Posted on 03/16/2003 1:36:37 PM PST by Theodore R.
Headless kids smothered first Associated Press
BROWNSVILLE (AP) — Autopsies show that three South Texas children were smothered, then stabbed several times before their heads were severed.
The children's parents, 23-year-old Angela Camacho and her 22-year-old common-law husband John Allen Rubio, have confessed to killing the three together, Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia said.
Camacho and Rubio are charged with capital murder and are being held without bail in single cells on suicide watch in Cameron County Jail, Sheriff Conrado Cantu told The Brownsville Herald in Saturday's editions.
Justice of the Peace Tony Torres announced autopsy results Friday. The bodies of 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio, 1-year-old John Esthefan Rubio and 3-year-old Julisa Angela Quezada were taken to Guerra Funeral Home.
Public viewing was to begin at noon Saturday. Funeral services will begin at 2 p.m. Sunday in the funeral home's Chapel of the Holy Spirit.
On Friday, family members cried softly in a private viewing at the tiny caskets. Pink and blue flowers and animals were piled in front of the funeral home.
Dr. Marguerite DeWitt, who completed the children's autopsies Thursday at Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen, told Torres that the children died of asphyxiation and that the decapitated bodies had several stab wounds.
Police officers identified three knives Tuesday that possibly were used in the slayings.
The children's father, according to a relative, had recently reported hearing family members' voices coming from the youths and that the devil had been speaking to him.
Investigators scouring the family's dilapidated apartment Tuesday night told Torres that the children's mother held their bodies while Rubio severed their heads.
Law officers found the little girls' bodies Tuesday bundled in trash bags, and the boy's headless and washed body lying naked at the foot of their bed after an acquaintance summoned police.
Officers said Rubio fathered the two youngest children while Camacho was mother of all three. Rubio, a former Porter High School student, and Camacho, a Mexican national, were transferred from Brownsville Municipal Jail to county jail facilities early Friday.
The sheriff said Mexican Consulate authorities called Friday morning to contact Camacho, who is from Matamoros. But she refused to speak with them. Meanwhile, court-appointed attorney Bruce Tharpe met Friday morning with Camacho and Rubio.
Tharpe on Friday afternoon filed motions to reconsider the couple's no-bond status and to conduct an examining trial.
County Court-at-law Judge Janet Leal said Friday that she signed two separate search warrants this week — one to search the property and another to sift through the defendants' bloody clothes and belongings.
By "youths" I assume this reporter means the murderd children. Or?
the children's mother held their bodies while Rubio severed their heads.
Ghastly on the scale of Andrea Yates.
I wonder whether investigators also found little devil-worship altars around the house or other evidence of wierd rituals taking place. I don't think that drugs and booze make you this crazy without some evil belief system that points you toward murdering your own children. The father may have been carrying on conversations with the devil for a long time.
Why haven't they been hanged ?
The Mexican government will most likely demand these parents not receive the death penalty, which they deserve. A nice, cozy jail cell is too good for them.
Only in the respect that if they are illegals Vincente Fox will expect us to give them a pass.
May the guard doze off for a little while.
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