Dora Luz Buenrostro

Victims
3
Years active
October 25/27, 1994
Location
San Jacinto, California, USA
Method
Stabbing with knife
Status
Sentenced to death on October 2, 1998. She remains under sentence of death in California, where executions have been under moratorium since 2019 and the San Quentin condemned unit was closed in 2024.

Buenrostro was born in 1960 and was living apart from her husband, Alejandro, in San Jacinto in Riverside County, California. There had been a history of conflict and of allegations between them.

On October 25 and 27, 1994 her three children were stabbed to death: Susana, nine, Vicente, eight, and Deidra, four. Two were found at the house; Vicente's body was found at an abandoned building. She told police that her husband had done it and that she had been out.

The evidence contradicted her account, and she was charged. She was convicted of three counts of first degree murder and sentenced to death on October 2, 1998.

She remains on California's death row, where there have been no executions since 2006 and a moratorium since 2019. She has continued to maintain that her husband was responsible.

This is a single sequence in one household, not a serial case, and it is in the archive under that classification.