More than two years after being abandoned in a Cannon Beach hotel room, bleeding from razor-blade cuts to her throat and wrists, Alana Smith, 15, entered a courtroom Thursday and laid eyes on her mother for the first time since the attack.

The teenager was sitting as Jessica Smith, 42, wearing a gray-striped jail jumpsuit, glanced back at her briefly. She was awaiting her mother's sentencing, squeezed between her father and aunt in the back row of a Clatsop County courtroom, with her paternal grandparents nearby.

The girl dabbed a tissue to her eyes after a video montage played of her smiling, chubby-cheeked younger sister, Isabella -- drowned by their mother during their brief beach getaway in the summer of 2014. The clips showed her blue-eyed, 2-year-old sister playing barefoot in a sundress and hat on Cannon Beach with an accompanying song that concluded with the lyrics: "Just you and me love, we are almost home.''

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Julie E. Frantz sentenced Smith to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years.

The "horrific and inconceivable nature'' of Smith's crimes - the drugging and killing of her toddler daughter and attempted murder of her then 13-year-old daughter -- appeared inconsistent with her past, the judge said.

"This is without question a profoundly tragic case in which the unthinkable has occurred,'' Frantz told Smith. "I hope all may continue to heal and go forward with your lives as best as you can.''

Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis said Jessica Smith "planned the execution'' of her two daughters and left a handwritten note behind on hotel stationery that read, "We've decided to opt out of life.''

What apparently "set her off'' was a court-ordered, one-day visitation day that her estranged husband was set to have with the girls, the prosecutor said. The horrid homicide scene drew national attention to the small beach town during the height of the tourist season.

Smith last week entered Alford guilty pleas to aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder charges about a month after a judge found her mentally competent to stand trial. In an Alford plea, defendants assert their innocence but admit sufficient evidence exists to find them guilty.

Document: Handwritten note Jessica Smith left behind in Surfsand Resort room

Document: Transcript of Jessica Smith's interviews with law enforcement

In the written plea petition, Smith said she accepted the evidence and the plea deal, "wishing to avoid additional stress and harm to Alana Smith, my family and myself.''

Smith declined to speak in court, but nodded briefly when the judge spoke.

Her ex-husband, Gregory Smith, spoke instead. Unsure what he could say that would reach his former wife, he decided instead to focus on what inspires him, he said.

He sat down between the two prosecutors in the case and turned toward the defense table where Jessica Smith sat. She looked away.

"Sweet Isabella will forever stay in my mind, frozen at that innocent age of 2,'' he said. "My hope is that I can, and we all can, soak up some of her spirit and be inspired by her short yet meaningful life. Maybe then a little bit of her lives in us.''

He called his surviving daughter, Alana, "the best thing in my life.''

"I'm also greatly inspired by my daughter, Alana, who taught Isabella from her own deep well of sweetness,'' he said. "She's truly a treasure and is the most sincere human I know.''

Alana, who had been home-schooled when she was living with her mother, is now living with her father and will be starting 10th grade in school in Washington.

"I'm proud to witness Alana's discovery of a world that has the potential for love, friendship and possibility,'' Gregory Smith said.

He thanked the emergency responders, law enforcement officers, therapists, hospital workers, prosecutors and family and friends for their support.

"Our life stories diverge from this point forward,'' Gregory Smith told his ex-wife. "I'm looking forward to joy and peace in the future. I wish you peace in your path as well.''

The sentencing ended a series of unusually tense pretrial hearings as Jessica Smith's lawyers initially suggested their client suffered from a mental "implosion." She was later sent for evaluation to the Oregon State Hospital after a suicide attempt in jail.

Under the plea agreement, Smith faces life in prison with a minimum sentence of 30 years in prison for the aggravated murder count, plus a consecutive 10 years for the attempted aggravated murder charge. She waived her right to any appeals.

Jessica Smith had checked into the Surfsand Resort on July 29, 2014, and was scheduled to stay three nights, leaving Aug. 1.

Police found this and other drawings on a note Jessica Smith left behind in her hotel room on Surfsand Resort hotel stationery. (Case file)

Instead, she fled Room 3302 early Aug. 1, leaving her two children behind. She had drugged and drowned Isabella and then placed over-the-counter dental gel on Alana's neck before slashing her, police said.

