Los Angeles: The mother of a 10-year-old girl killed last month in a gruesome crime that shocked the United States told police that she had solicited men to rape her daughter, according to reports.

Victoria Martens’ dismembered body was found in her home in the western state of New Mexico in August after police were called to the scene.

Officials said that Martens, who was killed hours before her 10th birthday party, had been given methamphetamine and was sexually assaulted, stabbed, strangled and dismembered.

Her mother Michelle Martens, Fabian Gonzales as well as Gonzales’s cousin, Jessica Kelley, have been charged in connection with her murder.

Michelle Martens, 35, told investigators following her arrest that she had sought men online and at work to rape her daughter, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

It said that Martens had set up encounters with at least three men, one of them a co-worker and two she met online, including Gonzales.

The paper, quoting search warrants related to the case, said Martens told police she didn’t solicit the men for money but because ‘she enjoyed watching.’

Martens also reportedly thought of offering Victoria’s younger sibling for sex.

‘This homicide is the most gruesome act of evil I have ever seen in my career,’ Albuquerque police chief Gorden Eden Jr. said in August after Victoria’s body was discovered. ‘A complete disregard of human life and betrayal by a mother.’