WOODLAND, CA — In a Yolo County Superior Court hearing Wednesday, the jury trial in a case involving the murder of five infant babies by their father was postponed once again, despite an emotional victim impact statement from the accused’s daughter.
The father is accused of abusing and murdering five of his infant children between 1992 and 2001. The remains of one baby were discovered in 2007, but the case remained cold until 2019, when DNA evidence identified the accused. He was arrested in 2020 while already serving time in prison on unrelated charges.
He now faces multiple counts of murder with special circumstances for torture, lying in wait, and multiple murders, as well as sentencing enhancements due to prior convictions and the victims’ ages.
Litigation has dragged on since his arrest, with repeated continuances, time waivers, subpoenas and procedural delays. The most recent continuance, granted in January, allowed the defense time to locate a pathologist.
The court was scheduled to resume at the end of July for pretrial conferencing. However, the defense filed another motion for continuance, which was heard Wednesday.
Deputy District Attorney Davis Robbins began his opposition by reading a statement from the accused’s daughter, the only one of his six known children still alive. She said the repeated delays had compounded a lifetime of trauma.
“My life has felt like it’s been at a standstill since the day I was born, largely because of the emotional and psychological abuse my father placed on me,” she said. “And now these repeated delays in the trial have added on to what I am trying to grow from.”
She described the emotional toll of the delays on her mental well-being.
“Each new continuance has left me in a constant state of emotional limbo, never knowing when or if closure will come. It feels like an unstable rollercoaster, periods of hope following with crushing disappointment and renewed anxiety,” she said. “The uncertainty has been so overwhelming that it has affected every part of my life. I’ve had to leave jobs because I couldn’t maintain stability or focus, not knowing when any of this is going to take place or deal with the emotional weight of another delay.”
Although the murders took place in the 1990s, the first break in the case came in 2007, when a fisherman discovered a baby’s remains in a waterway near Sacramento. The six-month-old had been placed in a plastic container weighed down in the slough.
Investigators could not identify the baby until 2019, when DNA tests linked the remains to the accused. Detectives said the child was born in 1996 and was killed through torture and lying in wait.
After the 2020 arrest, the case entered a prolonged litigation phase. The latest motion to continue, heard Wednesday, was granted over the prosecution’s objection.
Deputy Public Defender Ronald Johnson requested the delay to obtain additional evidence, citing trouble retaining pathologists and delays in correspondence.
“We were supposed to find out last week the ultimate disposition of what might have been a missing tissue sample, as well as whether or not there were X-ray pictures available to view,” Johnson said. “Sacramento has still not located the ninth tissue temple that would be necessary for a slide cut, but my understanding is they’re still looking.”
Robbins opposed the motion, arguing that additional delay would further harm the witnesses.
“The frustration with the people is that we do have witnesses, some of whom are older, some of whom have come from out of the area,” he said. “This is quite a heavy lift every time this case is continued, and not even from a logistical standpoint, but from an emotional standpoint, as the court just heard from [the witness] about the mental impact of the constant continuances in this case.”
He also argued the prosecution had done its due diligence and that the issues with the original pathologist had been known for nearly a year.
“We’ve reached a point where this case simply needs to go to a trial,” Robbins said.
Judge Daniel M. Wolk granted the continuance, calling the decision difficult but noting the delay would be relatively brief.
The trial was vacated for the summer and is now scheduled to begin Oct. 20.
