OGDEN — Finding an interpreter of the Romani dialect spoken by murder suspect Brenda Emile has hit an apparent dead end, but a judge reminded the Ogden woman Monday that the onus is on her to demonstrate that she was threatened to plead guilty to killing her daughter.

Emile, 28, pleaded guilty in August to first-degree felony aggravated murder in the July 6, 2017, torture and starvation death of 3-year-old Angelina Costello, but weeks later she asked to withdraw the plea, alleging her son’s life had been threatened before the plea.

She said the alleged threat was communicated to her by her mother in a phone conversation earlier in August, the claimed source of the threat being Miller Eric Costello, her husband, co-defendant and father of the slain girl. Costello later took his own plea bargain, admitting to the charge but placing the blame on Emile.

In return for the guilty pleas, prosecutors dropped their pursuit of the death penalty.

In a Nov. 8 hearing, Emile told 2nd District Judge Michael DiReda that she moved to withdraw her plea only after Costello made his plea. She said she feared Costello could get out of jail and harm their son.

DiReda said he would allow the plea withdrawal only if Emile could provide sufficient evidence of the threat. Prosecutors and defense attorneys said Monday they have reviewed 177 phone calls recorded on the Weber County Jail system involving Emile, her mother, other relatives or friends, saying there’s no evidence of a threat.

However, in some of the calls, Emile and her mother briefly spoke in a Romani dialect, and public defender Jason Widdison since Nov. 8 has been trying to find an interpreter for those passages.

He said in court Monday that officials were mistaken in their previous understanding that the passages were in Romanian. Five interpreters told him that what was spoken was not Romanian. One of the five said she thought the conversation was in a Romani dialect, but she could not identify which one or interpret it.

“There are over 50 Romani dialects,” Widdison said. “They are highly divergent and not similar to each other. With the number of dialects, I am not sure we can find one that will be specific to that spoken by the defendant and her mother.”

He added, “There’s not a name that can be given to the dialect.”

Prosecutor Letitia Toombs of the Weber County Attorney’s Office said most of the calls were entirely in English and the Romani portions were “very brief lapses,” with no context, no reactions, that would indicate discussion of a threat.

“It is the state’s position that the call simply just doesn’t exist,” she said. “We could be continuing this out forever, but there’s no point in furthering this.”

“I’m trying to afford Ms. Emile her due process without entirely turning upside down our entire system,” DiReda said.

If translation cannot be obtained, the defense will have an opportunity to put on witnesses, including testimony by Emile and her mother, the judge said.

Widdison asked for another week so he could talk to Emile to “pinpoint the call.” The next step would be an evidentiary hearing, probably in January.

In a Nov. 13 letter to DiReda filed in court, Emile said she pleaded guilty in August “because my hand was forced. There is no evidence saying or showing that I killed my baby girl, because I did not.”

Charging documents alleged the couple beat, burned and starved the girl over a yearlong period. A police detective testified in 2018 that the girl’s body resembled that of a Holocaust victim.

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