Woman who helped murder boyfriend gets life

SANTA ANA — A woman who plotted with a former NFL linebacker to kill her Newport Beach boyfriend received a life sentence without the possibility of parole on Friday.

Nanette Packard, 46, sat stone faced in Orange County Superior Court as the verdict was read. Dressed in a pink cardigan, a black shirt and skirt, with a faded blond streak in her curly brown hair, Packard did not speak or apologize to the 40 or so people gathered in the courtroom, some of them family and friends of the victim.

Packard was convicted earlier this year of murdering Bill McLaughlin, a Newport Beach millionaire, for financial gain. Eric Naposki, 45, was convicted on the same charges in July. Packard was dating both men at the same time and had hoped to benefit financially from the 1994 murder.

Naposki refused to come out of his holding cell during proceedings, leaving him to shout his answers to Judge William R. Froeberg.

Prosecutor Matt Murphy called Naposki’s refusal to leave his cell to step into the courtroom a “final blaze of no class and cowardice,” saying the family agreed to only do one victim impact statement to minimize the pain of having to return to court and again face McLaughlin’s killers.

“Mr. Naposki is a coward for not coming out of his cell, a coward for not facing [the McLaughlin family].”

Naposki’s sentencing was moved to Aug. 10.

McLaughlin’s adult children, Jenny and Kim, gave their victim impact statements, calling Packard “despicable,” among other things.

Kim McLaughlin addressed Packard with a poem outlining what a good woman should have.

“This woman, Nanette, is the woman you are not,” she said at the end, calling Packard’s life an “abomination.”

“The fact that you destroyed so many lives along with my dad’s is vile,” Kim McLaughlin said.

A letter from the victim’s brother Patrick was also read aloud, in which he call Packard “a true black widow.”

During the pair’s trials, Murphy described Packard and Naposki as money-hungry and told jurors Naposki killed McLaughlin in cold blood as the businessman stood in his bathrobe in the kitchen.

A short while later, McLaughlin’s disabled 24-year-old son Kevin discovered his father with six bullet wounds to the chest.

Packard stood to inherit $1 million in life insurance and a rent-free year in McLaughlin’s luxury home. Just before McLaughlin’s death, Packard and Naposki shopped for pricey homes and said they intended to get married soon, although the two had no money independent of McLaughlin.

“Today is the end of Nanette’s rip offs, her con games,” Murphy said in a press conference after the sentence was read.

lauren.williams@latimes.com

Twitter: @lawilliams30