EP. 236: CALIFORNIA: She Let Her Killer In: The Senseless Murder of Autumn Wallace

The car they found had three deep scratches carved into the side. Not dents, scratches. They stopped, they saw it, and then they left. But here's where things got strange. Not long after, creepy things start happening. They began to feel like they weren't alone in the van, like something followed them from that road. People online have started connecting it to something they're calling the passenger.

Supposedly, it attaches itself to anyone who encounters it and marks their car with three scratches. And once that happens, it doesn't let go. If these reports are true, this couple didn't just witness something on that highway, they carried it with them. From Andre Overdahl, director of Autopsy of Jane Doe, comes Passenger. Only in theaters may twenty second, get tickets now.

No answer. Linda's nine year old daughter had been home alone that afternoon. Her crayons were still on the table. Her paper dolls spread out, like she had just been here. But where was she? Maybe Autumn heard the break in and hid somewhere. Maybe she was scared and waiting for her mom to find her. Maybe she got out and ran to a friend's house.

Soon enough, the police would line the streets of their neighborhood, and by the end of that day, everyone in Anaheim, California would know the name Autumn Wallace. So this is her story. I'm Courtney Browen.

Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mickey Mouse waving from a parade float, kids clutching autograph books, and parents pushing strollers down Main Street USA. Everyone smiling, everyone happy. But Anaheim is more than just a theme park. Step outside those gates, drive a mile in any direction, and you'll see that you're in fact in a real city.

Strip malls, fast food joints, auto repair shops with hand painted signs, laundromats, churches. In nineteen ninety, about two hundred and sixty six thousand people lived here. They clocked in at warehouses and office parks. They raised families and mowed their lawns on Saturday mornings. And like a lot of Southern Californian cities back then, Anaheim had different sides.

Near Disneyland you had the tourist areas, with hotels, restaurants, and the constant flow of visitors with their fanny packs and cameras. But a few miles away, you had rougher neighborhoods. Places where drugs were easy to find, where gang violence plagued the streets. In the first five months of 1990 alone, 17 young men had been gunned down in gang violence across Orange County.

That spring, an eight-year-old boy named Carlos Alvarez was shot by a stray bullet while watching television in his own home. The bullet went through Carlos, through the wall, and hit his aunt sleeping in the next room. Both survived. And then you had the streets in between, the quiet blocks, the neighborhoods where people settled down because they felt safe, because it seemed like a good place to raise kids. And that's where the Wallace family lived.

But in 1987, when Autumn was just six years old, her father lost his battle with cancer. After he died, Autumn didn't dwell on losing him. She always talked about the good times. She'd tell her mom he's up there fishing in heaven, and he's probably catching a lot of big ones. That was autumn. Even at six years old, she found light in the darkness. After her father died, Autumn and her mother grew even closer. Linda was all she had now.

And Autumn was Linda's baby girl. But losing her husband meant more than just losing the man she loved. Linda was now a single mom with three daughters to raise. She had bills to pay all by herself, one income instead of two. She worked as a clerk for the Orange County Superior. Court a steady job, but not one that made you rich. She had to stretch every dollar, make sacrifices, figure out how to be both parents at once. But Linda made it work. She always made it work.

According to people that knew her, she was mature for her age. She loved Nintendo and video games, and her favorite place to visit was Chuck E. Cheese. But not for the pizza. She actually hated pizza. She just wanted to play the game. And she loved basketball. The neighbors across the street, the Deckers, had a hoop on top of their garage, and Autumn was over there all the time, shooting hoops with the other neighborhood kids.

At school, she loved playing tetherball at recess. Her best friend was a girl named Ranelle Hand, and they'd known each other since they were four. Autumn spent almost every weekend at Rennell's house. They were always having sleepovers and taking trips to the beach. The two were practically inseparable, and Rennell's mom, Linda Hand, treated Autumn like one of her own.

She was a really responsible kid. Linda also knew that on the off chance of anything happened, there were many people in their neighborhood that looked out for her daughter. So throughout 1990, Autumn was very familiar with this routine. When she would get home from school, she would sit at the table and color. She would make herself a snack, maybe watch some TV. And before she knew it, her mom would come through the door, and they'd spend the evening together, like they always did.

June fifteenth, nineteen ninety was just like any other day. It was a Friday. The sun was shining over Anaheim. The temperature was warm, but not unbearable. Schools across the city were letting out early. It was one of those half days that kids love so much. That morning, Autumn Wallace is getting ready for school. She's nine years old, fourth grade. Summer break is almost here. And today, school lets out at 235.

