The Houston Chronicle

June 30, 2005

Angela Camacho, 25, will be eligible for parole in 40 years. Her attorneys failed to prove she was mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, but the plea agreement spared her. Had she been convicted and sentenced to death, she would have become the 1st Mexican national female on Texas' death row.

Camacho and 24-year-old John Allen Rubio, her common-law husband, were accused of strangling and decapitating her 2 daughters, 3-year-old Julissa Quezada and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio, in 2003. The couple allegedly washed themselves afterward and had sex before decapitating their 1-year-old son, John Esthefan Rubio.

A relative called police, who found the girls stuffed in a trash bag and the boy on a bed. Rubio and Camacho told police they thought the children were possessed.

Camacho answered state District Judge Benjamin Uresti's questions in Spanish as he accepted her guilty plea.

"I hope that God will touch your heart and that you ask for forgiveness," Uresti said. "Good luck to you."

Alberto Pullen, one of Camacho's attorneys, said she would face deportation if released from prison. He said she wants to stay in the U.S.

Rubio was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003 after he requested the death penalty. Rubio has since decided to fight the sentence. In February, he was found competent to choose his attorney for the appeal.

According to evidence during Rubio's trial, he had inhaled so much spray paint that he had damaged his brain and might have been psychotic.

Camacho's case was tied up for more than 2 years due to issues of her mental health.

Camacho competent to stand trial, defense says

Hearing scheduled to determine mother’s mental capacit

By Angeles Negrete Lares - The Brownsville Herald

May 7, 2004

More than a year after being charged with the decapitation deaths of her three children, Angela Camacho is competent to stand trial, defense attorneys said Thursday.

“Angela is getting better,” said Ernesto Gamez, one of Camacho’s attorneys. “Our psychiatrist Dr. David Moron has had her on medication for a year now, and she is now, in his opinion, competent to stand trial.”

Moron was not available for comment. He originally diagnosed Camacho as incompetent last year, stating in a letter dated May 5, 2003, to Judge Ben Euresti that Camacho “is currently experiencing a severe depression with psychotic features.”

But a steady intake of Lexapro and Risperdal — an antidepressant and antipsychotic, respectively — has improved her condition, Gamez said.

“Without (Camacho’s) current medicine, she is not quite all there,” Gamez said. “We’re talking about a lady that is hallucinating and has seen her children appear in her jail cell; (she’s) seeing ghosts.”

Camacho, 24, was slated to appear in a competency hearing tentatively scheduled for May 17, but Gamez said plans have likely changed.

“There probably won’t be a competency hearing because she is now ready to go to trial,” Gamez said.

“(Camacho has a) functional and rational understanding about the charges against her, and she can assist me in her defense.”

According to court documents, Camacho is scheduled to appear in a retardation hearing — also known as an Atkins motion — on May 17 so a judge can rule on her mental state. If she’s found retarded, Camacho could avoid the death penalty since a Supreme Court decision in 2002 deemed it “cruel and unusual” punishment to execute mentally retarded individuals.

A competency hearing was to determine whether Camacho is stable enough to assist in her own defense. Now that medication has improved her condition, Gamez said he hopes the Atkins motion proves her retardation and saves her from the death penalty.

Defense claims Camacho has scored below the retardation line in four IQ tests. The first test was administrated on March 14, 2003 — three days after the killings were discovered — and the last test was on March 5, 2004. A score below 70 on an IQ test marks the legal line for retardation.

A retardation ruling in the Atkins motion would be monumental, said Alberto Pullen, Camacho’s other defense attorney.

“It would be the first case in the history of the United States that the death penalty against a Mexican national would be avoided,” Pullen said.

The Atkins motion is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on May 17 at the 107th state District Court, according to court documents. Prosecutors, defense lawyers and Camacho are expected to attend, Pullen said.

Camacho and common-law-husband John Allen Rubio, 23, are accused of killing and beheading their three children Julissa Angela Quezada, 3, John Esthefan Rubio, 1, and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio in March 2003 in their filth-ridden downtown apartment.

Rubio was convicted in November and sentenced to death for the killings. His lawyers have appealed the sentence.

Mother bares other motive in kids' deaths

By Mariano Castillo - MySanAntonio.com

October 28, 2003

It was financial desperation, not insanity, that led to the suffocation, stabbing and decapitations of three small children, their mother told police.

