Texas man gets death penalty for beheading 3 kids

Texas man gets death penalty for beheading 3 kids
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
The Associated Press

EDINBURG, Texas – A jury sentenced a south Texas man to death on Thursday, four days after convicting him of capital murder for beheading his common law wife’s three children in 2003.
It is the second death sentence for John Allen Rubio, who was convicted of killing the children all under the age of four – smothering, stabbing and ultimately decapitating them – in a windowless Brownsville apartment.
Jurors deliberated for about four hours before returning the sentence.
Before entering the sentence, Hidalgo County District Judge Noe Gonzalez asked Rubio if there was anything he would like to say.
“I thank the jury for giving me a chance to show what I could,” Rubio said quietly.
Gonzalez, who said he had sentenced more people to death than any judge in south Texas, said he recognized that a lot of people went through what Rubio did, citing his abusive and troubled childhood.
“I don’t know what happened, but I know what this jury found,” Gonzalez said. “I have never seen a crime like this.”
Jurors on Monday found Rubio guilty on four counts of capital murder – one charge for each child and one for the children together.
Rubio was previously convicted of the murders in 2003 and sentenced to death. But a state appeals court overturned his conviction in 2007 because statements from the children’s mother – Angela Camacho – were wrongly allowed as evidence during the trial. Camacho pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence for her role in the slayings.
At his current trial, Rubio pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury rejected his defense and convicted him.
Rubio’s attorneys did not deny Rubio killed the children. But one of them, Nat Perez, said something must have gone terribly wrong in his client’s life for him to have done so. As a final indignity, no family members came to support Rubio, Perez said. “And we called them yesterday to come testify and they didn’t show up,” he said.
Rubio showed his only emotion of the nearly three-week trial during Perez’s closing statement Thursday.
At one point, Perez asked Rubio to stand up and face the jury. Rubio stood, but did not look at the jury with his reddened eyes.
“He’s a child of the Valley, too,” Perez said, referencing Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos’s comment earlier in the trial that Rubio’s crime tore at the very fabric of the Rio Grande Valley.
During the sentencing phase, prosecutors called witnesses who portrayed Rubio as a remorseless killer. Even inside prison, Rubio would continue to be a threat to others, witnesses said.
Rubio’s attorneys argued that it’s unlikely that a man convicted of killing three children would pose a threat in prison. With the exception of setting several fires while on death row, Rubio never attempted to assault inmates or guards, they said. Their experts testified that Rubio’s childhood – filled with violence at home, “toxic” parents, drug use and prostitution – damaged him developmentally and set him on a path for failure.
After being flagged down by Rubio’s brother, police found the bodies of 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio on March 11, 2003, in the apartment Rubio shared with Angela Camacho.
At various times since the crime, Rubio claimed the children were possessed and that he was the “chosen one” intended to save the world. Defense experts diagnosed Rubio as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, a determination rejected by prosecution experts.
Prosecutors pointed out that in the midst of the murders, Rubio had sex with Camacho, telling her it would likely be their last chance. They were in the process of cleaning up the crime scene when Rubio’s brother and girlfriend stopped by.
The first police officer on the scene testified that after he saw the decapitated body of one child in a back bedroom, Rubio held his wrists out and said, “arrest me.”
The apartment was a step up for a family that had lived on a park bench and in an abandoned building. The state had taken away the children and returned them when Rubio and Camacho enrolled them in government assistance programs.

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