Such Good Boys: The True Story of a Mother, Two Sons and a Horrifying Murder

by Dirmann, Tina

  Another month passed before Jane agreed to go home.

  “We had so many bills piled up at home,” Jose remembered. “But thankfully, I got my job back right away, because I work so many hours.”

  Jane’s misery returned almost instantly. This time, she didn’t want a vacation. She wanted to move. She decided on another sunny state—California. Specifically, San Diego. Jose didn’t understand it. They had no ties to the area, no friends, no family, no jobs waiting. But that’s exactly why Jane wanted to go. She wanted to get away from everyone and start over. Remembering how happy she had been in Florida, Jose relented.

  “If you really want to do it,” Jose told her, “let’s not talk about it anymore, let’s just go.”

  At the end of 1988, the family packed all of their belongings into their used Chevy Blazer, and prepared for the long drive from Waukegan to San Diego. Before they hit the road, Jane stopped by to say goodbye to her family. Jane insisted Jose come with her this time, saying she didn’t trust her family enough to be alone with them. It was an odd statement. Jose had no idea what she meant. But he silently tagged along as she broke the news to her mom and dad.

  The final goodbye was tense, Jose recalled. There were no tears or I love yous exchanged between mother and daughter.

  “Okay,” Nellie told Jane. “Well, goodbye, then.”

  Despite years of tension, Jane obviously still wanted a loving goodbye from her parents, given her intense reaction to the cold sendoff. Taken aback by her mother’s words, Jane retorted, “Fine, to hell with you,” and stormed out.

  As they returned to their car that day, Jane screamed, “You see, you see! Do you understand now why I don’t want anything to do with my family?”

  The entire meeting was so strange, Jose had trouble understanding what had just happened. But pressing Jane for more details on why she and her mother hated each other so much usually put her in such a foul mood, she would lash out at him and the kids. So he kept quiet.

  “I always suspected there was so much more to that story,” he said. “But I’ll never know. She wouldn’t tell me.”

  5

  The drive to California took three days. Jane and Jose took turns at the wheel, driving day and night.

  “She was my co-pilot,” Jose said.

  Because money was tight, they didn’t have much to spend on hotels. Jason, 6 years old, and Matthew, I slept in the back seat as the family car sped its way west.

  It wasn’t an easy trip. The close quarters for so many hours, combined with the fight with her mother, left Jane in a terrible mood.

  “Some hitting went on,” Jose remembers. “She started hitting me. The anger she had on her family, she took it out on me. And I’d talk back to her, so she’d get so mad, she’d hit me.” Jose tried to take it as long as he could. “But eventually, we just started boxing on each other.”

  Jane calmed down after the family reached California. They stopped at a hotel in San Marcos. It was thirty-five miles from the city of San Diego, but housing there was cheaper, and Jane seemed satisfied. Jose found work almost immediately, once again as a tire technician. Jane found the family a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment just off the freeway, and enrolled Jason in the first grade.

  But this time, the change of environment didn’t have its uplifting effect on Jane. Instead, she grew more odd. She insisted the family eat a strict diet of lettuce and vegetables. “Rabbit food,” Jose called it. While Jose and little Jason weren’t happy with the diet shift, no one complained. And no one ever asked her why. “If I opened my mouth, we’d start fighting.”

  Jane’s affections for her kids also grew more sharply divided. She had no problem peppering Matthew with kisses or cuddling him when he cried.

  But Jason only saw her cold side. Jose had a theory about Jane’s affection for Matthew. Not only was he a handsome boy—despite his Hispanic father, he had such pale skin, he looked Caucasian. Matthew looked nothing like his older, darker-skinned brother. Despite her early draw toward Hispanic men, in later years, Jane changed, growing hateful toward other races.

  The lack of affection continued to take its toll on Jason. He had always been a smart boy. From his earliest school days, his teachers had pointed that out. But he wasn’t very good at making friends. He was quiet, the kind of kid who preferred to sit alone with a toy and entertain himself. Early on in school, he became the target of other boys. As Jose remembers, “He was a little wuss.” Sometimes, he’d still have accidents in bed.

