Fathers of 4 Murdered Girls Testify

Testifying through tears, two fathers described Tuesday the lingering pain of losing their daughters, more than two years after their mother, Sandi Nieves, murdered them.

“We try to move on, but each day is a struggle,” said Fernando Nieves, father of the two older victims. “There’s always a cloud of sorrow.”

David Folden, father of the two younger girls, said “the pain doesn’t go away. . . . It’s no different today from what it was two years, one month ago.”

By testifying for the prosecution during the first day of the penalty phase of the trial of Sandi Nieves, her two ex-husbands were implicitly urging the San Fernando jury to sentence her to death.

Sandi Nieves, 36, set her house on fire early in the morning of July 1, 1998. Prosecutors contended she tried to commit suicide and take her children with her because she wanted to take revenge on the men in her life. Her defense attorney unsuccessfully argued that the woman was legally unconscious at the time of the deadly blaze.

Nieves was convicted Thursday of four counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Jaqlene and Kristl Folden, 5 and 7, and Rashel and Nikolet Folden-Nieves, 11 and 12. The four died of smoke inhalation. She was also found guilty of arson and the attempted murder of her teenage son, David Nieves, who was in the house but survived.

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Though the final phase of the trial lasted three months, the jury of five women and seven men deliberated just one day. Now, the same jurors must decide whether Nieves deserves death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“There can be only one appropriate punishment for what the defendant has done to these four little girls . . . and that is the punishment of death,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth Barshop told jurors Tuesday.

But the “tragedy [of the deaths] does not warrant the death of Sandi Nieves,” said Deputy Public Defender Howard Waco.

“She is not a danger to society,” Waco said, pointing out that the woman had no prior felony convictions. “None of us is without flaws, including Sandi. . . . She started to crack under the stress of being a single parent.”

Nieves was born and raised “in a dysfunctional environment,” Waco said. Nieves at one point married her former stepfather.

Waco told jurors that Nieves was a good mother who had “one torturous night” after a boyfriend dumped her, after she underwent an abortion that conflicted with her religious beliefs, and after Folden attempted to reverse his adoption of the three older children.

“She slowly became unglued,” Waco said. “She had no ill will toward her children.”

But her two ex-husbands called Nieves a manipulative woman who tried to use her children as pawns in battles over custody.

Her son, now 16, has nightmares about what happened and at times is quiet and withdrawn, Fernando Nieves said. “He’s not enthusiastic about life. . . . Who at his age had to know that his own mother tried to kill him?”

The mother has mailed her son letters from jail, but the boy either returns them unopened or throws them into the trash, Fernando Nieves said.