She already knows what she's going to do once she gets home. Her paper dolls are waiting for her, her crayon. Her mom Linda is rushing around getting ready for work. Her sister April is in the kitchen feeding her baby before she leaves for work. You'll be okay by yourself this afternoon? Linda asks. Autumn not. She's done this before, dozens of times. She knows the rules. Don't open the door for strangers.

Call a neighbor if something feels wrong. I'll be fine, Mom, she says. Linda kisses her goodbye. Autumn heads off to school. The day moves by quickly. At 2 35 p.m., the bell rings at Salk Elementary. Autumn grabs her backpack and she meets her friend Christina outside. They walk home together talking about summer plans, TV show.

what they're going to do this weekend. When they reach Autumn's house they say goodbye. See you Monday, they tell each other. Christina waves and keeps walking. Autumn turns and heads up her driveway. She unlocks the front door and steps inside. The house is quiet. The curtains are drawn against the afternoon sun. She sets her backpack down by the front door and walks into the living room. She sits down and picks up where she left off.

Cutting, coloring. Her scissors make a soft snipping sound as she cuts around a paper dress. But soon enough, her crafts are interrupted by the sound of a knock at the front door. Autumn freezes. She isn't expecting any visitors. She sets down her scissors and walks to the door, standing on her tiptoes as she peeks through the window. But once that door opened, no one would ever see Autumn Wallace alive again.

Hours later, around 4 30 PM, Autumn's sister April is sitting at work. She picks up the phone and dials her. She wants to let Autumn know she's going to be a little late getting home. The phone rings and rings and rings. No answer. It's strange. Autumn should be home by now. Her school let out almost two hours ago. But maybe she has the TV on a little too loud and can't hear the phone. April hangs up. She'll be home soon anyway.

Around 5:20 p.m., April pulls on to Headland Street. The sun is still up. It's a warm evening. She pulls into the driveway and enters the house through the garage door, but immediately she stops in her track. Things are missing. The TV, the VCR, the microwave. April walks towards her bedroom. A mirror is gone. Some of her personal belongings.

Clothes are scattered across the floor, like someone went through everything in a hurry. Autumn? Her voice echoes throughout the empty house. No answer. Autumn nothing. A pit forms in her stomach. Her hands are shaking. She peers down the hallway where she notices a light on in the back bathroom. The door is closed. She doesn't think anything of it at the time, but she's frightened. Something is very wrong here. The silence. The missing items and where is her sister?

Maybe Autumn heard the break-in and ran. Maybe she went to a neighbor's house like she was supposed to. April doesn't look any further. She turns around and walks out the front door. Across the street, the Deckers are home. She crosses over and knocks on the door. Kathy Decker answers. Did you see anything unusual today? April asks. Her voice is shaking. Someone broke into our house. Things are missing, and I can't find my sister. April stands in the Decker's living room. Her mind is racing.

The Deckers haven't seen anything, they haven't seen Autumn either. April watches the street through the window. About twenty minutes later, she sees her mother's car pull under their street. April runs outside. Inside the car, Linda sees her daughter April running towards her. She can tell just by the look on her face. Something is wrong. Linda gets out of the car. Frantic, April tells her someone broke in. The TV is gone, the VCR, a bunch of stuff. And mom? Her voice cracked.

I can't find Autumn. Linda's stomach drops. What do you mean you can't find her? April explains that she called out her sister's name, but she didn't answer. She admits that after seeing the house ransacked, she got scared and ran outside. Linda doesn't wait. She runs towards her house, through the front door. She sees the mess. The drawers open, things scattered everywhere.

But she doesn't care about any of that. She's looking for one thing. Autumn, Autumn, where are you? She yells out. Linda runs through the house. The living room, the kitchen, April's bedroom, her own bedroom. She looks through the closets, under the beds. She continues calling her daughter's name, her voice getting more desperate, and then she reaches the back of the house.

The hallway, the bathroom at the end. The light is on, the door is closed. Linda pushes it open. A moment in time that would forever change the course of her life. There, lying on the ground, is her baby girl. She's face down surrounded by blood, so much blood. She's not moving. She's not answering. Linda's legs give out. She falls to her knees.

And the little girl is hurt, hurt very badly. Randall Deckard then hangs up the phone as his wife Kathy tries to calm Linda down. But Linda can't stop screaming or shaking. She just keeps saying her daughter's name over and over. April is standing there frozen. She didn't go inside and see what her mother saw, but she can tell from the screaming, from the way her mother ran out of that house, that something was very, very wrong.

Within minutes the first sirens cut through the quiet neighborhood, red and blue lights flashing down Headland Street. A sheriff's patrol car pulled up first, and two deputies got out. Linda was on the Decker's lawn now, hysterical, barely able to speak. My daughter, she kept saying, My daughter, in the bathroom. There's blood, so much blood.

