Killing Trial Starts for Son

Bitterness, a steak knife and his bare hands -- those were all a prosecutor said Jason Victor Bautista needed to strangle his mother and lop off her head and hands in a scene stolen from “The Sopranos.”

But the attorney for Bautista, 22, told jurors during his opening statement Tuesday in a Santa Ana courtroom that his client was fueled by pent-up anger from years of physical and emotional abuse by his apparently schizophrenic mother.

He was a product of “a home more desperate, more psychotic, more poisoned than anyone should bear,” said Assistant Public Defender Don Ronaldson.

Bautista and his 17-year-old brother, Matthew Montejo, are expected to testify in the case, which drew nationwide attention after police said the young men told them they were inspired by the HBO series about a New Jersey mob family.

Montejo has agreed to testify against Bautista, with the prospect of reduced charges, and perhaps release from his juvenile holding facility after the trial. Bautista faces life in prison without parole if convicted.

Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Murray told jurors that Jane Bautista’s mental illness disturbed her elder son so much that he finally killed her after months of planning. Her torso, naked except for white underwear, was found dumped in a weed-choked ravine off Ortega Highway on Jan. 15, 2003.

More than a week later, detectives found her head and hands in a hall closet in the Moreno Valley apartment she shared with her two sons. A security guard, who testified Tuesday that he saw Jason Bautista and Montejo trying to put a body in a trash bin in Oceanside, led police to connect the pair to the body, found miles away to the north.

Murray said Bautista picked a fight with his mother Jan. 14, beating her so hard that he broke the bones above her eyes, then strangled her. Then, Murray said, Bautista used an inexpensive steak knife to dismember her in the sons’ bathtub.

Some members of the 11-woman, one-man jury were visibly shaken when Murray displayed photos of Jane Bautista’s severed head and hands, tucked into a black duffel bag.

One juror clapped her hand to her mouth for several seconds. A juror next to her slowly shook her head.

Although mutilating one’s mother is a horrifying act, Ronaldson said, it proved how spontaneous the slaying was.

“He relied on a TV script for a half-baked plan to cover up the killing,” the lawyer said of Bautista. “He had no idea what to do with the head and hands.”

The mother’s illness had become too much for Bautista to bear, Ronaldson added. From the time he was an infant, his mother had beat him with belts, sticks and clubs and threatened him with knives, the attorney said. Her anger at her son was intense, apparently because he reminded her of his father, who had left her and killed himself when the boy was a toddler.

But prosecutor Murray said that for months Bautista had been telling co-workers at a Cal State San Bernardino computer lab, and the Holiday Inn where he was a desk clerk, that his mother was planning to move to Chicago indefinitely to be near her family.

When detectives from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department pulled him out of class to interview him Jan. 24, Murray said, Bautista spun a series of lies about his mother’s erratic behavior. She met men through the Internet all the time, and he thought she was with one of them in Corona, he allegedly told the detectives. He described his mother as petite with several tattoos, including a sunburst on her back, Murray said, whereas she was actually about 5 foot 7 with no markings on her body.

The biggest lie, though, was telling investigators how much he loved his mother, the prosecutor said.

“He despised his mother because of her mental illness and the way her mental illness was impacting his life,” Murray told the jury.

A tape of the interview will be played today in Judge Frank F. Fasel’s courtroom.