"She intended for them to die,'' Marquis said, and had tried to get Alana "to bleed out quicker.'' The older daughter told investigators that her mother had her lie on the floor and yelled at her, angry that it wasn't occurring fast enough, Marquis said.

Jessica Smith also insisted that Alana bolt the lock to the room's front door as she left, the prosecutor said.

About 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 1, housekeepers used a master key to enter the room, having heard someone inside slipping and falling. When they opened the door, a voice told them to go away, according to prosecutors' reports. The staff called 911, drawing the Cannon Beach police chief and assistant fire chief about 10 minutes later.

Police Chief Jason Schermerhorn found the lifeless, clothed body of Isabella on a king-sized bed, the white sheets beside her stained with blood. He said Alana appeared "ghostlike'' under a sheet on the bed, bleeding profusely. She was airlifted by Life Flight helicopter to a Portland hospital.

Two days later, a member of a U.S. Coast Guard crew flying in a MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter spotted their mother's gold Suburban on a logging road, about 13 miles east of Cannon Beach off U.S. 26. The crew was heading back about 6 p.m. to their Warrenton base when they saw the SUV.

Part of the handwritten note that Jessica Smith left behind in the Surfsand Resort hotel room, where her two children were found early on Aug. 1, 2014. (Case file)

Smith, found in the woods beside her car wearing makeup, was described as cooperative when taken into custody. She confessed to the crimes during a four- to five-hour videotaped interview that night at Seaside Police Department. FBI special agent Denise Biehn, Cannon Beach Lt. Chris Wilbur and Clatsop County Sheriff's Det. Ryan Humphrey interviewed her.

She described how a fun beach trip with her daughters turned stressful after she received a call from her estranged husband's lawyer telling her to return the children. She was expected to hand the children over to their father for visitation at 9 a.m. on the day the children were discovered.

"To me, when it was all happening, it was actually not like a feeling of maliciousness or anything else but saving someone,'' Jessica Smith said, crying as she initially spoke with the FBI agent, according to an interview transcript. "I had this horrible life and I was trying to get out. I just wanted to be free.''

The Smiths had separated in April 2014. Gregory Smith, of Goldendale, Wash., then filed for divorce from Jessica Smith in June 2014 and sought shared custody of their two children.

Less than two weeks before the Cannon Beach trip, he had sought a custody evaluation. He also had a temporary restraining order against Jessica Smith, fearing she'd leave the state and he wouldn't see his daughters again.

Jessica Smith wrote this note on Surfsand Resort stationery that she left behind in the hotel room where her 2-year-old daughter Isabella was found dead, and 13-year-old daughter Alana was found with razor blade-slashes to her throat and wrists on Aug. 1, 2014. (Case file)

The mother claimed that she and her girls were terrified of her husband and that their older daughter said she would rather die than go back to live with him. Smith described herself as a "good person who's been mistreated.''

In her note left in the hotel room, Smith claimed Alana "chose opening her veins,'' and that she was going to do the same to herself "but didn't have the strength, after assisting Alana.''

She wrote that if Alana was found alive, she wanted to live with her maternal grandmother.

"I feel absolutely terrible for having things come to this, and hope I never return to this Earth, after I die,'' Smith wrote. She included a colored drawing of herself on the note.

Isabella Smith died of asphyxiation by drowning after she was heavily sedated with an over-the-counter antihistamine, the state medical examiner ruled. Alana Smith suffered cuts to her neck and wrists and told medics that her mother had slit her throat and wrists, according to court documents.

On video, Jessica Smith said the 2-year-old "just fell asleep, peacefully, and went into the water and was gone.''

"The intention was to drown her...to end her misery,'' the mother was recorded saying.

The FBI agent asked her what the hardest part had been.

"Just thinking about how, how terror ... terrorized I felt that I would do that,'' Jessica Smith told her during an interview on the night of her arrest. "It's unthinkable. It's horrific. I'm inconsolably sad. ... I loved my child.''

At the end of Thursday's hearing, two Clatsop County sheriff's deputies led Jessica Smith from the courtroom, her hands cuffed and linked to a chain around her waist. She avoided eye contact with her surviving child or other relatives.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian