Killed Girl, 9, to Escape Arrest, Suspect Says : Crime: In transcripts of interviews by police, the woman says she looted the youngster’s house for money to buy drugs and then stabbed her. She is bound over for trial.

An Anaheim woman said she robbed a friend’s house of $300 worth of household items to buy drugs and then, to keep from being caught, killed a 9-year-old girl who was alone there, according to transcripts of a police interview made public Monday.

Maria del Rosio (Rosie) Alfaro, 19, who was bound over for trial Monday by a Municipal Court judge, told investigators she had already taken drugs twice that day, but needed money for more.

“I was really wired, really coked out and stuff,” she told them.

Alfaro could face at least a life sentence without parole if convicted in the June 15 stabbing death of Autumn Wallace of Anaheim. The girl, an A student at Jonas E. Salk Elementary School, had been waiting for her mother and sister to come home from work on the afternoon of her death.

Alfaro, an acquaintance of the girl’s sister April, said she had two men drive her to the house because she knew Autumn would be home alone at that hour. The two men kept Alfaro’s infant son in the car with them while she went inside.

Alfaro has been the only one arrested, but the investigation is ongoing. Deputy Dist. Atty. Bernadette Cemore said there is corroborating evidence that it was Alfaro who stabbed the young girl.

But still unresolved is the role of the two men who participated in the robbery.

In her police interview on June 27, nearly two weeks after the crime, investigators from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department asked her whether the two men participated in the robbery. If they had, they could face first-degree murder charges, the same as Alfaro. Her statements were inconsistent as to the extent of their participation, but Alfaro said they knew she was going to Autumn’s home to commit a robbery.

Alfaro’s attorney, William M. Monroe, said his client is either protecting the actual killer or was too high on drugs to know what she was doing.

“The Rosie Alfaro I’ve gotten to know the last few months isn’t the kind of person who could do this,” Monroe said.

The transcripts show that Alfaro, who was 18 when the murder occurred, said she first got the idea for killing the girl when she happened to see a knife in the laundry room. But she later admitted that she had taken the knife from a kitchen drawer. She said she went into the bathroom and thought for about a minute about the killing before she did it.

Investigators questioned her repeatedly about her motive:

“Rosie . . . do you believe in God? I want you to tell me the truth. Why did you pick up the knife?”

“I don’t know, something just got into me and I thought of doing that. I don’t know,” she replied, according to the transcripts.

Alfaro said she knocked on the door and asked the girl if she could use the bathroom as a pretense for getting inside the house. After she got the knife, she said, she lured the girl to the bathroom by asking Autumn if she would clean some eyelash-curler tools.

At one point, an investigator told her: “Don’t try and convince me that you were out of your head.”

“No, I wasn’t out of my head,” she answered.

Alfaro said she and the two men stole a VCR, a mirror, a clock radio, an iron, some boots, a video game set, a small television and some clothes. She started to take a microwave, she said, but it was too heavy.

Alfaro said she sold the items for about $300 later that day. She said she spent about $30 of it for drugs and her boyfriend took the rest.

“So what did you end up getting out of it?” one of the investigators asked her.

“Nothing,” Alfaro replied.

“Autumn knew who you were and the only way you could rip off and get away with it was kill Autumn, is that right?” an investigator asked her.

“Yes,” she answered, “ . . . cause she knew who I was.”

Alfaro described for investigators a life of living in one seedy motel after another with a boyfriend. She was addicted to both heroin and cocaine, she said.

Alfaro also told officers that she knew only one of the two men with her, and him only by the nickname of “Shorty.”