One pleads guilty to Modesto triple murder. Death penalty trial postponed for co-defendants
At 3:40 a.m. on March 3, 2012, Joseph Luis Jauriqui entered an east Modesto home with orders by a high-ranking member of the Norteño street gang: Kill the 18-year-old woman who lived there and anyone else in the house.
On Monday, Jauriqui pleaded guilty to murdering three people that night: 16-year-old David Siebels, 19-year-old Alyxandria Tellez and 31-year-old Edward Joseph Reinig.
The 18-year-old woman who was targeted was the only survivor; she’d hid under a pile of clothes in the bedroom of her McClure Road home. She previously told The Bee she could hear Reinig screaming but didn’t hear Siebels, who was her brother, or Reinig’s girlfriend, Tellez.
Reinig had gotten out of bed and was shot multiple times in the head and torso. Tellez, still in bed, was shot in the torso. Siebels, who’d been sleeping on a couch, was shot twice in the head.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Marlisa Ferreira gave an account of the night’s events as part of the stipulated factual basis for Jauriqui’s plea.
The prosecution alleges that Jauriqui and co-defendant Armando Osegueda carried out the murders at the behest of Richard Garcia, who’d been dating the 18-year-old woman.
About a month before the murders, Garcia and Osegueda were arrested in connection with a domestic violence case against the woman. Garcia allegedly held her captive for several days, beat her, choked her, burned her with a lighter and threatened to kill her and her family. Osegueda allegedly helped bind her arms and legs with packaging tape.
Garcia bailed out and Osegueda had not been charged at the time the murders occurred. Both were rearrested shortly after the killings and charged with torture related to the domestic violence case.
But it was nearly a year before they, Jauriqui and four others were indicted on three counts of murder and other charges related to the killings of Siebels, Tellez and Reinig.
The other four defendants — Robert Palomino, Juan Jose Nila, Jose Osegueda, Ricky Javier Madrigal — were accused of having ancillary roles. In the years following their arrests, each of them pleaded to lesser charges in exchange for the testimony against the other three. They were released from jail on their own recognizance and their sentences deferred until after they testify at the trial of their co-defendants.
All the defendants originally were charged with three counts of premeditated murder with the special circumstances that there were multiple murders and that they were committed for the benefit of the Norteño street gang.
Special circumstances in a murder case make a defendant eligible for the death penalty.
A few months after their arrests, the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office announced it would seek the death penalty against Jauriqui, Garcia and Armando Osegueda.
As part of his plea agreement Monday, Jauriqui no longer will face the death penalty but instead will be sentenced to 100 years to life in prison for the murders.
He also pleaded guilty to premeditated attempted murder for stabbing another inmate in the Stanislaus County Jail in 2014. The inmate, also a Norteño street gang member and murder defendant at the time, was blinded by the attack.
For that, Jauriqui, 33, will be sentenced to life in prison to be served concurrently with his sentence in the three murders.
Under current California law, he will be eligible for parole at the age of 50 under the Elderly Parole Program.
Jauriqui is scheduled to be formally sentenced March 27. As many as a dozen family members of the victims are expected to give victim impact statements, Ferreira said in court.
The trial for Garcia and Armando Osegueda was supposed to start this week, but the attorney for Osegueda was granted a continuance because he said his investigator and mitigation expert, used in death penalty cases, both recently quit.
Thursday marks 11 years since the murders, but a new trial isn’t expected to be scheduled until next year.
For years, the families of the victims have expressed the frustration and anguish they experience waiting for justice for their loved ones.
“The system is not for those of us who are left behind,” Reinig’s mother, Maisy Avila, told The Bee in 2017. “It’s for those who stand behind the bars and try to fight their way out of something they know they did wrong and they’re trying to get off. It’s not right.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2023 at 10:52 AM.
