Man Gets 30 Years to Life for Killing Daughter in ‘70s : Sentence: The girl’s sisters, now grown, came forward more than a decade after seeking the 4-year-old ‘all blue’ in a bathtub to testify against their parents.

An unemployed Orange man was sentenced Friday to 30 years to life in prison for slaying his young daughter more than a decade ago, possibly as part of an attempt to exorcise demons from her tiny body.

In a long, rambling and sometimes incoherent statement shortly after he was sentenced, Marcos Morales, 56, denied that he ever harmed his daughter, Lisa, who disappeared sometime between 1977 and 1978, when she was about 4 years old.

“Nobody knows what happened to her, she just passed away,” said Morales, who maintained that the girl died of natural causes and not torturous abuse as prosecutors alleged. “It wasn’t at all like they say it was.”

Morales was convicted in October of first-degree murder, and his wife, Beatriz Morales, 48, was convicted of second-degree murder. Over the years, the couple told varying stories about the disappearance of their daughter, including one that she had been adopted by a Mexican couple.

The Morales’ trial was unusual for several reasons, including that the girl’s body has never been found.

Additionally, key witnesses against the couple were their own daughters, now young adults, who said they came forward after years of keeping the violent death of their sister a family secret.

Charges were filed in 1991 after Beatriz Morales Quintero, 22, told her therapist that on the last night of Lisa’s short life, her parents were in the bathroom with the girl when the adults began screaming about “demons.”

Quintero said she later saw Lisa floating face down in the bathtub, “all blue.” The children were then loaded into the car, along with a plastic bag that Quintero believed contained her sister’s body. They drove to Mexico, where her father used a shovel to dig a grave for the girl, she said.

During the sentencing hearing Friday, Marcos Morales told Superior Court Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon that Quintero trumped up the charges in revenge for his disciplining her as a child.

“These kids made it sound like all this ugliness--you don’t see any ugliness in here,” said Morales, as he struggled with his handcuffs to hold up a crumpled photo of his smiling family. “They did put across a lie, and everyone bought it.”

Judge Weatherspoon’s patience wore out when Morales said that the photo showed his children “healthy and spoiled” and that he was upset that his children turned on him after all the sacrifices he made for them.

“Your credibility is totally lacking with me,” the judge said, citing Morales’ 23 aliases and an arrest record dating back to 1957 for crimes ranging from child abuse to robbery to drunk driving. The judge also noted Morales’ 13 children who were often neglected and evidence that Morales “sexually broke in a number of (his) female children.”

Outside of court, prosecutor Lewis R. Rosenblum said he was pleased with the sentence. Beatriz Morales is still awaiting sentencing.

“It was long overdue justice,” Rosenblum said, who said the murder case was highly unusual because the body was never found.

Court records indicate that many of the Morales’ children were abused, and social service workers had more than 20 contacts with the family since 1975. Neighbors and witnesses recalled that Lisa was often confined to a bathroom and that she was malnourished and filthy.

Witnesses also recalled seeing burns and bruises on the girl’s back, chest and arms.

In a sentencing report, Beatriz Morales told the Probation Department that Lisa Morales was “deliberately mean” and would vomit after eating and defecate in her pants, even though she was toilet trained.

Several of the couple’s children deny that their parents are capable of such a heinous act, and one of the daughters who testified against her parents has changed her testimony several times.

Another daughter, Erica Morales, 16, of Fullerton, said her parents should be set free.

“It’s not true,” she said, wiping tears from her face. Erica Morales said she never witnessed her father abuse his children and accused her sisters of trying to get back at him.

Marcos Morales would pelt his children with golf balls or shave their heads as punishment, according to court records. He once hurled a 3-month-old child against a wall and gagged the baby so severely its tongue was ripped out of place.

While many of the abuses were documented by the social workers, court records did not indicate why the Moraleses were able to retain custody of their children for so long. At one point, the children were in foster care when both parents were in custody, records show.

Defense attorney Salvatore Ciulla questioned the credibility of Quintero’s testimony because it had been “aided” by therapy and said there was insufficient evidence to support a first-degree murder conviction against Morales.

“It was an emotional verdict because the case was so ugly,” Ciulla said.

Weatherspoon refused to grant a new trial or reduce the charges.