Just an hour before his trial was to begin, with his mother crying on one side of the courtroom and Sherrice Iverson's doing the same on the other, Jeremy Strohmeyer admitted to murder.

      Cutting short what likely would have been Las Vegas' highest profile criminal trial ever, Strohmeyer repeatedly told District Judge Myron Leavitt "yes, your honor" when asked whether he was the killer of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, whose body was found 16 months ago in a bathroom stall at the Primm Valley hotel.

      Though his voice was steady, he closed his eyes briefly with each answer that assured he would never spend another day outside prison.

      As those who packed the courtroom filed out, the usually stoic Strohmeyer held his head in his hands. Outside the courtroom defense attorney Leslie Abramson suggested the slaying was in part the result of "evil" influences, including the Internet and his so-called best friend, David Cash Jr.

      Strohmeyer, 19, admitted strangling or suffocating the girl the morning of May 25, 1997, accepting a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole on the first-degree murder charge. He also pleaded guilty to kidnapping Sherrice, following her into the women's bathroom of the Primm Valley hotel, 43 miles south of Las Vegas, then forcing her into a stall against her will. For that he'll get a consecutive sentence of life in prison with parole possible after 20 years.

      To two counts of sexual assault with a minor resulting in substantial bodily harm, he entered a type of guilty plea that required him to admit only that prosecutors could prove their case. This type of plea was offered because Strohmeyer has said from the beginning that he does not remember the sexual assault, according to Abramson. Nonetheless, for each count he will receive consecutive sentences of life without parole.

      District Attorney Stewart Bell said coroner's reports would prove the sexual assault had occurred and that Strohmeyer's own words would haunt him on that issue. A friend of Strohmeyer's would have testified that three days after Sherrice was killed, Strohmeyer used specific and graphic language to describe how the little girl was sexually assaulted.

      Sherrice's mother, Yolanda Manuel, covered her eyes for a few seconds when Bell described what her daughter endured. Last week her spokesperson, Najee Ali, said she hoped Strohmeyer received the death penalty. Ali said, however, that Manuel is pleased with the outcome because she is sure other children will be safe from Strohmeyer.

      "She can smile. She feels she can rest now that she's gotten peace for Sherrice," said Ali, director of the Los Angeles-based Project Islamic Hope, which has been offering Manuel support.

      After the plea hearing, Bell told reporters outside the courthouse that defense attorney Richard Wright approached him Friday afternoon about a possible plea. The jury had already been selected and had prepared to spend approximately six weeks sequestered in a hotel.

      Before Friday neither side had talked about making a deal, Bell said. Prosecutors, seeking a death sentence, took the position from the beginning of the case that any negotiations would have to be initiated by the defense.

      Bell said despite the expense prosecutors could have spared taxpayers by offering a deal earlier in the case, "We thought we had a good case and we wanted to make clear we were in a good position to try it.

      "When you're in trial it's a little bit of crap shoot involved," Bell said of the plea negotiation, noting if the jury did return a sentence of death there would still be years of appeals and uncertainty.

      "Now we can be assured no other child will be at risk. We've done our job," he said.

      Defense attorneys offered the plea after they were assured jurors would learn about files found on the hard drive of Strohmeyer's computer, Abramson said. Former District Judge Don Chairez, who is now running for Congress, had ruled that evidence was inadmissable, but days before the trial was set, the Nevada Supreme Court overturned that decision. Leavitt, who took the case over, ruled the information could be allowed before the jury for limited purposes, such as if the defense tried to show Strohmeyer did not premeditate the crime.     

  In addition to child pornography the computer held evidence of a "chat" less than two days before the murder in which the computer's user said he fantasized about having sex with 5- and 6-year-old girls.   

    With the potential of that evidence being presented, Abramson said she told her client the best they could hope for was life with parole after 20 years on the murder charge and consecutive maximum sentences on the other counts. That would have made Strohmeyer eligible for parole after 75 years.

      In the end, Abramson said the decision to plead guilty was Strohmeyer's alone.

      "Jeremy has matured pretty dramatically in the last few months," she said. "He made his decision for the benefit of his parents."

      At least one of Strohmeyer's parents and his older sister has made every court appearance in this case. An estimated $500,000 has been paid out to defend him.

      "He chose to be assured that he would live because the notion of him dying after their love and their efforts on his behalf was something he felt they should not have to bear," Abramson said.

      The decision to plead guilty also stemmed from Strohmeyer seeing Sherrice's mother on television, according to the attorney.

      ''He has tremendous, tremendous guilt and sympathy for Mrs. Manuel and for Sherrice. It made him realize that he and his desires were not the only issue in a decision whether to go forward.

      "Jeremy Strohmeyer stood there and pleaded guilty to consecutive life-without-paroles because he believes he is to blame. But I think if we want to prevent this in the future, we have to look farther than that because he was not a bad seed," she said. "He was not born bad. He was a good boy and a bright boy and a caring boy until seven months before this when he was undermined by the influences that were working on him."

      Among those influences, she suggested, was the fact that he was adopted "in secret" as an infant and never knew "where he came from."

      A major change in his life in the year before the murder was that his then-girlfriend, Agnes Lee, introduced him to methamphetamine by telling him she needed the drug to abort his child, Abramson said. Lee told the grand jury that indicted Strohmeyer that he confessed to her and that he had, in the past, asked her to dress up like a child for his sexual gratification.

      Abramson also blamed an unlicensed therapist, who saw Strohmeyer for 15 minutes and misdiagnosed him as having attention deficit disorder. She said the therapist prescribed Dexedrine, a stimulant that mixed dangerously with the methamphetamine he had been using regularly. Strohmeyer began taking the Dexedrine about a week before the murder, she said.

      She described Cash as "not a witness but a co-perpetrator in this case." Cash told the grand jury he saw his friend restrain Sherrice in the bathroom before waiting outside for 25 minutes, doing nothing, as Strohmeyer killed her.

      Cash has not been charged.

      While she argued in an earlier court hearing that pornography did not necessarily lead to violence, Abramson said after the plea that "America Online has a great deal to answer for because they know very well this stuff is being served up to their service."  

     Sentencing is set for Oct. 14. Jeremy Strohmeyer bows his head after entering a guilty plea Monday for killing and sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl. He is flanked by his attorneys, Leslie Abramson and Richard Wright. District Attorney Stewart Bell said justice was served after 19-year-old Jeremy Strohmeyer pleaded guilty Tuesday to strangling and sexually assaulting a young girl. Yolanda Manuel, the mother of murdered 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, listens Tuesday to her child's killer plead guilty to the crime. The Los Angeles woman has been vocal in her condemnation of Jeremy Strohmeyer and his friend David Cash Jr

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