Her second statement contradicted a confession she gave the night before, hours after Angela Camacho and her common-law husband, John Allen Rubio, were arrested when the children’s bodies were found.

Two written statements and a videotaped statement by Camacho on March 11 and 12 were presented Tuesday in Rubio’s capital murder trial over the objections of defense lawyers.

Rubio and Camacho, both 23, are charged in the deaths of Julissa Quezada, 3; John Stephan Rubio, 1; and Mary Jane Rubio, 2 months.

The two are being tried separately.

In her first confession to police, Camacho said that days before the murders, the children began acting strange and crying a lot.

“We felt someone had put some type of spell on our children,” she said.

Just as Rubio told police in statements already entered in evidence, Camacho said the children were killed because they appeared to be possessed as the result of witchcraft.

She said the concerned parents rubbed an egg on Julissa and dropped it in a container of water to check for proof of a curse.

“The way the egg floated told us something has happened to Julissa,” she said.

The practice is common in faith healing when treating a person afflicted with mal ojo, or “evil eye.”

The following morning, Camacho recanted her statement.

“It was not true,” she told detectives Samuel Lucio and Thomas Clipper on March 12.

“The real reason we killed the children was because of money problems,” Camacho said.

The financial pressures mounting on the impoverished family became so great on the day the rent was due, they decided to kill the children, she said.

“Better for the children to die rather than suffer,” she said Rubio told her.

The day before the killings, the family received a letter informing them that they would stop receiving food stamps because Julissa’s Social Security number did not match her birth certificate. They also were slated to lose Medicaid benefits.

The decision to kill the children was made together, but it was Rubio’s idea to decapitate them, Camacho said in the video statement, which was played for jurors.

Defense attorneys questioned Camacho’s truthfulness because of the conflicting statements and asked if Camacho was aware of her rights when she spoke to police.

A trial date for Camacho has not been set, pending a determination of her competence.

Since Camacho told officers she was a special education student, a slow learner and a high school dropout, defense lawyer Nat Perez asked police Detectives Chris Ortiz and Alberto Luis De Leon why those facts did not raise red flags for them.

Perez’s objection was overruled and jurors heard Camacho’s statements.

Jurors are to finish viewing the video when the trial resumes today.

Autopsies Show that Headless Kids in Brownsville Were First Smothered

Lubbock, TX, Avalanche-Journal

March 16, 2003

BROWNSVILLE (AP) — Autopsies show that three South Texas children were smothered, then stabbed several times before their heads were severed.

The children's parents, 23-year-old Angela Camacho and her 22-year-old common-law husband John Allen Rubio, have confessed to killing the three together, Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia said.

Camacho and Rubio are charged with capital murder and are being held without bail in single cells on suicide watch in Cameron County Jail, Sheriff Conrado Cantu told The Brownsville Herald in Saturday's editions.

Justice of the Peace Tony Torres announced autopsy results Friday. The bodies of 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio, 1-year-old John Esthefan Rubio and 3-year-old Julisa Angela Quezada were taken to Guerra Funeral Home.

Public viewing was to begin at noon Saturday. Funeral services will begin at 2 p.m. Sunday in the funeral home's Chapel of the Holy Spirit.

On Friday, family members cried softly in a private viewing at the tiny caskets. Pink and blue flowers and animals were piled in front of the funeral home.

Dr. Marguerite DeWitt, who completed the children's autopsies Thursday at Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen, told Torres that the children died of asphyxiation and that the decapitated bodies had several stab wounds.

Police officers identified three knives Tuesday that possibly were used in the slayings.

The children's father, according to a relative, had recently reported hearing family members' voices coming from the youths and that the devil had been speaking to him.

Investigators scouring the family's dilapidated apartment Tuesday night told Torres that the children's mother held their bodies while Rubio severed their heads.

Law officers found the little girls' bodies Tuesday bundled in trash bags, and the boy's headless and washed body lying naked at the foot of their bed after an acquaintance summoned police.

Officers said Rubio fathered the two youngest children while Camacho was mother of all three. Rubio, a former Porter High School student, and Camacho, a Mexican national, were transferred from Brownsville Municipal Jail to county jail facilities early Friday.

The sheriff said Mexican Consulate authorities called Friday morning to contact Camacho, who is from Matamoros. But she refused to speak with them. Meanwhile, court-appointed attorney Bruce Tharpe met Friday morning with Camacho and Rubio.

