A murderer, that shot using a .38-caliber revolver, in San Marcos, San Diego County, California,
USA, on the 27th of October
1996, and left 4 dead, the result of anger felt toward their fathers and the
boyfriend, whom had all chosen to leave her. She was tried, convicted and sentenced
to death on October 13, 1999.
Decision of the Supreme
Court of California
The People v. Susan Dianne Eubanks, Cause No: S082915 (Reported, Dec. 9, 2011), 53
Cal.4th 110, 134 Cal. Rptr. 3d 795, 266 P.3d 301. [This is actually a very interesting and in depth opinion].
Eubanks, Susan: White; age 33 at crime; murder of four white
males (her children) ages 4, 6, 7, and 14 in San Marcos (San Diego County) on
10-27-1996; sentenced on 10-13-1999.
Susan Eubanks:
On October 26, 1999, Susan Eubanks of San Marcos, California
took the lives of her four sons. The boys, ranging in age from 4-14, were all
shot in the head. She then turned the gun and shot herself in the stomach.
According to her defense lawyers, she shot herself as a result of an attempted
suicide. Only one other person was in the home at the time of the killings, Ms.
Eubank's 5-year-old nephew, who was found unharmed. After spending the day
drinking with her boyfriend and taking Valium, they began to fight. Once home,
she then slashed 2 tires on his car and refused to let him in the home. He
called the police and they then escorted him to the home, where he removed some
belongings and left. According to her defense team, this was the catalyst of
the killings. They claimed that it was then that she lost control of her mind
and body.
After warning one of the boys' fathers, as to her diminished
mental state (The boyfriend told the father that she "Talked about killing
herself and the boys"), the father then called the police department. He
asked the Sheriffs Department to check on the children. When the deputies
arrived at the home, they heard sobbing, and inside, found the three older boys
dead from gunshot wounds to the head. The youngest was not yet dead, so an
ambulance was called to the scene. The four year old boys was still was then
rushed by ambulance to the hospital, where he would later die. They then found
the 5th child, her nephew unharmed. They also found Susan sobbing and suffering
from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was also sent to the hospital. After 5
days, Ms. Eubanks was charged with 4 counts of first-degree murder. The trail
began in August of 1999 and the prosecuting attorneys alleged that Susan
Eubanks had killed her sons as a result of rage. The rage was a result of anger
felt toward their fathers and the boyfriend, whom had all chosen to leave her.
It was claimed that she felt the desire to seek revenge for the failure of the
relationships; that she had wanted the fathers to also know the pain of loosing
those that had been loved.
The defense lawyers claimed that the murders took place as a
result of "blacking" out; that
as a result of a diminished state of mind, she was not in control of her
actions. It was claimed that after spending the day drinking and using
prescription drugs, along with past heartaches and current domestic
disturbance, that she then became a "robot" and did what she thought
would remove her pain. During the trial, it was noted that there had been
allegations of child abuse and talk of revenge prior to the murders.
Prosecutors claimed that she was not suffering from a "black out"
because she had to load her weapon twice before she had finished; thus giving
her ample time to realize what she was doing and stop. It was also noted that
while she had killed her sons "execution style", she had only shot
herself in the stomach to. It was noted that she surely would know how to kill
herself, after murdering 4 others. Prosecuting attorneys believed that she had
shot herself to increase her chances of a lesser charge, or possibly to frame
someone else for the murders. In August of 1999, after just 2 hours of
deliberation, the jury found her guilty on all four counts of first-degree
murder. After 2 days, they returned with the sentence of death. The judge
agreed with the sentence in October of 1999 and she was then transferred to the
Central California's Women's Facility, where she now remains on death row.
***
Faded, but not
forgotten:
The slayings of four boys by their mother in 1997 left a
community in shock. Those who remember say the boys 'deserve recognition for
their lives and the lives they touched'
The graves of the three Eubanks boys, shot to death by their
mother in 1997 in San Marcos, rest under a thin camphor tree near concrete
stairs. Instead of headstones, concrete blocks slightly larger than bricks
display the initial of each boy's first name, their last name and the year they
died. The gray blocks, surrounded by trimmed grass at the San Marcos Cemetery,
appear well-maintained, but the letters are fading. The plain markers reveal
little about the victims. “A Eubanks” is on the left, “B Eubanks” rests in the
middle, then “M Eubanks.” Austin was 7, Brigham, 6, and Matthew, 4.
Their half brother, Brandon Armstrong, 14, also killed by
their mother, is buried in Texas and memorialized with a headstone there. The
slayings of the four brothers are arguably one of the darkest moments in San
Marcos history. Like the letters on the grave markers, however, what happened
to the boys has faded from many residents' memories. The house where the
murders happened was torched by firefighters in a training exercise. Some might
not know the murders ever happened – more than 10,000 people have moved to the
city since 1997. And they wouldn't know the Eubanks boys from their San Marcos
graves. Although money was collected to buy headstones, the father of three of
the boys was too distraught to handle the arrangements. The blocks were meant
to be place holders until permanent markers could be installed, said Dennis
Shepard, general manager of the North County Cemetery District, which oversees
the San Marcos Cemetery. The community gave money for headstones. San Marcos
Pop Warner football, in which Austin played, collected nearly $3,000, according
to a 1999 news article. About $500 was given to Brandon's father for his son's
plot, but no one can account for the rest of the money now. Memories are hazy.
People have moved. Austin, Brigham and Matthew's father has left the area.
