Drifter Goes on Trial in Burglary-Slaying of Oceanside Woman

Three years ago today, a burglar slit Yvonne Weden’s throat from ear to ear and wrenched the 65-year-old Oceanside woman’s wedding ring from her finger as she lay dying.

Now, a 35-year-old drifter from Santa Fe, N.M., may face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances in what the prosecutor calls “a strong, simple case” and the defense labels a “murder mystery.”

Attorneys begin sifting through the 41-page questionnaires of potential jurors today in the case of Rudolph Roybal. About 400 possible jury members have gone through “hardship” examination since Friday to see if they would be willing to serve on what could be a three-month trial and penalty phase.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James Koerber has dedicated much of the past year to showing that Roybal stabbed Weden more than 13 times and then burglarized the house on either the evening of June 9 or the morning of June 10, 1989.

“She died a horrible, brutal death,” Koerber said. “He beat her, he cut her, he stabbed her, he broke her ribs, and then he took her wedding ring from her finger.

“He killed her to silence her, and the cutting of the throat is a symbol of that.”

Koerber said the case is simple. Roybal knew the layout of the outside of the Wedens house, he lived less than a block away, he knew what time Yvonne Weden’s husband would be away at work, he fled the state just hours after the killing and was caught with the loot from the burglary, Koerbger said.

A cigarette butt found in the house also places Roybal at the murder scene, Koerber said.

Public defenders Jack Campbell and Kathleen Cannon, however, said the case is not so clear.

“It’s a circumstantial-evidence murder mystery, and not all the circumstances point in the same direction,” Campbell said.

In early 1989, Roybal began living with his older step-brother, John Frank Orozco, and his family in suburban east Oceanside after being released from a court-ordered drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in Seattle.

The New Mexico native has a lengthy history of problems with drugs and alcohol and had been in trouble with the law a number of times, compiling a “significant and lengthy criminal record in New Mexico,” Koerber said.

His step-brother allowed him to stay in their Oceanside home as long as he didn’t drink, a rule that Roybal violated, which led to arguments, court records show.

On weekends, Roybal would help his brother at gun shows, where they would sell ammunition and military surplus. During the week, Roybal would go door to door on his brother’s 12-speed bike doing yard work in the neighborhood, according to court records.

In late May, 1989, Yvonne Weden and her husband, Paul, hired Roybal to pull weeds from a slope next to their house. Paul Weden worked nights at a local grocery store, and slept in the house during the day while Roybal dug up the weeds.

After four days, the Wedens decided the work wasn’t progressing fast enough and dispatched Roybal, paying him $135 in cash for his work.

On June 10, Paul Weden came home at 8:30 a.m. to find his wife of 15 years dead in the hallway.

That evening, Roybal boarded a bus in Oceanside that took him home to Santa Fe, after he told his brother that he wanted to return to take care of their ill mother.

Two days after he reached his mother’s house, Roybal’s mother and sister called Santa Fe police to arrest him for violating his probation.

When he was drunk, Roybal often became disruptive and threatened his family to the point where his mother, Stella Roybal Orozco, would hide the kitchen knives when he came home, court records show. Orozco had also gone so far as to ask the courts for a restraining order to keep her son from coming home.

After Roybal was taken into custody, Orozco called police to retrieve a bag that Roybal had hidden in a cinder block wall in the back of the house.

The bag, police discovered, contained 20 pieces of jewelry that was missing from the Weden house.

In an interview before the trial, Cannon and Campbell could not offer an explanation as to how Roybal came to have the jewelry, and tried to frame it as a “side issue.”

“If the jury doesn’t know how he came to possess the property, that’s not evidence that he killed Yvonne Weden. . . . That’s a side issue in this case,” Campbell said.

“It’s true that the property links him somehow to the burglary, but it’s circumstantial evidence. Can you think of a rational explanation for having the property that doesn’t involve killing Yvonne Weden? I can think of 100.”

In an interview with an Oceanside police detective last year, Roybal said he found the jewelry while riding his brother’s bicycle.

“I picked that up right there by my brother’s house,” Roybal told the detective, according to a transcript of the interview in the court record.

The interview was excluded from evidence in the trial because police failed to inform Roybal of his Miranda rights before the interview. “It was excluded because it was involuntary,” Campbell said.

Koerber has his own explanation of how Roybal obtained the jewelry, including Weden’s wedding ring.

“There is no way he could have gotten that ring if he wasn’t the murderer,” Koerber said.

But defense attorneys also point to a bloody fingerprint found at the scene that they say excludes Roybal as the murderer.

The print was found in a door jamb near the garage and was cut out of the door frame and sent to the state Department of Justice to be identified. Experts there said they could neither exclude nor include Roybal as the person who left the print.

Before defense attorneys could examine the print, the doorjamb was lost by authorities. Using pictures of the doorjamb, defense experts said the print definitely did not belong to Roybal. The Federal Bureau of Investigations earlier this year came to the same conclusion.

“We believe that the print is obviously the print of the perpetrator,” Cannon said.

Koerber contends the print came from Yvonne Weden.

Cannon dismissed the possibility that the prints belonged to Weden, citing the position of her body and the lack of a blood trail from the door to the hallway.

A cigarette butt found in a bedroom of the Weden home after the killing matched the ones smoked by Roybal, and DNA tests showed that it may have belonged to him.

Defense attorneys said there were no ashes to indicate that the cigarette was smoked at the murder scene and that there were no burn marks that showed it was extinguished in the house.

“It’s very probable that that cigarette butt was brought in on a shoe or something. There are no ashes anywhere or any kind of trail for the cigarette butt. . . . It looks like it got carried into the house and deposited,” Cannon said.

Campbell, who says “the presence of the cigarette butt is a bit mysterious,” argues that the cigarette butt’s presence at the crime scene does not jibe with what he called a “near-surgical” burglary.

“It’s as if the perpetrator was cautious enough not to leave any fingerprints and do this killing and make off with the proceeds . . . then, inexplicably, he blows it and he drops a cigarette in this room. It’s so inconsistent with an otherwise pretty slick burglary,” Campbell said.

Cannon said the burglar closed every drawer, turned off every light and closed a bedroom closet door that had been opened, all suggesting a “very thoughtful, very methodical” burglary.

Defense attorneys said that, on the night of the killing Roybal had gotten stumbling drunk and had to be put to bed by his brother. His brother checked in on him once during the night and again in the morning, finding Roybal lying on the bed in the same clothes and in the same position as before, defense attorneys said.

No bloody clothes were found in Roybal’s possession, and it is unclear whether the murder weapon has been found, although Roybal was found with a knife that could have been used in the stabbing.

However, the prosecution argues that it is not surprising for a man with a 15-year history of committing crimes to be good at concealing them.

“So he threw the knife away. He probably threw his bloody clothes away too,” Koerber said. “Hardened criminals know how to get away with crimes.”

But Cannon said that doesn’t fit the “bungling burglar” image that they say Roybal has with prosecutors in New Mexico.

“He’s just a belligerent drunk. This is not a Rudolph Roybal burglary,” said Campbell, who describes Roybal as an “inept burglar.”

“When he’s drunk, yes, he does things that are inappropriate and are theft-related, but you can’t look at him and his past and look at this crime and say it was possible.”