Mother Breaks Down in Tears at Murder Trial

A woman accused of murdering her four daughters by setting a fire broke down wailing in court Monday after testifying about a “flashback” of holding a lighter in her hand and seeing a blaze.

“I was hoping it would be a dream,” Sandi Nieves testified about the flashback, growing distraught. “It scared the hell out of me. I had a flashback of a flash . . . a lighter . . . a fire . . . I don’t know what it was!”

Nieves shouted at one point, “I sit here and wonder every day what happened. I have no idea!”

Putting Nieves on the stand was part of a risky strategy by Deputy Public Defender Howard Waco to suggest that she was not “legally conscious” when the house fire started and should not be held legally responsible.

Prosecutors contend that Nieves tried to commit suicide and kill her children out of desperation and revenge. She had just undergone an abortion, a boyfriend had left her, and a former husband was trying to escape paying child support, her sole source of income.

Nieves, now 36, allegedly gathered her children in the kitchen of their rented Saugus house on the night of June 30, 1998, opened an oven and turned it on, then started a fire. Her daughters, Kristl and Jaqlene Folden, 5 and 7, and Rashel and Nikolet Folden-Nieves, 11 and 12, died of smoke inhalation.

Nieves is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder of her teenage son, David Nieves, who was in the house but survived, and arson causing great bodily injuries.

If convicted, she faces a possible death penalty.

On the stand Monday, Nieves said she had been devastated about an abortion she had five days before the fire and had begun taking antidepressant drugs. She also was taking two different prescription diet pills, she testified. The night of the fire, she drank beer and wine while talking on the phone with a friend.

Waco tried to show that up to the day of the fire, Nieves was planning for a future, not a suicide.

Days before the fire, Nieves testified, she bought sundresses and sandals, shopped for an expensive dress she was to wear to a friend’s wedding in August, and stocked her refrigerator. She filled her van with gas, and she mailed a check for $1,075 to her landlord for her July rent.

But she testified that she had no memory of a letter she wrote to an ex-husband, which appeared to have been mailed hours before the fire. Prosecutors characterized it as a suicide note.

“Now you don’t have to support us anymore . . . you scum,” Nieves wrote.

She recalled turning on an oven and opening it four or five inches that night.

“My feet were cold,” she said. But she turned off the oven after David complained about the heat.

Nieves said she remembered looking at her children lovingly as they slept on the kitchen floor after she had gathered them for a slumber party. “They’re so peaceful,” she said.

The next thing she recalled, she said, was “waking up in black smoke.”

Nieves said she told her children to put their faces into their blankets “so they wouldn’t breathe in smoke.”

In the morning, after the fire died, Nieves got up from the kitchen floor to go outside, she testified.

“So you stepped over the bodies of your children?” asked Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman.

“I thought they were asleep,” Nieves answered. “I don’t remember stepping over my kids. I don’t remember any of it.”

Silverman asked Nieves to look at photos of her dead daughters and to explain how she could step over them without seeing them.

Nieves refused to consider the pictures.

“I’m not looking at my children if they’re dead. I’m not looking at them!” Nieves said.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge L. Jeffrey Wiatt then told prosecutors to place the photo display directly in front of Nieves.

She collapsed, sobbing violently, without looking at the pictures.

Her testimony continues today.