Tharpe on Friday afternoon filed motions to reconsider the couple's no-bond status and to conduct an examining trial.

County Court-at-law Judge Janet Leal said Friday that she signed two separate search warrants this week — one to search the property and another to sift through the defendants' bloody clothes and belongings.

John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho

Pysih.com

The phrase ‘perfect storm’ was first coined by William Makepeace Thacheray in his novel “Vanity Fair” in 1847. This phrase commonly refers to an event or series of events where rare and powerful forces collide to dramatically aggravate an existing situation with disastrous results.

When John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho of Brownsville, Texas met in 2001 it began a chain of events that ended with an event that would rock not only the city of Brownsville, but the entire state of Texas. And given all the wackiness that goes on in Texas, that’s saying a lot.

Angela Camacho was born in Mexico and illegally immigrated to the United States. She settled in Brownsville and had a child with one man and then became pregnant again by another. When she was about one month along in her second pregnancy, she met John Allen Rubio.

According to Rubio’s confession, he did not care that she had children with different men, he accepted them as his own referring to Julissa Angela Quesada as his daughter and when Angela Camacho gave birth to a son, he named the boy after himself.

Less than a year later, Angela Camacho became pregnant again and gave birth to daughter Mary Jane. The blended family moved into a ramshackle apartment which had once been a cement block grocery store in Brownsville.

John Allen Rubio grew up in Brownsville surrounded by superstition, dysfunction, drug abuse and alcoholism. According to Rubio, both his mother and grandmother were practitioners of witchcraft, as well as long term drug users, alcoholics and prostitutes.

He told investigators that his mother began pimping him out at a young age, so he followed in the family tradition of being a prostitute, at his mother’s suggestion. It beat flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

John Allen Rubio had a few run ins with the law over minor drug charges and was diagnosed with some emotional problems, none of which prohibited him from completing his high school education and participating in the ROTC program.

But according to friends and associates, John Allen Rubio had a nasty habit – huffing; Inhaling the fumes from spray paint, solvents or other common household chemicals in order to get a quick, but often lethal, high. Long term users of inhalants often suffer from severe depression, mood changes, weight loss, lack of coordination, irritability and in some cases permanent brain damage and death.

Angela Camacho was not known to use drugs or inhalants, but she was also not considered to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. She was a follower who usually went along with what ever someone told her to do. The one thing that they both shared was being born into and raised in abject poverty.

During John Allen Rubio’s first trial, Lorena, a transvestite and prostitute who was born Jose Manuel Hernandez, testified that on the morning of March 11, 2003, she stopped by the apartment that she shared with Rubio and Angela Camacho. When Rubio opened the door, Lorena became concerned because it was obvious to her that Rubio had been hitting the spray paint hot and heavy.

When she tried to enter the apartment, John Allen Rubio stopped her saying, “my old lady tried to kill herself last night. Right now, we are going to kill everyone.” Lorena told the court she became concerned and scolded Rubio, telling him that he shouldn’t talk like that around the kids. Rubio pushed Lorena out of the doorway and slammed the door.

Lorena pounded on the door and demanded to be let in, but Rubio refused. Lorena recalled for the court that she was frightened of John Allen Rubio because when he was under the influence he was often volatile. Hernandez left the apartment, fearing that Rubio might attack her.

Around 7:00 p.m. that night, Officer Efrain Cervantes was responding to a domestic disturbance call at another address when a terrified young man and woman flagged his patrol down. The couple, Maria Elena Alvarez and Jose Luis Rubio (the younger brother of John) were hysterical.

Officer Cervantes stated in his report that Maria started screaming in Spanish:

“The babies are dead.”

While Jose yelled:

“They have no heads.”

Officer Cervantes asked the young couple to get into his patrol car and take him to the scene so he could try and figure out what the hell was going on. While in route, both of the witnesses kept crying that:

“They have no heads.”

“They have NO HEADS.”

“NO HEADS”

The couple directed Officer Cervantes to a run down apartment building where the young man took the officer to the door of the Rubio apartment. When John Allen Rubio answered the door, Officer Cervantes asked him what was going on. Rubio invited him into the apartment and just kept muttering, “the kids.”

