At first, Nicole Johnson told police the bags in the trunk of her car contained dirty clothes.

But when she opened a suitcase wrapped in plastic at the insistence of the Baltimore County Police officers who pulled her over for speeding in July 2021, an officer yelled out an expletive and Johnson tried to sprint away.

“It’s a baby,” the officer told another after a few moments of hyperventilating. “It’s a dead baby in that bag.”

On Tuesday, more than three years after police found Johnson’s dead niece and nephew inside bags in the trunk of her car, the 36-year-old woman pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree child abuse resulting in death.

During the plea hearing in Baltimore County Circuit Court, prosecutors played about 20 minutes of body-camera footage from the Eastern Boulevard traffic stop when officers discovered the bodies of Joshlyn Johnson, 7, and her 5-year-old brother, Larry O’Neill III.

Joshlyn’s body was 17 pounds, and Larry’s weighed 21. The medical examiner, who found bruising and other injuries on both children, determined the cause of death to be homicide by unspecified means but ruled out drugs or carbon monoxide.

Baltimore County Deputy State’s Attorney Lisa Fox Dever said the state is recommending a life sentence suspending all but 50 years — 25 years for each child — followed by five years of supervised probation for Johnson.

Sentencing guidelines call for 50 to 75 years, Dever said, and the maximum penalty for each count is life imprisonment.

Natalie Finegar, Johnson’s attorney, told her client in court that she could argue for a lesser sentence than the state was requesting. Sentencing is set for Jan. 28. Finegar declined to comment Tuesday.

“This case has so many multiple layers of tragedies, starting with my client’s childhood, and the abuse and neglect she has suffered, culminating in the tragic deaths of her niece and nephew,” Finegar previously told The Baltimore Sun.

Dachelle Johnson left her children with her sister Nicole in November 2019, believing they would be safe with her, according to a statement of charges and supporting facts Dever read in court Tuesday.

But when Dachelle asked to see or talk to her children, Nicole would always give an excuse why she couldn’t, Dever said. When Dachelle arranged to meet in March 2021, Nicole didn’t show up, and Dachelle wasn’t able to find her or the children.

Nicole Johnson told a homicide detective that while staying at the Regal Inn in Rosedale in May 2020, she became angry at Joshlyn for taking food from the fridge that didn’t belong to her, Dever said. Johnson said she beat Joshlyn with her hand and Joshlyn hit her head on the floor and never regained consciousness.

Then in 2021, two months before the July 28 traffic stop, Johnson became angry with Larry for playing with something that didn’t belong to him and “overreacted,” Dever said. Charging documents said Johnson told police that Larry lay down to rest in her car and never woke up. She also told detectives she remembered seeing blood on Larry’s leg.

She didn’t call emergency medical services or police, and placed his body inside a plastic tote that she kept in the trunk next to Joshlyn’s body, according to charging documents. Johnson didn’t notify authorities that Joshlyn had died either.

On Tuesday, Johnson softly answered, “Yes, ma’am” or “No, ma’am” to questions from Judge Nancy M. Purpura, speaking more quietly each time. Johnson looked down at her hands and cried, mostly silently, as Dever played the videos. Other relatives in the courtroom also cried.

Essex patrol officers originally stopped Johnson for speeding, then discovered her West Virginia tags were fake and her car was unregistered. They told Johnson and her passenger, a woman who police determined had no involvement in the children’s deaths, that the car would be towed and that Johnson could remove her belongings.

Police also noticed a “foul smell” coming from the car, and when Johnson unloaded a suitcase wrapped in plastic onto the sidewalk, an officer saw maggots crawling inside, Dever said.

In one video played in court, an officer asked Johnson, “What is this, right here?” referring to the bag wrapped in plastic.

“Bunch of dirty clothes,” she said. She had told police that the bad smell came from dirty blankets she had from sleeping in her car.

“They don’t seem like dirty clothes,” he said in the video. Johnson unwrapped plastic and cut through layers of bags for several minutes with an officer’s help, then removed what appeared to be blankets from the suitcase.

“What is that?” the officer suddenly asked, and he asked her to “pull it out.”

He yelled out an expletive as Johnson suddenly ran away, then he began breathing so heavily that a different officer told him he needed to calm down.

Another officer chased Johnson, took her to the ground and handcuffed her, sitting her down on a curb nearby. “I didn’t know that was in there,” she told police in the video. Officers found Larry’s body inside another bag in the car’s trunk.