  Jane was never formally diagnosed with any mental problems. She never saw a psychiatrist, never went to counseling. But throughout Jane’s life, people suspected something was wrong with her. Aside from the tough personality and quick temper, Jane just seemed “off,” as a neighbor from her teenage years phrased it. Perhaps the possibility that anything was really wrong with her was ignored because she was so bright, academically. True, she never trusted anyone, but people simply labeled her as hard to get along with—not mentally unstable. As her friend Joyce Yonke told one reporter, “Jane was different…She seemed paranoid at times and sometimes suspicious.”

  Jane once told Jose that she took medication for depression, but he never saw her take anything. And he never knew her to see a doctor except when she was pregnant, despite the fact that she had been an asthma sufferer since childhood. Still, Jane was so secretive, Jose wouldn’t have been surprised if she did have depression medication hidden away somewhere. Jane was such a smart woman, she surely would have known to seek out help for whatever was making her so deeply unhappy. But even Jane, and probably most doctors, wouldn’t have known then that Jane was beyond depressed. She was demonstrating early signs of a mental collapse.

  Clinical psychologists know that many mental illnesses don’t fully present themselves until early adulthood—sometime between late teens and late twenties. Schizophrenia is one of those late blooming diseases, according to Neil Edwards, MD, a professor with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center who has studied schizophrenia for more than twenty years. Sometimes, he said, there are minor symptoms early on. But people don’t recognize them.

  “It’s like getting the flu,” Edwards explained. “For a few days before, you may feel achy, a little hot, tired. Sometimes you have them for a few days and they go away and you think nothing of it. Just a minor cold. But sometimes they persist and develop into the flu. It’s only then can you see that tiredness and achy feeling was a precursor to something more serious.”

  Perhaps it was the same with Jane, Edwards said. Her hot-tempered behavior, her paranoia over not being loved enough by her parents, by her boyfriends—all signs of a developing mental illness: paranoid schizophrenia.

  “Some people have paranoid personalities, but it never gets any worse,” Edwards said. “But some do. Some develop all the way into paranoid schizophrenia. Then they hear voices, they think people are after them, famous people, even. They’re delusional. After a while, their stories begin to sound like a complicated novel playing out inside their heads.”

  Typically, medication won’t entirely stop the delusions. But they can minimize them. Without treatment of any kind, however, the disease is left to roar out of control. “The disease can get so much worse. Then, often, it will end tragically,” Edwards said. “Very bad things can happen.”

  Aside from her sharp temper, there were few clear signs that something darker was developing inside Jane. But as her twenties came to a close, her paranoia and temper tantrums escalated. It was only the beginning of the nightmare to come.

  Jose’s patience with Jane was coming to an end by the early 1990s. She was so hostile, any conversation was tumultuous.

  “Only those boys and I know the hell we went through with her,” Jose says of that time.

  Jane accused Jose of cheating. She became obsessed with the idea, routinely rummaging through his dresser drawers, feeling into his pockets when he came home, demanding to see his wallet. If she just looked long enough, hard enough, she kn
ew she’d find the scrap of paper where Jose had scribbled down the number for his latest whore.

  “But she never found anything,” Jose said. “So she started inventing numbers. She’d come to me with some number and say, ‘Where did this come from?’ “

  Because of her fixation on phone numbers, Jose was careful not to bring any home. But he had grown close to a male co-worker and the two decided to get together sometime after hours to hang out. Jose jotted down the number, which Jane promptly found. She called the number and was greeted by another woman’s voice—the wife of Jose’s co-worker. Jane lost control.

  “What did I tell you?” she said, gearing up for a fight. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen and whipped open a closet filled with Jose’s clothes. She stabbed at them wildly, putting holes in whatever she could, shredding everything.

  Exhausted by the years of fighting, Jose decided not to engage. Instead, he packed his things. He was done.