One deputy stayed with Linda while the other crossed the street and walked up the driveway. Through the front door, he moved through the hallway toward the back of the house and saw that the bathroom door was open, the light was on, and he saw her immediately. A little girl. He didn't need to check for a pulse, but he did anyways. And as he touched her, he knew that she had been gone for a while.

The deputy then walked back outside and grabbed his radio and said, We're gonna need homicide out here.

Linda already knew. She knew the moment she opened that bathroom door. But hearing it out loud makes it real. Her baby is gone.

Before they know it, more police cars are pulling onto Headland Street. Yellow crime scene tape goes up. It stretches across the driveway, across the front yard. A deputy stands at the perimeter, keeping everyone back. Linda is sitting on the Decker's front porch now. Someone has brought her a glass of water. She hasn't touched it. She's staring at her house across the street. The house where she raised her girls.

Where they ate dinner together every night. April is on the phone calling family, trying to get the words out, trying to explain something that doesn't make sense. Inside the house, more deputies arrive. They move carefully throughout the crime scene. No one touches anything. In the bathroom, one deputy notices an eyelash curler on the floor. It's right next to the body, right next to the knife. Another notices bloody footprints on the floor outside the bathroom. Shoeprints.

Someone walked through that blood. A crime scene van pulls up. Technicians in gloves and booties step out. One by one, they enter the house. They photograph everything. The camera flashes in the bathroom again and again.

On door frames, drawers, and surfaces the intruder touched. They find bloody shoe prints on the floor leading away from the bathroom. They find the knife, a pairing knife. It's from the Wallace family's own kitchen. The blade was only a few inches long, but it was long enough, and they find that eyelash curler lying on the floor next to Autumn's body. According to Linda and April, it doesn't belong to anyone in the family.

Around 9 p.m., the coroner's van arrives, and Linda's inside the Decker's house now, standing at the front window. She hasn't moved in hours. Her eyes were fixed on her house across the street. The yellow tape, the flashing lights, the strangers walking in and out of her home.

April stands beside her. Neither of them have spoken in a while. Kathy Decker is in the kitchen making coffee, doing something, something to keep her hands busy. The coffee, though, will go cold. No one will end up drinking it.

Linda is sobbing, those deep, heavy sobs that shake your whole body. April is still holding her up. It's all she can do. That's her baby sister in that back. The one she used to carry around when Autumn was a newborn, the one she helped raise. The one who was just here this morning, eating cereal, asking what time April would be home from work. The van doors close, the engine starts, and it pulls away.

The red taillights growing smaller and smaller until they disappear around the corner. Linda stays at the window, staring at the empty street. Kathy Decker comes up behind her. She puts a hand on her shoulder. Outside, neighbors are still standing on their lawns, watching, trying to make sense of what just happened on their quiet street.

This is not a rich neighborhood, Randall Decker said. It's pretty working class, very quiet and peaceful. A lot of kids. The neighbors here watch out for everybody else. That was the thing. Everyone here knew Autumn. They knew the way she would wave hello when she rode her bike past. They all vowed to look out for her, as well as all of the neighborhood kids. But now she's dead. murdered on their quiet street. And the investigation is just beginning.

Earlier that afternoon, she noticed a car in the Wallace's driveway that she didn't recognize. It was a Monicarlo, she says. Older model, kind of a reddish color, golden bronze, maybe. She remembers something else too. Two men, Hispanic, standing in the driveway facing the street, like they were waiting for something or someone. One of them was holding a baby, she said, a little one, maybe a year and a half old.

Another neighbor saw the same thing. The Monte Carlo, the two men, the baby, and a third neighbor confirms it. There were now three separate witnesses with the same story. A car that didn't belong, two men that didn't belong, and a baby. Investigator Giffin writes it all down. It's something not much, but it's something.

The technicians run the unknown prints through Cal ID, a statewide database that holds the fingerprints of everyone who's ever been arrested in California. They enter a print lifted from the bathroom, and immediately get a hit. The print belonged to a woman named Maria Del Rossio Alfaro, eighteen years old. She lives three blocks away from the Wallace home, and Giffin gets the call.

He then remembered the woman from last night, the one who stopped at the crime scene tape, the one with the boyfriend, and the baby. I know the family, she said. April's my friend. Immediately, Giffin goes to see Maria. When he arrives and tells her he'd like to ask some questions about what happened to Autumn, she doesn't hesitate.

Lieutenant Richard Olson tells the public, quote, We know that it sometimes takes something like that to have people come forward, end quote. He urges anyone with information to call in, quote, no matter how insignificant they might think it is, end quote. But the leads are drying up. The neighbors saw the Monte Carlo, two Hispanic men and a baby. But no license plate, no names. And so far, that's all they have.

