Mother Found Guilty of Killing Her 4 Sons

A Superior Court jury convicted a 35-year-old San Marcos woman Wednesday of first-degree murder for shooting her four sons to death in a drunken rage. The jury took only two hours to reach its verdict.

Susan Eubanks, who did not deny killing her sons, faces a penalty phase in which prosecutors will seek the death penalty.

Eubanks, a former hospital surgical room employee, was convicted of gunning down sons Matthew Eubanks, 4; Brigham Eubanks, 6; Austin Eubanks, 7; and Brandon Armstrong, 14, in rage over the breakup of her marriage and a subsequent relationship.

“She was fueled by her anger against the men that she perceived had betrayed her,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bonnie Howard-Regan. “It was callous. It was cold. It was Susan Eubanks not being able to control the men anymore. So they had to suffer, even if it meant taking away the lives of four innocent children.”

Eubanks slumped over at the defense table as the jury’s verdict was read. Members of her ex-husband’s family said they supported the verdict and hope Eubanks is sentenced to death.

“We’re grateful for the jury,” said Dale Eubanks, grandfather to three of the boys. “They were such wonderful boys, the kind of grandsons every grandparent wants.”

Eubanks had been watching a football game on television and drinking heavily at a bar in Escondido on Oct. 26, 1997, when she returned to the family’s ramshackle home in nearby San Marcos and shot each boy in the head with a .38-caliber pistol. During the shootings, she reloaded the pistol and also shot herself once in the stomach.

Eubanks had a blood-alcohol level of 0.19%, far above the legal limit for intoxication, and had ingested more than her daily dose of the tranquilizer Valium, authorities said.

While at the bar, Eubanks and her boyfriend, a construction worker, had an argument, which led him to say he wanted to end the relationship. As he tried to remove some clothes and construction tools from the home, Eubanks smashed his truck and the two nearly got into a fistfight.

After sheriff’s deputies arrived, the construction worker left. The fatal shootings took place only moments after the deputies left. Evidence at the trial indicated that Eubanks had long suffered from alcohol-related problems and was a victim of spousal abuse during a volatile marriage. At the time of the murders, Eubanks had a restraining order against her husband of nine years, Eric Eubanks, a cabinetmaker who had been convicted four months earlier of spousal battery and sentenced to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Although Eubanks did not testify, her attorney, William Rafael, told jurors that Eubanks’ mind was so foggy with alcohol and drugs that she could not form a conscious intent to murder, a definition of first-degree murder. Rafael had hoped for a finding of second-degree murder, which would mean his client could not be sentenced to death.

But jurors disagreed. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty because of the multiple victims and the cruelty of killing children.

To counter Rafael’s assertion, prosecutor Howard-Regan showed jurors a note that Eubanks left for her ex-husband at the murder scene which read: “I’ve lost everything I’ve ever loved. Now it’s time for you to do the same.”

Howard-Regan called the shootings “a shocking, horrendous crime, a waste of valuable life. I can’t keep from thinking about those boys.”

After killing her sons, Eubanks attempted suicide by shooting herself in the stomach. She recuperated at the hospital where she was once an employee.

At the penalty phase of the trial due to begin Wednesday, the defense will ask that instead of death, she be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

There are 10 women on death row in California, compared with 527 men. The state has not executed a woman since the death penalty was restored in 1992.

Nationwide, three women have been executed since 1976. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are 47 women awaiting execution in America, and more than 3,560 men.