HIALEAH, Fla. -- A woman who took part in a child murder case in South Florida will testify again as prosecutors try to put her ex-lover to death for the torture and murder of her child.

Olivia Gonzalez-Mendoza is back home in west Hialeah.

When recounting Gonzalez-Mendoza's history, her neighbor Yolanda Sanchez said she gets goose bumps.

In 1990, Gonzalez-Mendoza was arrested, along with her then-lover Ana Maria Cardona, for child abuse that ended in death. The abuse killed Lazaro Figueroa, Cardona's 3-year-old son, who had become known as "Baby Lollipops."

Figueroa's body was found in bushes in front of a Miami Beach mansion. He had been starved, beaten, bitten and had broken bones, police said.

The medical examiner called it the worst case of child abuse he had seen in his 43 years on the job.

"You were beating him on a pretty regular basis?" a prosecutor asked Gonzalez-Mendoza.

"Yes," she replied.

Eventually, she admitted to abusing Figueroa, but claimed she did so only to please her lover.

Gonzalez-Mendoza's mother said in a letter to the judge, "She was only an instrument in the hands of Ana Cardona, who threatened to do something against our family."

Gonzalez-Mendoza's mother would not speak to NBC6 about her daughter's case.

Prosecutors said they believe Gonzalez-Mendoza was a lesser participant, so they made her their star witness.

Gonzalez-Mendoza's stories about the torture and murder were the keys to convicting Cardona if first-degree murder.

Cardona went to death row, and Gonzalez-Mendoza, pleading guilty to second-degree murder, got 40 years in prison.

Under Florida's old lenient gain-time rules, 40 years can amount to only 15 and Gonzalez-Mendoza was released.

Bruce Fleisher represented Gonzalez-Mendoza and got her the plea deal.

There were things about Gonzalez-Mendoza's deal that defense lawyers for Cardona said they didn't know during the first trial. The new details prompted Florida's Supreme Court to pull Cardona off of death row and grant her a new trial.

"She hit him with a bat," Gonzalez-Mendoza said.

Her vivid testimony at trial differed in key details from what she had told detectives earlier, prosecutors said.

In earlier statements, she admitted to abusing Figueroa on a daily basis and even said she hit him with a baseball bat that ultimately cracked the child's head open.

But prosecutors hadn't told Cardona's defense lawyers about the earlier statements.

The Supreme Court suggested that prosecutors might have coached Gonzalez-Mendoza into telling more compelling testimony.

Gonzalez-Mendoza's previous lawyer said that her release from prison will be a focus of Cardona's lawyers.

"The defense is going to claim that she purchased her freedom with her testimony," the lawyer said.

Even the Cardona jury that heard Gonzalez-Mendoza's testimony, but didn't hear about the earlier statements, only voted eight to four to put her to death.

It has been nearly six years since Cardona was given a new trial, but it won't happen soon, defense attorneys said. She is not due back in a courtroom before next September.