Jury Convicts Woman of Killing 9-Year-Old : Trial: Anaheim girl, only witness to robbery in her home, was stabbed 57 times. Death sentence possible.

A jury took less than four hours Monday to convict an Anaheim woman of fatally stabbing a 9-year-old girl who was the only witness to a drug-related home robbery.

If the jury recommends death for Maria del Rosio Alfaro, 20, she will become the first Orange County woman on Death Row. The penalty phase of the trial will begin March 30.

The victim, Autumn Wallace, was stabbed 57 times in the bathroom of her Anaheim house on June 15, 1990. She was waiting at home after school for her mother to return from work when she opened the door for Alfaro, who knew her sister.

The jury convicted Alfaro of first-degree murder with two special circumstances, either of which can bring the death penalty. The special circumstances are murder in the course of committing burglary, and of committing robbery. Alfaro was found guilty separately of burglary, robbery and using a knife during the other crimes.

As the jurors filed into the courtroom to announce their verdicts, one said, “This is the hard part.”

Alfaro, wearing a flowered blouse and blue stretch-pants, began dabbing her eyes even before hearing the verdicts. She stood, holding the hand of her attorney, as the murder verdict was read.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles J. Middleton told Superior Court Judge Theodore E. Millard that he will call no witnesses during the penalty phase. Instead, he said, he will introduce a school photo of Autumn and address the jury.

Defense attorney William M. Monroe said that because of “the viciousness, the heinousness of the crime,” the task of saving Alfaro from the gas chamber is “monumental.”

In the trial’s penalty phase, the jury will recommend to the judge a death sentence or life in prison without possibility of parole.

Much of the prosecution’s case was built around a 4 1/2-hour, videotaped interrogation of Alfaro by two sheriff’s investigators, which was played for the jury. It was made about two weeks after the killing.

Alfaro, sobbing throughout the tape, said that on the day of the killing she was “wired” on cocaine and heroin. With two male friends and her infant son, she drove to the Wallace home to rob it, knowing that Autumn would be alone, she said.

At the house, Autumn recognized Alfaro as a friend of her older sister, April Wallace, and let Alfaro come in to use the bathroom. On her way through the house, Alfaro said, she grabbed a knife from a kitchen drawer and, after thinking about what to do for a few moments while in the bathroom, called to Autumn to help her clean her eyelash curlers.

“That’s when I did it,” Alfaro told the investigators. “I stabbed her . . . ‘cause she knew who I was.”

The girl did not resist and made no sound when she was attacked, and no one else participated in the stabbing, Alfaro said.

Alfaro said the stolen goods from the house, including a portable television, VCR, clothes and Autumn’s typewriter, were sold for about $250.

The prosecution introduced 109 pieces of physical evidence, including Alfaro’s fingerprint taken from the house, her footprint in blood on the floor of the bathroom and her bloodstained, high-topped running shoes.

Autumn’s mother, Linda Wallace, flanked by two surviving daughters, said the jurors “did a great job, they did, and they made the right decision. I’m just glad it’s half over with, and looking forward to the end of this. I want to see her get the death penalty. That’s what she deserves for what she did. . . .

“If she gets life in prison, I’ll accept that. . . . It’s been a long two years, and it’s a great relief to have it half over with. . . .”

Wallace said she and family members and friends planned to make victim-impact statements at the time of sentencing, which follows the penalty phase of the proceeding.

Middleton said the verdict was “not unexpected because the evidence is so overwhelming regarding the guilt.”

The prosecutor said the violence of the Autumn Wallace killing made it “one of the worst” he has ever seen.

Monroe called no witnesses in Alfaro’s defense but argued to the jury that the murder was committed by one of the two men who went with Alfaro to rob the home. “Rosie Alfaro may have stabbed little Autumn Wallace, but she did not kill her,” Monroe told the jury.

Monroe said he was disappointed by the verdict but acknowledged that there was little the jury heard to support the defense scenario.

“That’s the most difficult part of it,” he said. “There was no objective evidence to support the proposition that there was another person in the house.”

During the penalty phase, Monroe said, he will first argue that life in prison without the possibility of parole “is a terrible, terrible punishment in and of itself.”

The second portion of his argument, he said, will focus on Alfaro, the mother of a child under the age of 5.

“Rosie is the kind of a person who should be spared,” Monroe said. “She is a person who could be a productive member of society” if sentenced to prison.

“She is a salvageable young woman,” Monroe said. “She’s a girl worth saving, she really is.”