Today’s Pathetic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
On the morning of October 27, 1994, a heavy-set, Hispanic female burst into the Riverside County Sheriff substation in the dusty, working-class town of San Jacinto, California. Thirty-four-year-old Dora Buenrostro screamed at the police that her ex-husband was at her apartment and was going to harm their children. Police rushed to the apartment complex at 324 East Shaver Street and found a scene that made the most veteran deputy throw up. Buenrostro’s nine-year-old daughter Susana and eight-year-old son Vicente were dead, their throats slit. Susana was laid out on a loveseat and Vicente on a couch. Both children were covered with a blood-soaked blanket. Their tiny arms had multiple cuts on them from defending themselves. Four-year-old daughter Deidra was nowhere to be found.
Riverside County sheriffs noticed the lack of emotion Dora displayed when they discovered her children dead, as well as her lack of concern about her missing daughter. She demanded the police arrest her ex-husband, Alex Buenrostro, for the murders. Alex lived in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake, so the Los Angeles Police were called to pick him up. The L.A.P.D. found him around two in the morning and took him for a ride to Riverside.
While Alex Buenrostro was in custody, the Riverside County Sheriffs informed him of the death of his two children and the disappearance of another. The news of his children’s deaths devastated Alex. Detectives checked with his employer and questioned his friends. They quickly realized Alex Buenrostro not only had an airtight alibi, but he was also utterly distraught over the deaths of his children. Investigators were sure he did not commit the murders. On the other hand, Dora’s story changed every time she told it, and she was evasive and non-responsive when asked if she knew where her daughter Deidra could be. A Riverside County sheriff’s deputy described Dora’s behavior: “She went from laughing and joking to being tired to being nonchalant, but never showed remorse or sadness…”
Later that evening, some children playing in an abandoned post office sorting facility at Date Street and Reservoir Avenue in Lakeview found the lifeless body of Deidra. She was strapped in a child seat, and like her siblings, her throat was slit. She appeared to have been dead for several days. The blade of the knife that killed her had broken off in her neck.
Police arrested Dora two days later and charged her with three counts of first-degree murder. In July 1998, four years after the murders, she was brought to trial. The jury listened for three weeks as Deputy District Attorney Michael Soccio described the crimes in intense detail. Soccio laid out what happened, starting with the night of October 25th, when Dora visited her ex-husband at his Silver Lake apartment. On her way to see Alex, Dora, who had little Deidra with her, first took her anger out on the four-year-old. She stabbed the girl so violently that the knife blade broke off in her throat, and then Dora coldly left her in a massive abandoned postal facility for the rats to eat. She continued her drive to Silver Lake to see Alex. After they had sex, Dora pulled a knife on Alex and he called the police. Angered at her ex-husband for seeing other women while her own love life was stifled by her three young children, she murdered nine-year-old Susana and eight-year-old Vicente as they lounged in their living room the next day. She spent the rest of the day in her apartment with her two dead children as her audience, rehearsing what she would tell the police.
Just as the jury was on the edge of being overwhelmed by the vileness of this crime, Alex Buenrostro took the stand. He tearfully told what happened the night Deirdra was murdered. He described how he was brought in by the police and the emotional impact of learning about the horrible crimes.
Jay Grossman, Dora’s attorney, tried his best to paint the entire crime as unplanned, and that Dora’s plot was pathetic. He asked to find her guilty of second-degree murder. The jury did not buy it. On July 23, 1998, they found Dora Buenrostro guilty of three counts of first-degree murder.
The following Monday, the trial went into the penalty phase. Dora took the stand and denied killing the children. She insisted she was being framed, that Alex had murdered her family, and that the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department were in on the cover-up. She went on to berate the prosecution and her own defense attorney.
A Spanish interpreter was brought in for Dora when the jury announced that it had agreed on a penalty. As the interpret translated the verdict, Dora leaned her heard forward and cried. She was officially sentenced to death on October 2, 1998. As of this date, she is awaiting execution. Jury members told reporters that had she admitted her guilt and said that she was sorry, they would have given her life without parole.
Dora Buenrostro
Culled from: California’s Deadliest Women by my friend, David Kulczyk
Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!
OLDER CHILD PROPPED ON PILLOW AND TUCKED IN BED
G. M. HOWE, PORTLAND, MAINE
DAGUERREOTYPE 1/6 PLATE, CIRCA 1853
This postmortem photograph depicts a young girl [I thought it was a boy? But then again, gender is over. – DeSpair] as if she were casually lying in bed. Her arm has been placed across her chest to make it look as if she were about to get up. The dead were often posed in sitting positions to make them appear alive in these mementos for their loving survivors. However, this child’s vacant, glassy stare at the ceiling shows us the true nature of her condition. Moreover, if she had been alive, a more natural pose would have been chosen; pictures of the living had recognizable poses which would not be confused with those in memorial images.
Culled from: Sleeping Beauty II