Death Penalty Urged for Woman in Slayings of Sons

A Superior Court jury recommended Thursday that a 35-year-old San Marcos woman be executed for murdering her four sons in a drunken rage.

The jury in Vista Superior Court deliberated for two days before deciding that Susan Eubanks, a former hospital nursing employee, should die for the Oct. 26, 1997, murders of her sons, ages 4, 6, 7 and 14.

Jurors, some in tears, embraced members of the boys’ families.

“Justice has been done,” said Eubanks’ ex-husband, John Armstrong. “I want to thank the jury from the bottom of my heart.”

Armstrong was the father of Brandon, 14; the other three boys were from Eubanks’ second marriage to a cabinetmaker named Eric Eubanks.

Dale Eubanks, grandfather to three of the boys, called his former daughter-in-law “a vicious, coldblooded murderer who deserves to die.”

Prosecutors say that Eubanks, who was unemployed and deeply in debt, had been drinking heavily at a bar in nearby Escondido and was angry at her two ex-husbands and a former boyfriend when she killed her sons. The boys were shot point-blank with a .38-caliber pistol.

Eubanks did not testify on her own behalf during the penalty phase of the trial, although her attorney asked for mercy. He noted that Eubanks grew up in a troubled home, was the victim of domestic violence during one of her marriages and had become hooked on painkillers after being injured at work.

Judge Joan Weber must now decide whether to accept the jury’s sentence or reduce it to life in prison without the chance of parole.