Post by CUTEGAL on Nov 7, 2003 10:27:57 GMT -5
Rubio guilty of murder
Punishment phase begins today
By DAVID ROBLEDO
The Brownsville Herald
BROWNSVILLE — John Allen Rubio was emotionless Thursday afternoon as a jury found him guilty of three charges of capital murder for the gruesome decapitation slayings of his three children in their squalid downtown apartment, where he broke knives, spilled blood and wrapped their bodies and heads in separate plastic bags.
He could be sentenced to death when the jury begins the punishment phase of his trial at 9 a.m. today.
Rubio, 23, stood with his head slightly bowed but otherwise showed little emotion as the verdict was read. Nat Perez, one of his defense attorneys, stood to his left and grimaced.
"Mr. Rubio, you have heard the verdict of the jury," presiding Judge Robert Garza told him. "You will be adjudicated (as) guilty."
Three-year-old Julissa Quezada, 1-year-old John Estefan Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio were suffocated, stabbed and decapitated sometime on March 10 or 11.
Autopsy reports showed one child had 12 stab wounds on her face and neck and 21 across her chest. Another’s vertebrae and rib bones were severed several times. All three were beheaded.
Rubio’s defense attorneys were not able to convince jurors that their client was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Rubio told police and psychiatrists that he killed the children because they were possessed by demons. He told police in at least one of his two confessions that his dead grandmother’s spirit had taken possession of Julissa’s body.
Brownsville psychiatrist William Mark Valverde testified that Rubio’s tendency toward schizophrenia, coupled with his addiction to spray paint fumes, led to a whirlwind of erratic, psychological misfires that ended with him killing his children and cutting off their heads to get rid of the demons.
Rubio was under two mind-stabilizing drugs throughout the trial and for the last few months. One drug was for depression, the other for psychosis.
"Rubio still holds out the belief that someone will believe his story," Valverde testified on the seventh day of the trial that began Oct. 20.
However, prosecutors insisted that Rubio wasn’t insane – just lazy and irresponsible.
They presented testimony showing that Rubio and common-law wife Angela Camacho didn’t have money to pay the rent on their East Tyler Street apartment. Also, they may have been cut off from food stamp benefits, and at least one child was sick and unable to see a doctor because they had no money.
Killing the children was going to make Rubio’s life easier, they said.
Cameron County Assistant District Attorney Karen Betancourt said an insane man could not have severed the children’s heads so meticulously.
"Why didn’t he chop off a foot, or maybe an ear?" Betancourt said.
Camacho, a Mexican national living illegally in the United States, is also charged with capital murder for her alleged role in the slayings. She has confessed on a police videotape to holding down two of the children while Rubio killed them.
Her trial date has not been set pending a determination of her mental competency.
The trial included compelling testimony from Rubio’s mother — a prostitute in downtown Brownsville who admitted to encouraging her son to have sex with men and women for money and to buying illegal drugs for him.
Also testifying was Rubio’s transvestite roommate, who said Rubio answered the door to his apartment on the day of the murders with a can of spray paint in his hand.
On Oct. 30, jurors were taken inside the apartment, where they saw trash and dirty clothes piled along the walls and sexual paraphernalia like pornographic magazines and condoms lying next to the dead children’s toys.
A local anthropologist said there were no signs of witchcraft in the family’s dwelling.
Valverde said Rubio told him that he learned from a movie that cutting off the children’s heads was the only way to exorcise the demons that possessed them. He told Valverde he chopped and stabbed at each child’s neck until the separation was complete, then dunked the heads in a bucket of water to make sure they didn’t reconnect with their bodies.
But psychiatrist Mary Anderson of Austin, the prosecution’s last witness, said Wednesday that Rubio understood right from wrong when he murdered the children and that he may be lying about seeing demons.
She based her conclusions on a four- to five-hour interview with Rubio in which she said he shifted and changed details from his previous confessions.
"Sometimes Rubio exaggerates … tells stories," Anderson said.
