Kids Killed to Punish Wife, Jury Told

David Von Haden was described by a prosecutor Wednesday as an angry man who killed his 2-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son to get back at his estranged wife, who was leaving him for someone else.

But an attorney for the Yorba Linda man, who could face the death penalty if convicted of the Feb. 22, 1996, slayings, said Von Haden was suffering from “clinical depression” when he suffocated the children and then tried to kill himself.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood told the Orange County Superior Court jurors that the evidence “tells the story of rejection, anger and revenge” and that victims Cody and Courtney Von Haden “were used as weapons in a war” waged by their father against their mother.

Kirkwood said Von Haden, 37, premeditated the crimes and that after killing the children he called his then-wife and said, “It’s all over,” before shooting himself in the chest.

Deputy Public Defender Jean Wilkinson said the killings were “not about anger or revenge. It’s about pain.” She said her client adored his children and was a good man who believed marriage was forever. She said he lost 25 pounds in the month leading up to the slayings and was unable to think beyond his own pain when he committed the crimes.

“He intended to die because of his pain,” Wilkinson said. “Tragically, the children were part of that.”

Von Haden’s former wife, Laurie Liem, has since remarried and is pregnant with her second child with her current husband. Liem was in court Wednesday and wiped away tears when a sheriff’s investigator described the condition of the slain preschoolers when their bodies were discovered. She is expected to testify next week.