Officer Cervantes observed that the apartment was filthy with dirty clothes and garbage strewn throughout the front room. He saw Angela Camacho sitting on what appeared to be a futon and staring at the floor. Rubio went to the futon and sat next to Angela. When John Allen Rubio’s brother yelled at him, “tell him,” Rubio looked at Officer Cervantes and said, “the kids are in the back room.”

Officer Cervantes made his way through the garbage to the back bedroom. He said that the hallway had a very strong odor of bleach. When he looked into the bedroom, at first he thought that a doll had been thrown on the bed, until he realized that it was the nude body of a small child. And indeed, he had no head.

He said:

“I just saw the jagged marks around the neck and then I realized that that couldn’t be a doll or anything.”

Frantically, Officer Cervantes reported the murder-decapitation and requested immediate assistance. No shit. I mean if I saw the dead body of a naked baby missing it’s head, I think that I would be screaming for the fucking Marines to land.

Officer Cervantes stormed back into the front room of the apartment and yelled at Rubio, “What happened?” John Allen Rubio just sighed deeply, stood up, put his hands together and said, “arrest me.”

Not a problem asshole.

Showing what I believe to be considerable restraint, Officer Cervantes calmly ordered everyone out of the apartment and placed John Allen Rubio in handcuffs for his own protection.

What investigators found inside the Rubio apartment defied even the most horrific slasher film Hollywood ever produced. Police Chief Carlos Garcia said:

“They lived in very poor conditions. There’s clothes, trash, all sorts of things thrown all over. Very poor, very trashy … in the worst conditions that anyone could live in the United States.”

Garbage littered the apartment; bags, toys, shopping carts, empty water bottles and clothes were piled into every nook and cranny, leaving little room for police to navigate the crime scene. Brownsville Police Department Investigator Chris Ortiz said about entering the bedroom for the first time:

“I wasn’t sure if it was a human being until I touched it.”

Baby John’s body was lying at the foot of the bed, devoid of blood. Officer Cervantes said:

“We go back to where the baby boy was found. And at that point the house was in disarray. It was dirty everything was dirty and dingy. But there was a plastic bag that I hadn’t seen the first time I walked in. It was at the entry of the doorway, towards the foot of the bed and that bag was like shiny a black trash bag. It looked like a brand new bag like it had just been placed there. It felt round. This has got to be the baby’s head. And I kind of reached over there and I was able to get to the bag, and it opened. I mean, I opened the bag and I could see that there were two other bodies in there, headless as well.”

Think this poor man has had nightmares about what he saw?

The bodies of 3-year old Julissa Angela Quesada and 2-month old Mary Jane Rubio were found stuffed inside a garbage bag, hidden behind the crib. The children’s heads were found inside of a separate garbage bag.

Investigators described the bloody scene as “horrific.” There were numerous blood pools and stains in the kitchen and on the floors. A bucket full of bloody water. Bloody knives in the kitchen and bedroom. Other Detectives found the bloody clothing that both John Rubio and Angela Camacho were wearing at the time of the murders soaking in the bathroom. As they continued to collected evidence from the scene, everyone began asking the same question, “why?” Dear God, WHY?

When John Allen Rubio was interviewed by police, he calmly and coherently explained the events that transpired on the evening of March 10 and 11, 2003. He said it began with the children’s hamsters. He became convinced that the hamsters were possessed by demons. He went to the cage where they were kept and he said that they were growling because evil spirits had entered them. So he smashed their heads with a hammer.

While John Allen Rubio was pouring bleach on the bodies, 3-year old Julissa saw what he was doing and began screaming. I don’t know about you, but if I saw the man I considered to be my father killing my pets, I would probably begin screaming too.

John Allen Rubio said that, “she started talking in like, demonized — like, she was looking at me, like, weird,” he said. He claimed that Julissa was possessed by the spirit of his grandmother. Julissa began growling and screaming at him claiming that she was Grandma who had come back from limbo and stolen Julissa’s soul. He believed that all of the children were possessed by demons.

“Julissa … my daughter … was telling me that she came from limbo. Julissa started to laugh in an evil way and started making growling sounds to me. The other two babies … started to talk and say things like three witches. They were talking to each other…”

John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho became terrified of their children and Angela began screaming for him to kill them. Rubio said that he began choking Julissa, but she wouldn’t die. So Angela ran into the kitchen and retrieved some knives. He said that Julissa was shaking and yelling at him, “you are killing me.”

