Slain Woman’s Son Faults Bureaucracy

The tearful son of a La Canada Flintridge woman allegedly killed by her mentally ill daughter told a joint legislative committee Tuesday that he repeatedly tried to obtain treatment for his sister but failed because the state’s bureaucratic system would not provide it.

“Legally, people have the civil right to be mentally ill and lead less-than-human lives on the streets,” said Brian Jacobs of Long Beach, who broke down emotionally several times during testimony in Sacramento.

“How many times have you passed a mentally ill person on the street, walked by this person and looked aside because you were afraid that they might accost you?” he asked. “That is a terrible indictment of the (mental health treatment) system. My mother was a beautiful, stately woman. She didn’t deserve this.”

Jacobs’ comments came several hours before his sister made her first court appearance on charges that she murdered her mother, Roma Jaul Jacobs, 78, who was stabbed and shot to death Sunday night in her home.

The suspect, Victoria Elizabeth Jacobs Madeira, 43, smiled briefly in talking with her public defender, but made no statement as her arraignment was postponed until Tuesday by Glendale Municipal Judge Barbara Lee Burke.

She and her 11-year-old son were arrested in her mother’s yard Sunday night, with Madeira wearing military fatigues and her son dressed as a girl, according to sheriff’s deputies and witnesses.

It is not known how Madeira, who Jacobs said has been institutionalized on occasion since being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic two decades ago, obtained the weapons--four handguns and several knives--allegedly used in the slaying.

Arraignment for Madeira’s son is set for today in Pasadena Juvenile Court. Because of confidentiality laws protecting minors, William Gerth, the director of juvenile intake at the Los Angeles County Probation Department, said, “We can’t say much about the boy’s case . . . except that the district attorney felt that there was enough evidence to warrant arraignment.”

One person who knows the Jacobs family said she was not altogether shocked at news of the slaying. Montrose seamstress Lyzetta Edie, 73, who described herself as a close friend and confidante of Madeira since the early 1960s, said she got a call about three weeks ago from the suspect, who said she was distraught about relations with her family and their efforts to take away her son.

She quoted Madeira as saying: “I don’t know how long I can stand this. They won’t get off my back. They just want (the boy).”

Edie said Madeira never got along with her family and felt as if she could do little to please them.

“Betty had been pushed to the very limit,” Edie said of the suspect.

On March 17, Anaheim police had gone to a pickup truck parked across from the local YMCA to serve a child custody order on a woman using the name Elizabeth Jaul Jacobs, 42, Anaheim Police Lt. Marc Hedgepeth said.

A court had ordered the woman to turn over her son to an uncle other than Brian Jacobs. But the mother “became verbally defensive, would not allow the boy to be released, and claimed he had been sexually molested,” Hedgepeth said.

The lieutenant said the boy became “extremely upset” about leaving his mother, and was eventually placed by Orange County officials in an unidentified group home. The boy was on leave from the group home at the time of the slaying, authorities said.

At the Sacramento hearing, state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who chairs the Health and Services Committee, said a new state law calls for a special task force to put together a revised master plan for mental health treatment services. “The system is broken and broken very badly,” she conceded. “We commit ourselves to trying to put the system back together again.”

In recounting his own struggles to get assistance from the system, Jacobs told lawmakers Tuesday: “I tried everything. I called every agency. There was nothing--zero.”

Several mental health experts contacted Tuesday said the Madeira case is “a highly predictable result” of an overtaxed and underfunded system that generally requires a mentally ill person to commit a violent act before he can be legally committed involuntarily.

“They have to deteriorate to the point where they prove they are dangerous,” said Rael Jean Isaac, co-author of a recent book that criticizes trends in psychiatric law. “It’s bitterly unfair to them as much as it is to the public who suffers.”

At the conclusion of his testimony, Jacobs said softly, “I still love my sister.”

Watson said that Jacobs’ appearances Tuesday and at a similar hearing Monday in Los Angeles were not staged or planned for publicity purposes. “The tragedy just happened on the eve of the hearing,” she said.

Gillam reported from Sacramento. Lichtblau reported from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Tammerlin Drummond and Sonni Efron in Orange County contributed to this article