Beverly Likes pleaded not guilty last Thursday to a count of solicitation of murder in the February 2006 death of Melinda Widby, whose burned body was found months later in an abandoned well north of Deming, the Deming Headlight reported.

Widby's daughter reported her mother missing in February 2006, but it wasn't until August 2006 that her remains were recovered and identified only through serial numbers in surgical rods in her arm and leg, the Headlight reported.

Likes' son Chester and another defendant, Craig Winters, are serving life in prison in Widby's death and have agreed to testify against Likes when she goes to trial, the paper said.

Another defendant, Ronald Davis, was acquitted last year on a charge of solicitation of murder but was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, the Headlight reported.

The state Office of the Medical Investigator was never able to determine a cause of death because some of Widby's remains had been destroyed by fire, the paper said.

But testimony at Davis' preliminary hearing in January indicated that Widby was alive when she was thrown into an abandoned well at the Holy Cross Sanitarium north of Deming, the Headlight said. 

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