Man Says He Accidentally Killed Mother After She Attacked Him

Taking the stand for the first time in his defense, accused murderer Jason Bautista told jurors Thursday that he accidentally killed his mother as she lunged at him with a knife.

But rather than tell police, he testified in a Santa Ana courtroom, he cut off her head and hands because he feared no one would believe him.

“If I couldn’t call police, I had to get rid of the body. I remembered a ‘Sopranos’ episode I had seen where they got rid of someone that way,” said Bautista, now 22. He is charged with strangling his mother Jan. 14, 2003, in their Riverside apartment and tossing her body into a ravine off Ortega Highway in Orange County.

In nearly six hours of testimony, set to continue today, Bautista was polite, repeatedly calling the attorneys “sir.” He looked at the jury as he spoke, swallowing hard when speaking about the pain he said his mother inflicted on him.

He painted Jane Bautista as an abusive, mentally ill woman who had tormented him for years. She talked repeatedly about conspiracies, he said, and on a near-weekly basis grew so infuriated that she would attack him.

“If it’s in the house, it’s probably been thrown at me,” Jason Bautista said, recalling incidents involving skillets, irons and the family computer.

He lived a life of fear, he said, but he never wanted her dead.

“I didn’t want to kill her,” he said. “That wasn’t my goal.”

But prosecutor Michael Murray says Bautista had planned the slaying for months and is lying about killing his mother in self-defense. During his cross-examination, Murray marveled that Bautista had no marks on him when he was arrested 10 days after his mother’s death.

“I was very lucky,” Bautista said.

Murray repeatedly confronted Bautista about his memories of the killing and the dismemberment. The defendant gave a detailed description of the struggle with his mother, recalling that she told him, “I made you and I’ll destroy you.”

She threatened to kick him out, he said, and when he started helping her pack his belongings, she went to the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife and came after him.

After tackling her and pinning her to the floor for several minutes, he said, he rose and realized she was dead.

Bautista told jurors that he cried in his room, then went to a grocery store and bought supplies for the task of severing his mother’s head and hands: plastic bags and gloves, along with bleach for cleanup. He also bought energy drinks and gum.

His memories after that are hazy, he said. He recalls placing his mother in his bathtub, but little else, he said.

But in a taped interview with police the day he was arrested, which Murray played in court Wednesday, Bautista recalled several details: cutting off one hand, then her head, then the other hand.

After the tape was played, Bautista said: “I remember making the statements, but thankfully I don’t remember the details.”

When Murray asked why some details of that night were clear and others were fuzzy, Bautista answered, “I remember being afraid of my mom.”

He would have done things differently, he said, had he realized how many neighbors and family members knew how angry his mother could get.

“I thought it was our family secret,” he said in the taped interview. “I didn’t think the police would believe me.”