Posted by: Mike Perez on Nov 07, 03 | 12:19 am | Profile
Punishment phase begins today
By DAVID ROBLEDO
The Brownsville Herald
BROWNSVILLE — John Allen Rubio was emotionless Thursday afternoon as a jury found him guilty of three charges of capital murder for the gruesome decapitation slayings of his three children in their squalid downtown apartment, where he broke knives, spilled blood and wrapped their bodies and heads in separate plastic bags.
He could be sentenced to death when the jury begins the punishment phase of his trial at 9 a.m. today.
Rubio, 23, stood with his head slightly bowed but otherwise showed little emotion as the verdict was read. Nat Perez, one of his defense attorneys, stood to his left and grimaced.
"Mr. Rubio, you have heard the verdict of the jury," presiding Judge Robert Garza told him. "You will be adjudicated (as) guilty."
Three-year-old Julissa Quezada, 1-year-old John Estefan Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio were suffocated, stabbed and decapitated sometime on March 10 or 11.
Autopsy reports showed one child had 12 stab wounds on her face and neck and 21 across her chest. Another’s vertebrae and rib bones were severed several times. All three were beheaded.
Rubio’s defense attorneys were not able to convince jurors that their client was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Rubio told police and psychiatrists that he killed the children because they were possessed by demons. He told police in at least one of his two confessions that his dead grandmother’s spirit had taken possession of Julissa’s body.
Brownsville psychiatrist William Mark Valverde testified that Rubio’s tendency toward schizophrenia, coupled with his addiction to spray paint fumes, led to a whirlwind of erratic, psychological misfires that ended with him killing his children and cutting off their heads to get rid of the demons.
Rubio was under two mind-stabilizing drugs throughout the trial and for the last few months. One drug was for depression, the other for psychosis.
"Rubio still holds out the belief that someone will believe his story," Valverde testified on the seventh day of the trial that began Oct. 20.
However, prosecutors insisted that Rubio wasn’t insane – just lazy and irresponsible.
They presented testimony showing that Rubio and common-law wife Angela Camacho didn’t have money to pay the rent on their East Tyler Street apartment. Also, they may have been cut off from food stamp benefits, and at least one child was sick and unable to see a doctor because they had no money.
Killing the children was going to make Rubio’s life easier, they said.
Cameron County Assistant District Attorney Karen Betancourt said an insane man could not have severed the children’s heads so meticulously.
"Why didn’t he chop off a foot, or maybe an ear?" Betancourt said.
Camacho, a Mexican national living illegally in the United States, is also charged with capital murder for her alleged role in the slayings. She has confessed on a police videotape to holding down two of the children while Rubio killed them.
Her trial date has not been set pending a determination of her mental competency.
The trial included compelling testimony from Rubio’s mother — a prostitute in downtown Brownsville who admitted to encouraging her son to have sex with men and women for money and to buying illegal drugs for him.
Also testifying was Rubio’s transvestite roommate, who said Rubio answered the door to his apartment on the day of the murders with a can of spray paint in his hand.
On Oct. 30, jurors were taken inside the apartment, where they saw trash and dirty clothes piled along the walls and sexual paraphernalia like pornographic magazines and condoms lying next to the dead children’s toys.
A local anthropologist said there were no signs of witchcraft in the family’s dwelling.
Valverde said Rubio told him that he learned from a movie that cutting off the children’s heads was the only way to exorcise the demons that possessed them. He told Valverde he chopped and stabbed at each child’s neck until the separation was complete, then dunked the heads in a bucket of water to make sure they didn’t reconnect with their bodies.
But psychiatrist Mary Anderson of Austin, the prosecution’s last witness, said Wednesday that Rubio understood right from wrong when he murdered the children and that he may be lying about seeing demons.
She based her conclusions on a four- to five-hour interview with Rubio in which she said he shifted and changed details from his previous confessions.
"Sometimes Rubio exaggerates … tells stories," Anderson said.
Posted by: Mike Perez on Nov 07, 03 | 12:19 am | Profile