Julissa kept trying to manipulate his mind with bad magic. That was when he threw her on the floor and began stabbing her. But she kept trying to get away from him because her magic was too strong. Julissa looked at Angela Camacho and said, “Mom, please make Dad stop.” Angela then held the child down with John Allen Rubio grabbed a machete and cut her head off because of course that is the only way to stop a possessed 3-year old.

John Allen Rubio said that after he cut her head off, Julissa bled all over the place with blood gushing out of her. Angela Camacho then picked Julissa’s body up and took it into the kitchen where she washed all of the blood off. She filled a bucket with cold water and placed the severed head into the bucket. Julissa’s autopsy showed that she had 12 stab wounds on her face and neck with an additional 21 stab wounds across her chest. He then nailed the back door shut to prevent any evil spirts from coming in or leaving.

John Allen Rubio then turned his sights on 2-month old Mary Jane. According to Rubio, she was practically foaming at the mouth, growling and spitting at him. Sounds like something out of the 1974 horror film, ‘It’s Alive.’ He grabbed her and began choking her really hard, but the little witch just would not die.

Rubio said that he thought that he had stabbed her in the head (he had stabbed her with enough force to break one of the vertebra in her neck) but he wasn’t sure. She was so strong and powerful that he had no choice but to cut her head off. He tried the first time but the knife wasn’t sharp enough. He couldn’t find the machete because he believed the witches had made it disappear. So John Allen Rubio grabbed her head and “with my hands ripped her head off from her body.

It was very hard but I managed to pull her head off.”

OK friends and neighbors, let’s remember that this is a 2-month old infant he is talking about. Two fucking months old and the bastard rips her head off of her body. That is a serious ‘WTF.’ Angela Camacho took Mary Jane’s body into the kitchen and washed it off. Then tossed her head into the bucket along with Julissa’s.

Even though John Allen Rubio admitted he was getting tired (of course the asshole is going to be tired – takes a lot of Wheaties to decapitate two defenseless children) but he had to deal with little Johnny.

Now there is some confusion and conflicting reports as to when John Allen Rubio killed Johnny, so I am taking this straight from his written confession. Rubio said that when he confronted 1-year old Johnny, he could just feel the evil oozing out of the child. About the only thing that little Johnny wasn’t doing was spitting pea soup all over the place.

John Allen Rubio said that Johnny was the strongest of the three children and possessed the strength of Satan himself. He explained that Johnny was trying to cast spells and spewing incantations at him and Angela. He said that it took him and Angela Camacho both to hold the child down.

John Allen Rubio tried sprinkling the baby with water, but it had no effect. I guess he thought Satan wouldn’t know the difference between tap water and Holy water. He says that he never stabbed Johnny, although the police video of the crime scene clearly shows stab wounds to the 1-year old’s body. The video shows that Johnny was stabbed multiple times, including just below his testicles on his right leg.

John Allen Rubio says that he used a larger, sharper kitchen knife to cut off Johnny’s head. Angela, ever the dutiful mother, took Johnny’s body into the kitchen, washed it and dunked his head into the bucket with his sister’s heads. Rubio said that he and Angela Camacho then began trying to clean up the mess. They tried soaking up the blood soaked into the carpet and wipe down the walls.

He placed Julissa and Mary Jane’s bodies into a plastic bag and hid it behind the crib while placing their heads in a separate bag and tossing it under the bed. But John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho were tired. So they took a shower together to wash all of the blood off of them.

He said that after the shower, the two of them went into the front room to relax. Did they call the police? A Priest? Anyone? Nope, nope and nope. With their children’s bodies lying in the next room, John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho fucked. Rubio told Angela, “we should make love for the last time because we were going to jail.”

John Allen Rubio sounds like a really deranged individual to me; someone so nuts that he has absolutely no idea of what he has done and that it was wrong. He told Angela Camacho that he thought they should dispose of the bodies in the backyard of his grandmother’s house because she was a witch and could control their evil power. I wonder if that was the dead grandmother or a living grandmother, as he was never very specific about that little detail.

They then laid in bed the rest of the night and throughout the next day until Rubio’s younger brother came to the apartment. Oh yeah, and according to Rubio, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend were both possessed by evil spirits as well. Good thing they were not helpless babies or their heads would have ended up in a bucket too.

So John Allen Rubio butchered three innocent children because they were evil. He told them that he “did what is right to save the world and that he has supernatural powers.” Sounds unfathomable, but unfortunately not that rare. It’s the old “The Devil Made Me Do It” defense.

