40-year-old Tami Joy Huntsman will be facing the death penalty when she goes to trial in February for the abuse and murder of 3-year-old Delylah Tara and 6-year-old Shaun Tara in November 2015. As KRON 4 reports and as you can see in the video above, Huntsman appeared in Monterey County Superior Court this week alongside boyfriend Gonzalo Curiel, 18, and she collapsed in her chair distraught when Deputy District Attorney Steve Somers announced that they would be pursuing the death penalty. Curiel, who is also charged with the children's murder, is not eligible for the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the alleged crime.

The children, who were initially believed to be Huntsman's niece and nephew but may be some other relation, were in Huntsman's and Curiel's care last November in a Salinas apartment along with their older sister, a nine-year-old who was later found severely abused but alive in an apartment in Quincy, California. Sometime on or after November 27, the two smaller children were killed, and it's believed that Huntsman and Curiel traveled with their bodies as well as the nine-year-old to Plumas and Shasta Counties, where on December 13 the two children's remains were found in a storage facility in Redding.

As CBS 5 reports, both defendants have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, torture, child abuse, conspiracy, and special circumstances allegations.

Prosecutors say the children's father will testify in the case, as will three child witnesses, including, presumably, the nine-year-old sister. She was discovered first by authorities, in what was reportedly a severely abused state, on December 11, and she may have led authorities to the storage unit in Redding.

An earlier report in the Salinas Monterey Herald explained that the children had come to live with Huntsman at the request of their father after their mother was killed in a car accident in December 2013. Huntsman has four children of her own, but further questions were raised about the culpability of Child Protective Services, who had previously had to remove Huntsman's 12-year-old twins from her care. Both the six- and nine-year-old were enrolled in home schooling as of August 2015, and therefore had not had regular contact with teachers or others.

She had, according to neighbors, taken up with then 17-year-old Curiel in January 2015 after filing a restraining order against her ex-husband. Huntsman also has a son who is 15 or 16 years old.

Disturbingly, as this case broke last December we learned that Huntsman is the sister of Wayne Allen Huntsman, who pleaded guilty this past April to arson for singlehandedly starting the 100,000-acre King Fire in 2014 in El Dorado County. He is now serving a 20-year sentence.

Tami Huntsman is scheduled for trial on February 6, and prosecutors may still decide to try Curiel separately.