Mother Accused of Killing Her 4 Girls Called ‘Liar’

Despite her efforts to paint herself as a victim, Sandi Nieves is really a “liar” and a “manipulator” who killed her four daughters because she wanted vengeance against men who failed her, a prosecutor argued Thursday.

“What type of a woman does that? What type of mother does that?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth Barshop asked in closing arguments before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge L. Jeffrey Wiatt.

Barshop urged the San Fernando jury to find Nieves guilty of first-degree murder.

Nieves, 36, allegedly gathered her five children in the kitchen-den area of their Saugus house on the night of June 30, 1998, and started a fire. Kristl and Jaqlene Folden, 5 and 7, and Rashel and Nikolet Folden-Nieves, 11 and 12, died of smoke inhalation. Her son David Nieves, who was 14 at the time, was also in the house but survived.

Nieves is charged with four counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder and arson. If convicted, she could face the death penalty. Closing arguments by the defense are to begin Monday.

Throughout the trial, which began three months ago, Nieves’ lawyer proposed different, sometimes conflicting theories of why she should be acquitted. He asserted a lack of proof that she started the fire; that even if she had started the fire, she was in a sleepwalking-like state at the time and legally unconscious; or that someone else, perhaps her son, David, started the fire.

“Does the defense have no shame?” asked Barshop, calling the theories of Deputy Public Defender Howard Waco “smoke and mirrors.”

Barshop painted Nieves as a woman with two failed marriages and a boyfriend who had rejected her. With no prospect of a paying job and her money running out fast, Nieves was especially angered by an ex-husband’s attempt to reverse his adoption of three of her children, which would have reduced child-support payments, the prosecutor asserted.

Just hours before the fire, Nieves wrote and mailed three letters, which Barshop characterized as “suicide letters.”

In a letter to Scott Volk, the boyfriend who left her and whose baby she had aborted just five days before, Nieves wrote: “I’m sorry if my love wasn’t good enough for you. . . . You just couldn’t see it. Now you never will. . . . I can’t live without you in my life,” Barshop read aloud in court.

In a letter mailed to David Folden, the ex-husband who tried to reverse his adoption of the three eldest children, Nieves wrote: “Now you don’t have to support any of us anymore. . . . You are scum.”

Barshop argued that the letter indicated Nieves’ intent to die, because Folden’s legal action would not have affected his support payment for the two younger children.

When one of the girls woke up in the smoke and asked to go to the bathroom to throw up, Nieves told her to stay where she was and throw up on the floor, Barshop said.

Several times Barshop displayed photos of the dead girls. A few showed the corpses lying stiffly, mannequin-like on the kitchen floor. Jurors squirmed uneasily, and one turned away.

Nieves, who took the stand earlier in the trial, “lied to your face,” Barshop said. The woman testified she had ingested a combination of alcohol, prescription diet pills and Zoloft, an antidepressant, before the deadly blaze. But there is no evidence that she was on Zoloft, Barshop said.

When Nieves was hospitalized after the fire, at least eight people from the hospital questioned her, Barshop said, adding that she said “not a word about Zoloft.”

“Why did she kill the children?” Barshop said. “She sure hated the fathers. She sure wanted them to pay.”