John Armstrong, Brandon's father, said the three boys should
be more prominently remembered. “They deserve recognition for their lives and
the lives they touched,” Armstrong said. The boys Austin, Brigham and Matthew
were buried Nov. 7, 1997. Their father, Eric Dale Eubanks, owns the three grave
sites and is the only one who can ask the cemetery to set headstones, Shepard
said. It appears that he has never contacted the district, Shepard said, and
the boys' files have no plans for markers. Eric Eubanks has never publicly
spoken about the slayings. He wasn't in the courtroom when the jury read the
verdict at the 1999 trial of the boys' mother, Susan Dianne Eubanks. When
reached last month, he declined to be interviewed. Melanie Cornwell, a friend
who stayed in touch with Eric Eubanks for some years and then lost contact,
said she isn't surprised. He has kept to himself about what happened, said
Cornwell, who lives in Lubbock, Texas.
San Marcos resident Karen Hoy, who still talks to Eric
Eubanks, said he told Pop Warner a decade ago to do what it wanted with the
money, but he never found out how it was spent. It's no longer important to him
what happened to the money, Hoy said, and he doesn't want to dredge up the
past. The money initially was held in a Pop Warner bank account for Eric
Eubanks to claim, said Cornwell, who was involved with the league at the time. “Eric
just wasn't able to handle it,” Cornwell said. “I talked to his family several
times, but it was left to him.” Recent Pop Warner board members said they don't
know who was in charge at the time but said they were given limited financial
records. Treasurer George Litzinger said Pop Warner only has one account at
Union Bank in San Marcos, and has no records of donations for the Eubanks boys
or how the money was spent.
In 2005, Cornwell left San Marcos but still thinks about the
boys. “The grief and the sorrow never go away,” she said. “I just hope that
some people learn from that day that it's OK to be nosy, to intervene and to
check on something that you don't feel right about because as private as people
want to be, maybe,” she said as she began to cry, “if somebody had pushed hard
enough to find out what the issues were – if maybe someone had pushed hard
enough, there would be four beautiful boys grown up, graduating and getting
married.” According to court documents and articles in The San Diego
Union-Tribune following after the slayings and during Susan Eubanks' trial,
here is what happened on the day of the shootings, Sunday, Oct. 26, 1997, the
day of the shootings:
Susan Eubanks, then 33, had been drinking and watching a
Chargers game at the North Bar in Escondido with her boyfriend, Rene Dodson.
She had filed for divorce against her husband of seven years, Eric Eubanks, on
Sept. 5. Dodson and Susan Eubanks were living together. The couple argued, and
Dodson drove her home. They argued more on the way to the house near Cal State
San Marcos. After arriving, Dodson told Susan Eubanks he wanted nothing to do
with her. She cursed him, grabbed his car keys and unplugged the phone lines. Dodson
walked to a gas station and called sheriff's deputies to escort him to the
house and stand by while he retrieved his car and belongings. When they
arrived, Susan Eubanks had slashed two tires on Dodson's car and had turned on
the headlights to kill the battery. Dodson gathered his possessions, and as he
was leaving, Eric Eubanks showed up. They left together in Eric Eubanks' car.
Dodson told Eubanks as they were driving that Susan had said she was going to
shoot the boys and herself. They went to the North Bar, where they spent
several hours. That evening at the bar, Eric Eubanks received a page, alerting
him to a voice-mail message. He listened to it, and called 911.
His estranged wife had recorded two words on his telephone
answering machine: “Say goodbye.” When two deputies arrived at Susan Eubanks'
house about 7:30 p.m., they heard a woman call for help, and they broke through
the front door. Eubanks was bleeding from the stomach, where she had shot
herself. Three of the boys were dead. Matthew died the next day.
Susan Eubanks had fired a .38-caliber revolver at the boys'
heads repeatedly, at one point reloading. Brandon was shot in the living room
as he watched TV; the others were in their bedroom, on a bunk bed, playing
Nintendo. In September 1999, a jury decided Susan Eubanks should be executed
for murder. At her sentencing a month later, she said she loved her children
but felt they would be better off dead. She said she killed her boys as a final
act of love in what was an attempted murder-suicide. Factors that influenced
her actions, she said at the sentencing, included alcoholic parents, her
depression and poor mental-health treatment. Five letters written by Eubanks
that reference what she did and why remain sealed to the public. They were
found around her bed, where she was lying when deputies reached her. Separate
letters were addressed to Eric Eubanks, Dodson and her family members.
On Oct. 13, 1999, Judge Joan Weber upheld the jury's
recommendation to execute Eubanks. “Mrs. Eubanks apparently committed these
murders in a vicious, calculated attempt to lash out at the men in her life as
evidenced by her angry, vindictive letters found at the scene,” Weber said. “.
. . Mrs. Eubanks committed the single most horrific criminal episode in the
history of this county.” Eubanks is on death row in the Central California
Women's Facility in Chowchilla.
(Where she was admitted 10-20-1999, at the age of 52, Inmate
Number W82266 , and address: 23370 Rd 22, Chowchilla, CA 93610).
Not many murders homicides happen in the city. From 1993 to
now, San Marcos has had 31 homicide victims, according to the Sheriff's
Department. “The community grieved because the boys ranged from 4 to 14, across
elementary school to high school,” Cornwell said. “It touched everybody.” Austin
and Brigham had attended Discovery Elementary, and Brandon played football at
San Marcos High. Kathy Goohs of San Marcos, a friend of Eric Eubanks, said she
visits the graves every Memorial Day. Goohs said some of her neighbors still
visit, too. Goohs said she wishes that the boys had permanent markers, but that
even then, the markers would be “so inadequate for the whole situation.” She
said Eric Eubanks' friends were more concerned about his well-being at the time
than making sure that the boys had headstones. “The most important thing is to
remember the boys,” Goohs said. “And I do regardless if they have a
tombstone."
***
As always, be safe !
Bird
***