  “If you leave me,” Jane warned, “I’ll call the sheriff’s department and tell them you’re sexually abusing your son. You’ll never see him again!”

  It was the worst thing Jane could have said to Jose, and she knew it. Because he’d grown up in an abusive home, he went out of his way to be kind to his own children. Now, to have someone label him as an abuser was more than he could stand.

  “If you do, and they put me in jail,” he told her, “I will come back from that jail and I will hurt you. Don’t ever threaten me with that again.”

  Jane didn’t call the police. Instead, she watched as Jose grabbed a few belongings and left their apartment.

  With no money in his pockets, Jose slept in his car that night. Far from his family, without any close friends, and reluctant to go back to Jane, Jose drifted. Deeply depressed, he rarely worked and found himself homeless for weeks. He grabbed meals where he could, even if that meant out of the occasional trash can. At night, if it was warm outside, he slept behind buildings. If not, he slept in his car.

  “I had nowhere to go,” Jose said. “It’s a time I’d rather forget.”

  By the spring of 1990, Jose pulled himself out of his depression. He got a job as a mechanic and put a security deposit down on an apartment in Escondido, just a few miles away from San Marcos. He didn’t want to go too far, hoping he’d be able to at least visit with the boys.

  Amazingly, Jane was delighted to hear from Jose again. And she allowed him time with Jason and Matthew. But Jose realized that the visits had become an excuse for Jane to check in on him, ensuring he wasn’t involved with another woman.

  Jane popped by one afternoon for a surprise visit. Jose was there, in his driveway, working on a strange car. A female neighbor had some car trouble and Jose had offered to take a look. With her sons in the back seat, Jane pulled up to the pair.

  “Who is this whore?” she demanded of Jose, right in front of the woman. “Is this your new whore?”

  Hoping to avoid trouble, Jose and the woman got into her car and drove off, intent on putting some distance between themselves and Jane. But Jane followed and a highspeed chase ensued. Frantic, Jose’s friend headed to the Escondido Police Department. Only then did Jane drive away.

  Weeks later, Jane returned. This time, she called first. It was a warm summer day in June 1990. Jane and the boys had spent the afternoon watching the horse races at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, not far from Jose’s apartment. She called from a pay phone announcing they would stop by.

  “Matthew wants to see you,” she said.

  On her way to the front door, Jane spotted a woman leaving Jose’s apartment. She let her go by undisturbed and knocked on Jose’s door.

  “You owe me child support money and I want it all right now,” she said. “If not, I’m calling the police and you’ll never see the boys again.”

  He gave her the cash he had on him, but it wasn’t enough. She took the opportunity to let her already-simmering temper fly. Jose realized she didn’t care about Matt visiting him. Or even the child support money. She was jealous and angry. She stormed into his bedroom, looking for signs that he was sleeping with someone new.

  “The next person that sleeps in that bed, I’ll kill her!” she screamed. As Jose tried to calm her down, telling her there was no one, she grew more angry, grabbing his brand-new television and smashing it to the ground. She stormed into the kitchen, where she noticed Jose had been cooking a meal for himself and his lady friend. She scooped up the tableware and food on the counter and slammed it all onto the floor. At that, Jose punched Jane in the face. He punched her again. She staggered backward, then gathered herself together enough to leave. On her way out, she grabbed the hand of 4-year-old Matthew, who had been standing by, watching it all.

  Days later, Jose got a call from the Escondido Police Department requesting he come to the station for questioning. As Jose would soon learn, Jane had told authorities that her ex-boyfriend had beaten and tried to rape her. At the station, police showed him a picture of Jane’s black-and-blue face. Even he was shocked at how bad she looked. He remembered giving her two blows, but she had bruises all over. He was at a loss to explain what had happened.

  “I’m not proud of hitting her,” he told police. “But she was going crazy in my house, destroying everything, after I worked so hard to start over.”