And what about Angela Camacho? Initially, she somewhat corroborated Rubio’s fairy tale. She told investigators that the children had been sick with a fever for several days before the murders, and that they were scared and had refused to eat.

She said the day before the murders, a woman they saw while riding the bus gave Johnny a piece of candy. John Allen Rubio believed the woman had cast a spell on the children, making them sick. Rubio then demanded that Angela Camacho break an egg in a glass of water, and the way in which the egg yolk floated told them that someone had done something bad to Julissa.

The night before the murders, Angela Camacho said that John Allen Rubio’s mother came to the apartment and they all discussed using witchcraft to help the children. She admitted to holding all of the children down while Rubio stabbed and decapitated them. She said of the infant:

“Mary Jane started staring right at my eyes, real bad, like with anger, and evil at the same time.”

But when investigators questioned her a second time, she told a slightly different story. She started the interview by saying:

“I would like to start saying that yesterday I told the detectives that witchcraft was the reason that John and I killed our children. That was not true. The reason that we decided to kill the children was because of money problems.”

Angela Camacho told investigators that the family had no money for rent and that their welfare and food stamp benefits were about to end because Julissa’s social security number did not match the one on her birth certificate. They were facing eviction from the rat trap that they called home and none of John Allen Rubio’s relatives were going to let them stay with them.

Angela Camacho said that she and Rubio discussed the dire straits that the family was in and decided that it would be “better for the children to die than to suffer.” When John Allen Rubio told her that he wanted to cut their heads off, Angela asked him why. She said that he told her:

“Because . . . we had no money. No way to take care of them. It is better that they go with God.”

Yeah, that really answer the question of “why do you want to cut off their heads?” Angela Camacho said again that they killed the girls first, and about two hours later they decided to kill Johnny because they did not want him to suffer alone.

They had planned to put the bodies in a shopping cart and bury them at the city cemetery then escape into Mexico and start over. When investigators asked Angela Camacho why she would go along with such a heinous and appalling plan she said:

“because we were afraid. I didn’t want to lose my husband again, since he had gone to jail before. I was afraid because I had never been in jail before.”

When asked if she thought that they were going to go to jail, Angela Camacho said, “Yes, because we did something wrong.”

So this cum bucket helped murder and decapitate her children because she didn’t want to lose her man. Just makes me sick.

John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho were charged with three counts of capital murder making both of them eligible for the death penalty. I’m sure that all of you are aware that a death penalty conviction in the state of Texas usually means that before too long, you gonna die. Texas has tried to put in an express lane to the needle, cutting the time that inmates sit on death row.

Motions were made and granted to try Angela Camacho and John Allen Rubio separately. The problem was that Mexico had a slight problem with Texas attempting to execute one of their native daughters and filed complaints not only with Texas but with the Federal government. Texas spent two years trying to determine if Angela was legally competent to stand trial in a capital case and in the end, the courts ruled that she was.

Given the heinous nature of the crimes and the fact that she confessed, Angela decided that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t worth standing by her man after all. In July of 2005, Angela Camacho pled guilty to three counts of murder.

Angela Camacho was sentenced to three concurrent life prison sentences instead of the death penalty, but will be eligible for parole in 40 years. If she is ever granted parole, she will be immediately deported back to Mexico. Angela has stated that she prefers to stay in prison in the United States, even if it is in Texas.

John Allen Rubio, however, was not in such a confessing mood. He and his attorneys insisted on going to trial, claiming that Rubio (wait for it…….) was innocent by reason of insanity. SHOCKING! And just in case Rubio wasn’t insane, his attorneys also proposed that he was so far under the influence of spray paint fumes that he didn’t know what he was doing or appreciate the seriousness of the situation.

During his first trial, John Allen Rubio testified that he used an array of drugs, including marijuana, spray-paint and “roaches” or flunitrazepam — a medication commonly referred to as the “date-rape drug,” which induces “memory impairment, drowsiness, visual disturbances, dizziness, confusion,” among other effects, states the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Web site.

John Allen Rubio testified that from the moment he first saw Angela, he would do anything to “make her happy, until the last moment of my life.” I guess that included butchering her children because she asked him to. He insisted that the whole thing was Angela’s idea. The jury didn’t buy his excuses, convicted him and sentenced him to die.

