarsh about the theft accusation on April 3, about two weeks after her daughter was arrested in Arkansas.
Reno had received records from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment showing Whitmarsh to have earned $108,870 between October 2021 and September 2022, with her employer telling police that the total was suspicious because it was more than double her previous year’s income.
Reno said in reviewing the information supplied by Stephanie Whitmarsh, her employer, and the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, she found four areas of fraudulent activity including double billed hours; unaccounted hours and mileage billed; unauthorized use of a business credit card and reimbursement of personal spending; and billing hours when out of town.
There is also probable cause that Whitmarsh committed the criminal act of theft, a class-4 felony, when Whitmarsh double billed her hours, logged unaccounted time and mileage, and submitted fraudulent expense reimbursement on personal merchandise, totaling $44,047.41, according to the affidavit.
Stephanie Whitmarsh also faces a charge of cybercrime-unauthorized access, a class-4 felony, for accessing the company’s computer network without authorization and logging “fraudulent time clock entries for time not scheduled, such as days off or out of town on vacation,” according to the affidavit.
