A woman whose weight -- and false murder confession -- once garnered her the nickname "Half-Ton Killer" explained why she lied to cover for her sister.
“I tried to protect my sister, and I was already dying so I didn't see [that] … I was doing something wrong," Mayra Rosales, now 33, told ABC's Nightline earlier this week.
Rosales weighed 1,028 pounds in in 2008, when she was charged with murdering her 2-year-old nephew, Eliseo Jr., by falling on him and crushing him. Rosales claimed that she killed the boy by accident, but her story didn't carry any weight.
Eventually, an autopsy showed that the boy died after getting hit, not being smothered. Rosales confessed that she was covering for her sister, Jamie, who murdered the boy. Prosecutors dropped charges against Rosales in January 2012, and Jamie was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Rosales would later say she lied so that her sister could escape prison and her other children "would still have a mom," but on Nightline she revealed there was more to the story.
"I was already giving up in life," she said, "And the way I saw it, when they began saying I was going to get capital murder charges, I really saw it like they were doing me a favor."
After the charges were dropped, Rosales started dropping pounds. She's now down to nearly 200 pounds.
"A lot of it is the diet," she told Access Hollywood last month. "I'm eating healthy food. Everything is measured by a dietician."
She's also had several surgeries, including some to remove tumors and excess skin.
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