  Jane apparently told them she’d received the punches because she refused to have sex with him. The police threatened to charge Jose with attempted rape and child endangerment. Instead, he agreed to plead guilty to felony spousal abuse. According to court records, the deal landed him a year in jail and a $100 fine.

  The night before he’d promised to turn himself in, Jose called Jane. He wanted to drop off some presents and hug the boys one last time before going to jail.

  “Sure,” Jane told him. “Why don’t you come over and stay the night? You can sleep with me one last time before you go to jail.”

  “What?” he said in astonishment. “After you just accused me of trying to rape you? I’m not that stupid.”

  Jose never saw the boys before going to jail, where he served just 3 months of his 1-year sentence and agreed to 3 years of probation. Days after his release, Jose called Jane to see the boys. He was bitter toward her and it took some time to work up the courage to deal with her again. But after dialing, he found the number disconnected. Weeks later, driving to the apartment they’d once shared, Jose confirmed what he’d suspected after that failed phone call. His family was gone. He knew he should have gone to the police to report his son missing, but given his last interaction with police, he had little reason to believe they would help him. The manager for the San Marcos apartment complex refused to tell Jose if Jane and the boys had left a forwarding address. Jane had confided in the manager, telling him what Jose had done and claiming to have a restraining order. She added that Jose wasn’t even her husband, anyway.

  The next time Jose saw Matthew, his little boy was a teenager, his picture flashing across an evening news report announcing that Matthew and Jason had just been arrested for murder.

  Looking back, Jose realizes Jane probably needed psychological help. He wonders if watching her first husband take his life was more than she could stand, and she slowly began to lose her mind because of it. But he never saw the worst of it. He was long gone by the time Jane unraveled completely, leaving Matthew, and more pointedly, Jason, to bear the brunt of her insanity alone.

  “You never know what’s going on behind someone else’s four walls,” Jose said. “You have to be there, living it, to understand. But I think she just went crazy.”

  6

  What Jose would never know is that Jane had scooped up her boys and moved just a few miles away, to a two-story home in a middle-class neighborhood in San Marcos. Her home on Butterfield Lane was a step up from the modest apartments she’d shared with Jose. The three-bedroom tract home had a fireplace, two bathrooms, a double-car garage and large front and back yards. A little extra cash from her sympathetic grandmother helped Jane afford s
uch a place. Like clockwork, Charlie Mae began sending monthly checks to her granddaughter, between $1,500 and $2,000 each. Jane set up a post office box and directed the payments be sent there. For whatever reason, she was reluctant to give her family her home address. Although Nellie had a strained relationship with her daughter, she still felt sorry for Jane’s two boys. So she supported Mae’s decision to send financial help. Each month, Nellie sent the checks by certified mail, along with a note: “To whom it may concern, please make sure this check gets to Jane Bautista.”

  Jane’s new San Marcos neighbors remember the pretty, petite single mom who moved in with her two sons back in 1992. Once again, it was her appearance that helped her stand out. Those around her noticed she was always “impeccably made up,” in the words of one neighbor. She wore short, stylish skirts, which flattered her thin figure, and kept her hair long and curly. Neighbors assumed by her looks that she was a woman of financial means—especially since she didn’t seem to hold down a regular job. Later, Jane, in a rare moment of seeming candor, told a neighbor that her mother and father had disowned her years ago, but she had a very wealthy grandmother who took care of her. Although she was an intensely private person, it seemed important to her that people know she came from an upscale background.

  “She was real uppity,” remembers neighbor Paula Toedt. “She always had her nose in the air…Nothing was good enough for her.”

  At first, she was reclusive, hard to know, neighbors said. Early on, Paula, living just three houses down from Jane, became one of her few friends on the block. Paula, like Jane, was also newly single, having just gone through a divorce. She had a daughter a few years older than Jason. The pair had dinner at each other’s homes. Paula often babysat for Jane, whose dating life had kicked into full gear.

  “She had so many guys coming and going from her place, it was impossible to tell who was who,” a next-door neighbor said.