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FARMINGTON — He blamed drugs for his crimes. His attorney blamed the influence of poor parenting.

Either way, Dereck James "DJ" Harrison was ordered to prison Monday for joining his father in kidnapping a woman and her four daughters — part of a crime spree that police say included kidnapping and murdering a Utah Transit Authority employee in Wyoming.

Monday's sentencing hearing also revealed disturbing details about the conversation between Harrison and his father before the two forced the Clinton woman and her teenage daughters into a Centerville basement where they were threatened, beaten and held at gunpoint.

As Harrison was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison — four concurrent sentences of 15 years to life with a fifth 15-years-to-life term running consecutively — Hiedi Harkins said her once close friend betrayed any ties they had on the day he turned on her and her girls.

Though the younger Harrison had told her he didn't want to become like his now-deceased father, she told the man in court: "Now you're just like him, if not worse."

Harkins' statement was met by applause Monday as she told Harrison he hadn't won the battle against her, and would now face the consequences for his actions in prison.

"I'm just glad the authorities found you before my husband did," she said.

Harrison apologized briefly, blaming his crimes on drugs.

"I just want to say that I'm so sorry for all the pain I've caused to all my victims," Harrison, 23, said.

As he handed down the sentence, 2nd District Judge Michael Allphin emphasized the decision reflected only the allegations Harrison faced in the Centerville kidnapping case. He then went on to describe the way that the mother and her daughters were hit with a baseball bat and held at gunpoint during the encounter.

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DJ Harrison and his father, Flint Wayne Harrison, 51, were charged together in two cases stemming from the same alleged crime spree earlier this year. In the first, the men lured Harkins and her daughters — ages 13, 15, 17 and 18 — to a Centerville home, 190 N. 700 East, where they bound and assaulted them until the younger girls broke free and ran for help.

The Harrisons fled, beginning a manhunt that would last almost five days. Police say the next day they kidnapped UTA employee Kay Ricks from a Salt Lake TRAX stop where he was working and drove him to Wyoming in his UTA vehicle, brutally killing him and leaving his body on a rural road.

Flint Harrison killed himself in a Davis County Jail cell July 25.

DJ Harrison pleaded guilty last month to kidnapping the woman and her daughters, admitting to five counts of aggravated kidnapping, a first-degree felony. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed 11 other assault, weapons and drug charges. Harrison also agreed to waive extradition to Wyoming to face the murder charge Calling for the sentence in the fifth kidnapping charge to run consecutively after the plea deal recommended the first four be set concurrently, prosecutor Jeffrey Thomson said the Harrisons' motives for the kidnapping may have been an imagined offense, including a belief that Harkins had reported them to police, or drug-fueled paranoia.

He also read graphic text messages exchanged by the father and son the night before the kidnapping, in which they discussed finding a mother-daughter duo to do drugs and have sex with. Thomson said they initially believed only the mother and one daughter were coming to the house.

"What were DJ and Flint going to do with (the mother) and her four daughters?" Thomson asked. "What would have happened had they not fought back?"

Michael Edwards, Harrison's attorney, pointed to his client's young age, lack of criminal adult history and "substantial rehabilitation needs" as he asked the judge to keep all five prison sentences concurrent. The attorney also blamed Flint Harrison's lack of respect for the law for the impact it had on his son as he raised him.

Recounting the brutal nature of Ricks' death, a stranger to the Harrisons, Thomson speculated that the outcome of the encounter could have been deadly for Harkins and her daughters, who knew and could easily identify the men to authorities.

"The killing of Kay Ricks is telling and disconcerting of what could have happened to Hiedi and her daughters," Thomson said.

Prosecutors believe Ricks suffered a brutal death over an 18-minute period before his body was dumped in the sagebrush off a remote Wyoming road. He was found with his face smashed to the point he was no longer recognizable, and his neck slashed three times, according to charging documents.

Richard Massey, a spokesman for the Ricks family, said Monday that upon hearing more details about what preceded the kidnapping of Harkins and her daughters, they are especially grateful that the women escaped.

"Hearing those facts disturbs us even more as we know better now the mindset of the Harrisons that perpetrated these horrible acts on this mother, her four daughters and, of course, to Kay," Massey said. "Our hearts go out to the mother and her daughters, we are grateful they survived. Kay was not as lucky."

With the Utah kidnapping case closed, the Ricks family is now preparing for the murder charge to be addressed in Wyoming, Massey said.

"I was not prepared to hear, again, the details of Kay's death at the hands of Flint and DJ Harrison," Massey said. "At least one or two more times we're going to have to go through this, and we're going to have to hear these things again. You never get used to it."

Wyoming's Lincoln County Attorney Spencer Allred, who attended the hearing, said that once Harrison is processed at the Utah State Prison, efforts will begin to extradite him to Wyoming. At this point there has been no discussion of a plea deal involving the murder charge, he confirmed.

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