Man Gets 25 to Life for Killing His Mother

A Riverside college student who killed his mother and chopped off her head and hands to conceal her identification was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison in a case the judge said was callous and deliberate.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel gave Jason Victor Bautista, 22, the state-mandated, maximum sentence for first-degree murder and denied a request for a new trial.

“The jury got it right,” Fasel said in his Santa Ana courtroom, noting that the murder “reeked of premeditation” and that Bautista had shown no remorse.

“All I’m hearing is maneuvering,” Fasel said minutes after denying Bautista’s request to dump his lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Don Ronaldson.

The case against Bautista drew national attention, in part because he said he got the idea to chop off her head and hands to throw off investigators after watching an episode of HBO’s mob drama “The Sopranos.”

The defense said Bautista killed his mother in self-defense Jan. 14, 2003, after she attacked him with a butcher knife -- part of a pattern of abuse the young man said he had endured for years.

Jurors who convicted Bautista said they were moved by the young man’s torment, but were equally disgusted that he killed her to escape the abuse.

Bautista was convicted Feb. 4 in the beating, strangling and dismembering of his mother, Jane Bautista, 41, at their Riverside apartment, then enlisting the help of his half-brother, Matthew Montejo, now 17, to dispose of her body.

Then, in another TV-like twist, the brothers tried to toss the bundled body into a Dumpster at an Oceanside construction site.

A security guard scared them off, but saw a foot poking from a sleeping bag. He jotted down their license plate number, which authorities used to find the brothers. They tossed her body down a ravine off Ortega Highway near San Juan Capistrano.

Bautista testified that he had accidentally killed his mother after she lunged at him with a knife. But prosecutor Michael Murray painted a picture of a son who wished his mother dead and, months before the murder, offered explanations for her anticipated absence.

Bautista’s lawyer, however, told the judge Friday, “Having gotten to know Jason ... I am not able to reconcile the verdict. This was a killing that stemmed from fear.”

In a brief statement, Bautista told the judge, “I’m very sorry for all my actions. They were very wrong.”

Fasel acknowledged that Jane Bautista was emotionally and physically abusive.

“That’s tragic, no doubt about it,” he said. “However, those circumstances do not absolve” the murder, he said.