After abruptly admitting during his death penalty trial that he was guilty of 49 heinous crimes, including drugging, sexually abusing and killing his 14-year-old daughter, Mark Mesiti wants to take it back.

Mesiti, 49, intends to ask a Modesto judge to let him withdraw his guilty plea in the long-running case, which began more than a decade ago when a Santa Clara County judge awarded him custody of his kids despite his lengthy criminal record.

The family of the victim, Alycia Allen-Mesiti, was horrified after learning Friday afternoon of Mesiti’s change of heart from the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors there could not be reached for comment.

“Mark is disgusting,” said Alycia’s great-aunt, San Jose resident Roberta Fitzpatrick. “He uses the system to torture us.”

Mesiti’s sudden decision earlier this month to plead guilty six weeks after the jury had been chosen spared Fitzpatrick and Alycia’s mother three more months of listening to excruciating testimony.

After sedating his daughter, Mesiti photographed or videotaped more than 40 sexual assaults against her. He also admitted to felony sexual assault counts against two other girls.

Under an order by Stanislaus County Judge Dawna Reeves, only the jurors were shown the images. But the audience, including Fitzpatrick, was privy to the testimony.

Now, instead of sentencing Reeves to life in prison without parole, Reeves will have to decide whether to allow the case to proceed to trial before a new jury.

Normally, a defendant who regrets pleading guilty or no contest doesn’t automatically get a hearing to make his case, though those who represent themselves do. Mesiti had represented himself at earlier stages of the case, but had two attorneys at trial.

It was unclear Friday whether the judge will give him an opportunity to show good cause for withdrawing the plea. Good cause could include arguing that he wasn’t aware of all the consequences of pleading guilty.

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That may be quite a stretch since the consequences were clearly that he would be sentenced to life without parole. And prosecutors required Mesiti earlier this month to spend what turned out to be more than an hour making “a personal and public allocution of all his crimes in open court,” meaning he had to formally plead guilty to every single charge rather than simply agree he had committed all 49 crimes.

Yet the fact that it’s a death penalty trial in which the stakes are extremely high makes it difficult to predict the outcome. Mesiti could argue that he realized he might somehow get a better outcome than life in prison by taking his chances at trial.

Alycia was killed in 2006, less than a year after Mesiti was awarded custody of her and her brother by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Vincent J. Chiarello.

According to court documents, the judge was aware at the time that in the seven years prior to being awarded custody, Mesiti had been convicted of state and federal charges, including bank fraud and drunken driving. He also was charged with domestic violence and ordered to attend anger-management classes after pleading guilty to a lesser charge. After failing to comply with court orders to attend drug- and alcohol-treatment programs, he landed in prison for violating probation.

Alycia’s mother, Roberta Allen, a former Campbell resident, was described by a court investigator as an unfit mother who had battled depression. However, in an investigation by this news organization after Alycia’s body was discovered in 2009, Allen described her years-long legal battle as “very angled toward Mark. I couldn’t afford an attorney. He had one.”

Chiarello, who is currently assigned to hearing criminal cases in Palo Alto, has declined to comment on the case since cadaver-sniffing dogs found Alycia’s body eight years ago buried in the unkempt yard of her father’s former home in the Central Valley community of Ceres. The case took ages to come to trial, first because he had to be prosecuted in Los Angeles County for running a methamphetamine lab there, then because he opted to act as his own attorney, then because he changed his mind.

An autopsy determined that Alycia died of acute drug intoxication, according to the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office. Testing of the body showed the presence of opiates, morphine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, benzodiazepines, diazepam, methadone and anti-depressants.

According to a statement released by Stanislaus County prosecutors, Mesiti had hundreds of thousands of images involving child pornography. Hundreds of those images showed Alycia being sexually assaulted while she was obviously unconscious.

Videos also showed the defendant setting up a hidden camera in the bedroom of an 8-year-old girl who lived in the apartment with him and his girlfriend in Los Angeles County at the time. Other videos and images showed a 16-year-old girl whom Mesiti had befriended being sexually assaulted.

At the time of his arrest, he was operating a methamphetamine laboratory in Los Angeles.

“There is nothing that will bring her back,” Fitzpatrick said, “but I hope Alycia’s story will be a cautionary tale and will eventually bring changes in the family law courts to better protect children who are trapped in contentious custody disputes.”