Unfortunately, there was a slight procedural error committed during John Allen Rubio’s trial. Angela Camacho refused to testify against Rubio. So prosecutors admitted into evidence her video taped and written confessions. But according to the Texas Supreme Court this was a big no-no. Seems that every accused has the right to confront all witnesses in their trial. And since Angela would not testify, Texas must now start the whole thing over.

Now the fun part – because they had to start over, that included proving that John Allen Rubio was sane. Of course Rubio’s defense team presented expert after expert during the competency hearing to try and convince the judge that Rubio was crazy for Coco Puffs.

My favorite was Jolie Brams, a forensic psychologist who stated that John Allen Rubio suffers from a delusional disorder. She testified that Rubio also suffers from a learning disability, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and of low intelligence. She said this could impact his ability to consult with his attorneys. Basically, she is saying that Rubio is to stupid to kill. Right. Sure Doc, whatever you say.

There is only one itsy, bitsy, teeny tiny problem with that. While Rubio has been in prison, it seems that John Allen Rubio has become the “go to” guy in filling out forms and requests for fellow inmates. He has also been reading law books, law dictionaries and researching specific legal cases. It seems that other inmates wanted to meet Rubio so he could provide them with legal advice.

I’m not sure about Texas, but it doesn’t seem to me that any inmate would want some whack job giving them legal advice or helping them fill out forms. Most inmates are pretty savvy when it comes to determining who is floating with a full deck.

But Brams stuck to her guns stating that if John Allen Rubio had actually done the legal reading and researching, he “still cannot comprehend legal documents you claimed he is reading.” Just makes you want to smack her doesn’t it? Maybe she wouldn’t mind if Rubio did a little babysitting for her.

In the end, the court determined that John Allen Rubio was as sane as you or me and the trial could proceed. It is scheduled to begin in July. This time, Angela Camacho will be testifying against him. Texas is again seeking the death penalty.

John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho are now pointing the finger of blame at each other, saying that it was the others idea to kill the children. Neither is accepting responsibility.

And yes, John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho had previously been referred to the state child protective agency because the children were found to be malnourished and needed medical attention, but the parents weren’t accused of physical abuse. CPS said it had counseled the couple before concluding three months before the deaths that the couple was making progress in providing a home.

Yup, John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho provided them a home alright. Three tiny caskets for the rest of eternity.

Now I know that there is a lot of occultism within the Mexican culture. Hell, I’m only one generation removed from paying the Ferryman. I have my own superstitions that have been handed down from one generation to another.

Like throwing a pinch of salt over your shoulder if you spill the shaker, planting lavender by your front door for luck and hanging wind chimes near your doors to ward off evil spirits. And I’m not saying that possession by evil spirits isn’t possible.

I just don’t see evil spirits using three babies. I mean how far could some evil entity go in the body of a 2-month old. The poor little thing can’t even hold up it’s head yet. Can’t wreck a lot of havoc when you wear a diaper and drink from a bottle.

I also don’t believe that John Rubio is nuts. I think that Angela Camacho may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but that she was more terrified of being without a man in her life than keeping her children alive with their heads attached. Whether or not Rubio is insane does not excuse his behavior in my opinion.

Maybe John Allen Rubio was hallucinating when he killed the children because of the amount of shit that he inhaled. But when the police arrived, he did not appear to be under the influence of anything. I think that he was just sick and tired of taking care of the kids. He wanted to take Angela Camacho and go frolic in Mexico free of the responsibility of three innocent young lives.

Sure, John Allen Rubio had it tough growing up. His mother was an abusive alcoholic who supported her family by prostitution, probably in front of her children. He was poor, really, really poor. He didn’t have any resources and he had shacked up with an illegal alien. But plenty of people without any money don’t chop off their kids heads.

I believe Angela Camacho told the truth when she said they killed them because they were destitute. And she would have done or said anything that Rubio wanted. I think that John Allen Rubio epitomizes the need for capital punishment. I just wish that he didn’t get off so easy with just a needle in his arm.

John Allen Rubio should suffer, suffer as Julissa, Mary Jane and Johnny suffered. They died in terror and pain. I hope and pray that Texas holds Rubio responsible for his actions and that he pisses himself as they drag his sorry ass to the death chamber. Maybe the Ferryman could just drop him off at the gates of hell, which is exactly where he belongs.

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