Dora Buenrostro was convicted of murdering her three children, Susana, 9, Vicente, 8, and Deidra, 4, in Riverside County, California, in October 1994. The court record places the case between October 25 and October 27 of that year.
From the first morning she blamed her estranged husband, the children's father. Police established within a day that he had been at his home in Los Angeles. At her trial her own lawyers told the jury that he had an alibi and could not have killed the children; she took the stand and said she had been framed. A Riverside County jury convicted her of three counts of first degree murder and returned a death verdict, and she was sentenced to death on October 2, 1998. Twenty years later, on December 3, 2018, the California Supreme Court upheld the convictions but reversed the death sentence, holding that the trial court had wrongly excused a prospective juror on the strength of her written questionnaire alone.
According to the facts set out by the California Supreme Court, Dora Buenrostro married the children's father in 1982. They lived in Los Angeles with their three children until they separated several years later. She worked for seven years as a file clerk and interpreter at a law firm, and she reported having a ninth-grade education. In 1990 she moved with the children to San Jacinto, in Riverside County, while their father stayed in Los Angeles and saw them twice a month.
The Guadalajara Reporter, an English-language weekly in Mexico, reported in 2016 that she was born in the state of Jalisco. Her date of birth is not on record.
In 1988 she pleaded guilty to felony grand theft, a conviction the prosecution later put before the jury at the penalty phase.
Her family later described a change in her in the months before October 1994. At her competency trial, her sister testified that in July 1994 Buenrostro had accused her of being a witch. Her sisters and mother described other beliefs that the defense experts treated as delusions. The Guadalajara Reporter wrote in 2016 that relatives had described months of erratic behavior and hallucinations.
On the night of Tuesday, October 25, Buenrostro arrived at the children's father's home in Los Angeles at about 11:00 p.m., alone and unannounced, and stayed about two hours. The visit ended in a confrontation in which she threatened him, and he called 911. Los Angeles police arrived at 1:15 a.m. on October 26 and told her to go home to San Jacinto.
At about 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 26, she went to the San Jacinto Police Department and spoke to Officer Blane Dillon. On Thursday, October 27, at 6:40 a.m., she went to the department again and told the desk clerk that her husband was at her apartment. Officers were sent at once.
Detective Sergeant Frederick Rodriguez of the San Jacinto police led the investigation. He began interviewing Buenrostro at the station at about 10:30 that morning. She was not under arrest. The whole interview was recorded, and the jury later heard the recording and read a transcript.
Police first concentrated on the children's father. By 9:00 a.m. officers had located him at his employer's office in Los Angeles and taken him into custody for questioning. A neighbor of his said she had seen him leave for work at about 7:20 a.m. Given the distance between San Jacinto and his workplace, and the 6:40 a.m. time at which Buenrostro said he was in her apartment, police ruled him out, and he was released early the next morning. The jury later watched a videotape of him learning that his children were dead.
By that evening the inconsistencies in Buenrostro's accounts had made her the focus of the investigation.
Buenrostro was arrested for the murders on October 28, 1994. That day, at the district attorney's request, the psychologist Craig Rath interviewed her for about an hour.
Investigators had her car towed for examination, and forensic testing of material from the car was put before the jury at her trial.
Before any trial on the charges, the court suspended the criminal proceedings to decide whether she was mentally competent to stand trial. A separate jury heard that question from October 26 to November 13, 1995.
Three defense experts said she was not competent. The psychologist Michael Perrotti, who examined her in March and July 1995, found no sign that she was faking. The psychologist Michael Kania, who saw her in the spring of 1995, diagnosed a delusional disorder. The psychiatrist Mark Mills, who saw her in November 1994 and April 1995, diagnosed a significant psychotic disorder, probably delusional. Other clinicians who saw her in jail in late 1994 and early 1995 reported a nonspecific psychotic disorder, rambling speech on one day and an alert, friendly manner on the next, and fair insight and judgment. She refused medication that had been prescribed for her.
Her sisters, her mother and a visitor described her beliefs: that jail staff were trying to harm her, that she was the subject of a medical experiment, and that her sister spoke a different language and was influencing the children. A witness testified that she could not put together coherent paragraphs.
Two court-appointed experts disagreed. The psychiatrist Jose Moral, who met her in March and July 1995, found her oriented, free of psychosis and familiar with how the legal process worked. Rath, who had seen her on the day of her arrest, found no major mental illness and said her personality test results fit the profile of someone exaggerating symptoms; she refused his later court-ordered evaluations. A forensic psychologist called by the defense, Sherry Skidmore, criticized Rath's methods, and the trial court excluded part of her testimony.
On November 1, 1995, in the middle of the trial, police seized two writings in Spanish from her jail cell. Translated, they were offered by the prosecution to show that she could communicate clearly and understood the proceedings. The jury found her competent to stand trial.
Her lawyers later renewed a request for a new competency evaluation, saying her ability to understand the proceedings and to work with them had worsened. The trial court refused. On January 3, 1996, it also denied her motion to replace her appointed lawyers. She also asked to be allowed to represent herself, and that request was refused.
A second jury heard the charges. Prospective jurors filled out a written questionnaire about their views, including their views on capital punishment.
