Woman Accused in 4 Slayings Wrote of a Desire to Murder Many, Prosecutors Say

A woman on trial for killing four members of her Pico Rivera family wrote in a letter 10 months before the slayings that her aim in life was to become a “mass murderer,” prosecutors told jurors Wednesday.

A deputy district attorney read the letter that Monica Diaz, then 16, allegedly wrote to her boyfriend -- Michael Naranjo, who has confessed to participating in the killings -- as the trial opened.

“The best job is to kill people professionally. Imagine how many victims I would have if I lived to be 800 years,” a prosecutor quoted from the letter in his opening statement.

The defense blames the killings on Naranjo.

Diaz is charged with four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in the stabbing deaths of her uncle and three cousins. Her aunt was injured.

The killings took place in the early hours of July 21, 2000, in the house where Diaz, now 20, and her half-sister, Laura Reta, lived with their aunt, Sylvia Flores, and her family.

Prosecutors say Diaz plotted the slayings with Naranjo, and that he stabbed to death Richard Flores, 42; and his children, Richard Jr., 14; Sylvia, 13; and Matthew, 10. The elder Sylvia Flores survived. Another daughter, Esperanza Flores, and Reta, both then 18, were not attacked.

Police found Diaz’s fingerprints on a roll of duct tape used to cover the mouths of the victims, prosecutors said. Three knives bearing her fingerprints were found in the bathroom of the house, prosecutors said.

Naranjo, now 20, pleaded guilty in October to four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, and was sentenced to five life sentences. He was not expected to testify in the Diaz trial.

Sylvia Flores said she hoped her niece’s trial would shed light on the motive for the slayings. “It’s just stuff I need to know,” said Flores, who was joined at Los Angeles County Superior Court in Norwalk by her daughter, Esperanza.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McCormick told jurors that the letter, which Diaz allegedly wrote to Naranjo in September 1999, shows that she helped plot the killings. In it, she wrote about mass murderers and fantasized about living hundreds of years as a killer, McCormick said.

Part of the letter read: “Hitler only lived for a few years and he killed lots, though he did it the cowardly way.”

Quoting the letter, McCormick said Diaz wrote that she wanted to be known as someone who “brought terror on the earth” and made her victims suffer. She allegedly wrote that she wanted a boyfriend with whom she could “work together and kill lots.”

Defense attorneys described Diaz as a young woman who loved the Flores family as her own after her mother died when she was 3 years old.

“One of the biggest parts of Monica’s life was her family,” attorney Louis Sepe said. “She wouldn’t do anything to cause her family harm.”

Sepe said Diaz believed her aunt and uncle were having marital problems that might have broken up the family. Diaz naively believed that if she and Naranjo staged a burglary, the family would be frightened into staying together. Naranjo took the plan too far, Sepe said.