John Jefferson
Top inset: Robert Castorena. Bottom inset: Janice Baker-Castorena. Background: The home where he killed her in California (KXTV/YouTube).
A California man whose father stabbed his mother to death in a bedroom and threatened him and his sister to say nothing is outraged that his father is walking free after being granted parole.
Robert Castorena was granted parole in March after serving a prison term for killing his wife, Janice Baker-Castorena, 38, in their Sacramento home in 1996.
“It’s ridiculous,” his son, who was not named, said on Tuesday as his father was set to be released on Wednesday, Sacramento ABC affiliate KXTV reported. “He’s going to be free, and that just seems so wrong on so many levels.”
A then-38-year-old Robert Castorena, a high school teacher at an area school, bludgeoned and stabbed his wife to death with a butcher’s knife on Oct. 1, 1996. He left her body in their Sacramento home and told their son and daughter — then 8 and 14 — to say nothing and don’t look in the master bedroom. Robert Castorena stayed at the home for a few days, at one point threatening the children, holding a knife to his daughter’s throat if she spoke out and threatening to stab the boy, SFGate reported.
Then he fled.
“He told them he was leaving. [Castorena said] he had to go fight the enemy, or find the enemy,” Sacramento police homicide Detective John Cabrera testified at the 1998 preliminary hearing, the Sacramento Bee reported. “And, then he got in the car and left, and they never saw him again.”
The kids were left with their mother’s body for nearly two weeks before the son went to a local store and shoplifted so he could alert police about the murder, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“In his mind, it was the only way to get someone to the house,” Michael Heenan, a spokesman for the Sacramento Police Department, said at the time. “The children never opened the bedroom door. I think for a long time, they were in complete denial.”
Robert Castorena was caught in Mexico and returned to the United States. In November 1996, he was charged with murder and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, according to appellate court documents outlining the case. He was initially found incompetent to stand trial in 1997 before his competency was restored the following year.
In 1999, he pleaded no contest to charges of murder and attempted murder and was sentenced to serve a term of 15 years to life in state prison for the murder conviction and committed to the state hospital for his attempted murder conviction, pending restoration of his sanity, the documents said. In 2014, his sanity was deemed restored. He was tried again in 2016 and was again sentenced to serve 15 years to life for his murder conviction, the documents said.
A media representative from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not immediately respond to a request for further information about Robert Castorena’s status.
Castorena’s son told KXTV he received no word from the agency about his father’s impending release.
“It’s pretty enraging. It feels like the system failed us,” he said.
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