Father Guilty of Killing 5 of His Children

A Pico Rivera man was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder Tuesday for killing all but one of his sleeping children by carbon monoxide poisoning after igniting a charcoal grill inside their home.

The jury in Norwalk found special circumstances -- lying in wait, poisoning and multiple deaths -- and will begin deliberations Monday on whether Adair Javier Garcia, 33, should be executed.

In just over a full day of deliberations, the jury also convicted Garcia of attempted murder of the surviving child.

Dressed in black and her eyes puffy, Adriana Arreola, the children’s mother, shifted her gaze between Garcia and the clerk as the six counts were read.

Garcia, dressed in a blue dress shirt and slacks, impassively looked downward. One juror cried.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Victor Rodriguez told jurors that Garcia intended to kill his four daughters and two sons to spite their mother, who had left him about two weeks before the Feb. 19, 2002, incident. Garcia joined his children in going to bed while the charcoal smoldered, and was found unconscious on the floor beside his bed. A 9-year-old daughter also survived.

Rodriguez portrayed the defendant as lucid and calculating, with full knowledge of what he was doing.

“There was a lot of planning going on here, a lot of scheming,” he said in his closing argument. “He had a plan, and he went to great lengths to carry out that plan.” In an interrogation videotaped soon after his arrest and played to jurors, Garcia told investigators he took his children out for pizza and to see the Disney movie “Return to Never Land” the afternoon of the killings.

Afterward, Garcia bought a videocassette, matches and a sack of charcoal, he told detectives.

Back home, he dressed the children in pajamas and videotaped them recounting what they did at school that day. They told their mother that they loved her and told her goodbye, presumably unaware of their father’s intentions.

The second part of the tape shows Garcia addressing his wife, bitterly explaining why he intended to kill himself and the children.

“You’ve broken me,” he said. “... [W]e’re going to go to sleep and dream beautiful dreams of what life used to be.... We’re going to a better place, a painless place.”

After disconnecting the smoke detector and phone -- actions the prosector said were evidence of premeditation -- Garcia lighted the charcoal in the three-legged barbecue that he placed in the hallway, and lay down beside his children, who were already asleep.

Their grandmother, Adriana M. Arreola, discovered the scene the following morning when she arrived to take the children to school.

Brenda, 10; Jonathan, 7; and Anthony, 2; died at the scene, autopsies showed. Cecilia, 4, died later that day and Vanessa, 6, died the following day. The couple’s sixth child, Kassandra, 9 at the time, survived.

Defense attorneys Patricia Mulligan and Jill Thomas contended that Garcia acted without premeditation and that his deep depression after his wife left him “impaired his ability to think straight.” They argued for second-degree murder, which under state law is not punishable by death.

The children’s grandmother said previously that the family was focusing on her surviving granddaughter, Kassandra.

“We just want her to live a peaceful life,” Arreola said.