Friends Portray Nieves as the Model Parent

Friends and a former church leader testified Wednesday that Sandi Nieves, convicted of killing her four daughters, had been a wonderful mother up to the time of their deaths.

Two women who knew Nieves so admired her parenting skills that they considered her to be a role model, they said.

“I always looked up to her in raising my children,” said Shirley Driskell, Nieves’ friend since childhood, recalling trips to parks, the zoo and theaters with Nieves and her children. “She was a very good mother.”

Their testimony in San Fernando Superior Court for the defense during the penalty phase of Nieves’ trial was a bid to save the life of the 36-year-old Nieves, who was convicted a week ago of the first-degree murders of her four daughters. She now faces a possible death penalty.

In the early morning hours of July 1, 1998, an angry and distraught Nieves tried to commit suicide and take her children with her. She mailed “suicide letters” to the men whom she believed had mistreated her, told her five children to all sleep in the kitchen of their Saugus home, then started a fire there.

Jaqlene and Kristl Folden, 5 and 7, and Rashel and Nikolet Folden-Nieves, 11 and 12, died of smoke inhalation.

The mother was convicted of attempted murder of her son, David Nieves, who was 14 at the time and survived, and arson.

Deputy Public Defender Howard Waco had argued unsuccessfully that Nieves was legally unconscious at the time of the blaze.

On Wednesday, Tammy Pearce, who has known Nieves for about a decade, recalled how the woman and her children always sat in the front pew every Sunday at their church.

“The children were always beautifully groomed,” she said, when questioned by Waco.

Pearce, a mother of 11, said Nieves, who served as a Cub Scout pack committee chairwoman, was a “very good example to me as how to be a good mother.”

But when questioned by Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth Barshop, Pearce said she and Nieves hadn’t attended church together since 1993, when she moved away.

“Does a good, caring loving mother not allow their kids to go outside to save themselves during a fire?” Barshop asked, alluding to trial testimony establishing that during the fire, children woke up gagging from smoke, but Nieves ordered them to stay where they were.

“Not if she wasn’t in her right mind,” Pearce replied.

Also vouching for Nieves was the former bishop of the Perris ward of the Church of Latter-day Saints, which Nieves and her children attended before moving to Santa Clarita.

Nieves’ children were always neat, clean, polite and well-mannered, said Lynn Jones, the former bishop.

Driskell lived with Nieves for more than a year, and testified that she had seen Nieves’ mother abuse her.

Later in life, Driskell testified, she had such trust in Nieves that she put in her will that if she were to die, she wanted the woman to care for her two children.

Her kids “were everything in Sandi’s life,” Driskell said.

“I’ll love her till the day she dies,” Driskell said.