Jury Sees Grisly Photos in Plea for Drifter’s Death

The prosecution paraded a dozen photographs of Yvonne Weden’s mangled body at Monday’s opening of the penalty phase for the New Mexico drifter convicted of her murder, while defense attorneys outlined tragic circumstances of his upbringing.

At the opening of what is expected to be a weeklong hearing, Deputy Dist. Atty. James Koerber showed the jury pictures of the Weden’s body taken at the crime scene and during the medical examiner’s autopsy.

“In order for you to know the seriousness and the brutality of this crime, it is necessary for you to see what this 65-year-old woman went through in her home in the final moments of her life,” Koerber told the jury as he showed them the enlarged photographs.

Among them were pictures showing Weden’s bloodied body lying in the hallway of her suburban Oceanside home, the three stab wounds that cut open her throat, and her grimacing face at the autopsy.

The jury, which last month found Rudolph Jose Roybal, 37, guilty of murder after less than two hours of deliberation, must now determine whether Roybal will receive the death penalty or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Roybal was convicted of stabbing Weden more than 13 times, breaking several ribs, puncturing her lung and slitting her throat from ear to ear after she discovered him burglarizing her home on June 9, 1989. As she lay dying in the hallway, Roybal wrenched her wedding ring from her finger.

“When he encountered Mrs. Weden in that home, he decided to and did stab her, and he stabbed her and stabbed her and stabbed her,” Koerber said.

Roybal has had six previous felony convictions, all occurring in Santa Fe, N.M., where Roybal was born and raised. The convictions date from 1974 to 1986 and include three counts of larceny, an auto burglary, shoplifting, attempted residential burglary and burglary, Koerber told the jury.

If sentenced to die, Roybal would join Kurt Michaels as the only other person to receive the death penalty in a North County courtroom.

In 1990, Superior Court Judge J. Morgan Lester sentenced Michaels, a former Marine, to die after he was convicted in a scheme to murder his girlfriend’s mother so that the daughter could collect her mother’s life insurance.

There are 11 people on California’s death row for crimes committed in San Diego County.

Public defender Kathleen Cannon, in her opening statement, depicted Roybal as a person who led a neglected childhood whose mother told him from the beginning that “he was a mistake, he was not wanted.”

“We are here not because you found Mr. Roybal guilty of these crimes alone,” said Cannon, who, along with co-counsel Jack Campbell, has continued to insist on Roybal’s innocence.

Cannon said Roybal’s mother, Stella Roybal Orozco, came from “an impoverished family riddled with alcoholism” and at 13 was sent to a reform school where she stayed for six years, receiving a visit from her parents only once.

“That was her only training to be a parent,” Cannon said.

To this day, Cannon said, Orozco is illiterate.

At 19, she met and married John Orozco, and they had a son, John Jr.

“They fought, they drank, they had a tumultuous life together . . . but it was a life,” Cannon said.

Seven years later, John Orozco found his wife with another man, “which was not unusual for her,” Cannon said. But this time, she became pregnant, which so infuriated John Orozco that he left, Cannon said.

“She was left with her resentment for the child inside of her. Stella, to dull her pain, drank and drank heavily with the baby inside her,” Cannon said.

When the child, Rudolph Roybal, was born, he came to symbolize the destruction of Stella Orozco’s life, Cannon said.

“He was more unwanted than any child. He represented the loss of her husband and the loss of any happiness she had,” Cannon told the jury. “It was a tragic mismatch between Stella and this baby. There was no bonding, there was no nurturing.”

Orozco and her children led “an impoverished, truly poor life,” living in a house the size of the courtroom’s jury box with no indoor plumbing, Cannon said. After Roybal’s birth, Orozco continued to lead a life with “a downward spiral of alcohol and men.”

Over the years, Orozco gave birth to two other children, a boy and a girl, from two different men, Cannon said.

When Roybal was 10 years old, Orozco and her boyfriend left on a six-month trip to Arizona, taking Rudolph’s younger sister but leaving him and his brother, Ralph, alone at home.

“They provided food, shelter and clothing, and they thought that that was enough,” Cannon said.

Orozco would insult Rudolph, telling him he was “a mistake,” and refusing to tell him who his father was, Cannon said. Orozco would call Rudolph a mojado, a derogatory Spanish term meaning wetback, since his father was an immigrant from Mexico, Cannon said.

Although pictures of the fathers of the other children were displayed in their New Mexico home, Rudolph’s father was unknown, and Orozco does not even know his last name, Cannon said.

Roybal was hyperactive and a slow learner, and “had learning disabilities at a time when they were not recognized,” Cannon said.

At the age of 9, Roybal began inhaling paint fumes by sticking a rag soaked in spray paint to his nose, a form of drug abuse, Cannon said. “His mother saw the paint on his face and around his hands, and turned her back. He disgusted her.”

At 14, Roybal started drinking and became an alcoholic, Cannon said. “The only way he could survive was on one substance or another.”

“He came to this world with every strike against him.”

At 20, he was sent to a drug and alcohol detoxification program where he succeeded at first, but relapsed when he was released to the outside world, Cannon said.

“Rudolph tried. He didn’t like it, but he tried. He called and begged for help. He wanted to be normal, he wanted to be like everyone else, but he couldn’t,” Cannon said.

Prison, however, provided a rigid structure to his life, something he needs to function properly, Cannon told the jury.

Roybal has been in prison since 1989, giving him “the structure that he lacked. He lived every day a living hell, but he was protected and society was protected,” Campbell said.