The guilt phase turned on whether the evidence proved that she had killed the children and had done so willfully, with premeditation and deliberation. Her lawyers did not argue that someone else had done it. In closing they conceded that the children's father, who had an alibi, could not have killed them.
Buenrostro testified. She said the children's father had come to her apartment on the morning of Thursday, October 27, and that she told officers about him. She admitted threatening him in Los Angeles but said she never tried to hurt him. She denied killing the children and said someone had planted evidence against her. She admitted her grand theft conviction.
The Guadalajara Reporter wrote in 2016 that she had testified against her lawyers' advice and quoted her defense attorney, David Macher: "It was something that we had no control over." The paper also reported that she called the hearing "a waste of time" and blamed her attorneys for the verdict.
The jury convicted her of the first degree murders of all three children. It found true three multiple-murder special-circumstance allegations and further allegations charged with the murders.
At the penalty phase the prosecution relied on her 1988 grand theft conviction and on two incidents in the county jail, in February 1995 and May 1996. In the first she refused an order to return to her cell and struggled with a deputy until other deputies subdued her. In the second she refused to leave a day room until deputies intervened; she did not try to hit anyone.
The children's father, their older half-sister and a school official testified about the effect of the deaths. The jury saw the videotape of the father learning what had happened and a photo montage of the three children.
The defense called a former neighbor, a niece, two of her sisters and her mother. They sketched her family background, described her as a loving mother and spoke of a change in her attitude and behavior in the months before the children died. Her relatives asked the jury for mercy. Buenrostro testified again, said she had been framed and asked to be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
The same jury returned a verdict of death. The trial court denied her motions for a new trial and to modify the verdict, and she was sentenced to death on October 2, 1998.
In November 2016 the Guadalajara Reporter reported that she was held at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. The paper counted her as one of 39 Mexican nationals on California's death row and as one of two foreign women on death row anywhere in the United States, the other being the British national Linda Carty in Texas.
Her case went to the California Supreme Court on automatic appeal from the death judgment. The court decided People v. Buenrostro on December 3, 2018, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Leondra Kruger.
Much of the opinion dealt with the competency trial. The court rejected her challenges to California's definition of incompetence and to the jury instruction based on it, held that any error in limiting the testimony of Skidmore and of the defense experts was harmless, upheld the use of her jailhouse writings, rejected her claim that the trial judge's rulings showed bias, upheld the refusal of an instruction telling jurors that a finding of incompetence would not set her free, and held that the trial court did not have to order a second competency trial on the showing her lawyers made. It also held that the refusal of her request to represent herself was not reversible error. It affirmed the judgment of guilt.
Two corrections followed. The court held that two of the three multiple-murder special-circumstance findings had been charged and found true in error, and it vacated them, leaving one. And it reversed the death sentence. During jury selection the trial court had excused a prospective juror, a retired woman identified in the opinion as B.R., on the basis of her written questionnaire alone, reasoning that she would not vote for death. She had left many questions unanswered and had indicated that a religious or moral feeling would make it hard for her to sit in judgment of another person. The Supreme Court held that her answers were not clear enough to show that her views would prevent or substantially impair her performance as a juror. Under the United States Supreme Court's decision in Gray v. Mississippi, wrongly excusing even one such juror requires the reversal of a death sentence, so the court did not decide whether two other excusals were also wrong. It sent the case back to Riverside County for a new penalty determination.
Death Penalty Focus, a group that opposes capital punishment, reported the ruling on December 14, 2018, noting that the court had left her convictions in place and that she would receive a new penalty trial.
Motive. The court identified no motive, and Buenrostro, who denied killing the children, gave no explanation for their deaths.
Mental state. Defense experts diagnosed a delusional or psychotic disorder; court-appointed experts found no major mental illness and one reported signs of exaggeration. A jury found her competent in 1995. At the guilt phase her lawyers contested premeditation and deliberation.
Age. Her date of birth and her age in 1994 are not on record.
1982: Dora Buenrostro marries the children's father; they live in Los Angeles.
1988: She pleads guilty to felony grand theft.
1990: Separated, she moves with the three children to San Jacinto, Riverside County.
July 1994: Her sister later testifies to accusations of witchcraft.
October 25 to 26, 1994, about 11:00 p.m. to 1:15 a.m.: Confrontation at the children's father's Los Angeles home; police tell her to go home.
October 26, 1994, 10:30 a.m.: She speaks to San Jacinto police.
October 27, 1994, 6:40 a.m.: She tells San Jacinto police her husband is at her apartment.
October 27, 1994: The children's father is questioned and ruled out.
October 28, 1994: Buenrostro is arrested; the children's father is released.
February 1995: Jail altercation with a deputy.
October 26 to November 13, 1995: Competency trial; the jury finds her competent.
January 3, 1996: Her motion to replace her lawyers is denied.
May 1996: Jail incident in a day room.
October 2, 1998: Sentenced to death, after a jury convicted her of three first degree murders and returned a death verdict.
November 2016: Reported held at the Central California Women's Facility, Chowchilla.
December 3, 2018: The California Supreme Court affirms the convictions, vacates two special-circumstance findings, reverses the death sentence and orders a new penalty determination.