Twenty years after the body of 5-year-old Michael Malcolm Jr. was found behind a trash bin at a West Palm Beach apartment complex, a woman who was 15 when the boy disappeared has pleaded guilty to his murder.

Karla Sevilla, who joined a search at Caribbean Villas when the kindergartner vanished in 1997, pleaded guilty last week to a charge of second-degree murder. During a brief hearing, Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Samantha Schosberg Feuer sentenced Sevilla to 30 years in prison, but gave her credit for the roughly 10 years she has already spent behind bars, awaiting trial.

Sevilla, who is now 35, was charged with first-degree murder in 2008 after West Palm Beach detectives linked her DNA to Malcolm’s death in the sprawling complex of 900 apartments near Haverhill Road and 45th Street. She spent years in state mental health facilities after judges ruled she was incompetent to stand trial.

After her competency was restored, her attorney challenged the veracity of the DNA evidence, claiming the analysis was flawed. Finally, state prosecutors recently agreed to the plea deal.

As part of the agreement, Sevilla can serve a 15-year term on a 2007 a burglary charge at the same time she is serving the sentence for Malcolm’s murder. She has previously served time on other charges, including robbery with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery and grand theft auto.

The boy was playing outside with his cousin when he failed to return to his aunt’s home, where he was staying while his mother worked. Family and neighbors, including Sevilla, searched frantically. It was Sevilla who spotted Malcolm’s small foot behind a trash bin, West Palm Beach police detectives said. His head was wrapped in a garbage bag. He had been suffocated, detectives said.

For years, his mother, Michie Robinson, pleaded with the public to help solve her son’s murder. In 2000, then West Palm Beach police Detective Gary Noel said he had never confronted such silence while investigating a child’s murder. While he suspected someone saw something that could have led him to the killer, no one called. A $5,000 reward for information went unclaimed.

Robinson filed a negligence lawsuit against the owners of the complex and a security firm it hired to patrol the grounds. A confidential settlement was reached.

Robinson couldn’t be reached about the plea deal. But, after the civil lawsuit was settled, she said she missed her son, dubbed Mikey, every day.

"We never got a chance to do the things we said we were going to do," Robinson told The Palm Beach Post in 2000.