On Saturday, June 23rd, Linda Wallace has to bury her baby. The service is at Magnolia Baptist Church in Anaheim. Nearly 200 people fill the pews. Family, friends, neighbors from Headland Street, classmates from Salk Elementary, teachers, people from the courthouse where Linda Work. Pink and white balloons line the aisles. Dozens of pink and white roses, carnations, and lilies of the valley.

At the front of the room sits a small open white casket. Inside, Autumn is clutching her favorite teddy bear. The Reverend, Michael Bradrick, steps to the front. He looks out at the mourner. At the balloons and the flowers and the tiny casket. He tells the crowd, Sometimes there are people like that who are so special that they teach us about life.

Autumn was one of those special people. He pauses. He knows what everyone is thinking, the question on all of their minds. How could this happen? How could a playful little girl be struck down by such senseless violence? He tells the crowd, there isn't any way our questions will ever be answered. It's simply not possible. The sacred things of God are secret and too high for us. There are some things God does that we don't understand. grace is one of them.

A classmate stands, a little girl, maybe nine or ten herself. She says she liked to play tetherball with Autumn at recess, because Autumn was never stingy, and she didn't brag about winning. At the end of the service, the Reverend addressed the mourners one last time. This is an occasion to remind us how important it is to value the lives of our children, he said. Sometimes they are remembered as a responsibility or a burden, but we need to remember they are a precious gift God has given us.

The service lasts half an hour. When it ends, the mourners file slowly past the white casket, past the little girl inside. Autumn was wearing a white dress with a baby blue ribbon in her hair and on her dress. She looked like a sleeping angel. Many of them smile instead of cry. Linda stands at the casket and doesn't want to leave. Doesn't want to walk away from her baby. Her daughters, April and Amber, are on either side of her.

The three of them staring down at the little girl who used to come running when they got home. Now she's so still, so quiet. Linda reaches out and touches her daughter's face one last time. That afternoon, a smaller crowd gathers at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cyprus. The sun is shining. It's a beautiful day. The kind of day Autumn would have spent shooting hoops at the Decker's house or riding her bike around the neighborhood.

Instead, they're lowering a small casket into the ground. Pink and white flowers rest on top, and Linda watches it disappear into the earth. Her baby girl forever. Nine years old.

She called Ruelis and asked her to leave the bag outside. She said she was leaving for Mexico early the next morning and would come by to pick it up, but she never came back for it. Giffen drives over. He gets a warrant to search the bag. Inside he finds some clothes. But he also finds something else a pair of boots, and a pair of LA gear tennis shoes. He brings the items to the crime lab. He reaches out to the Wallace family. Do any of you recognize these? he asks.

April Wallace points to the boots. Those are mine, she says. They were stolen from her bedroom the day Autumn was killed. From here, Detective Giffin goes back to the woman who called in the tip, Maria Ruele. She was able to confirm that the other pair of shoes, the LA geared tennis shoes, belonged to Maria Alfaro. They were shoes she wore often, and on the bottom of them was blood.

The technicians ran DNA testing, and soon enough, they learned whose blood it belonged to: nine-year-old Autumn Wallace. In addition, Maria's LA geared tennis shoes matched the bloody shoe prints found at the crime scene. But there's more. Over the past nine days, technicians had lifted a total of 26 fingerprints and a palm print from inside the Wallace house. Many of them were Maria.

The next day, June 25th, at 1 15 in the afternoon, they found her. She was in the front yard of a home at the corner of Jeffrey and Audrey Drive. Maria saw the police cars pull up and watched as the officers stepped out, but she wasn't worried. They probably just had a few more questions, she thought to herself. She had handled the last interview no problem.

She told them she used to live with the Wallaces, that they took her in when no one else would. She told them she just wanted to help, and they had let her walk right out the door. She could do it again. She started walking towards them ready to be helpful, ready to play the concerned friend one more time. But this time around, they don't ask her to come in for questions. They tell her to turn around. She was under arrest, and Maria froze.

This time, it's not voluntary. She's not walking out. And this time, the detectives have everything the prints, the boots, the blood on her shoes. Now all they need is a confession. The interview lasts more than four hours, and Maria sobs throughout. She changes her story, then changes it again. First, she says she saw the knife on the ground. Then she says it was on top of the washer. Then she admits she took it from a kitchen drawer.

The detectives notice. They write it down. They keep pushing, and then one of them leans in, looks her right in the eyes. Do you believe in God? I want you to tell me the truth. Why did you pick up the knife?

He beat Maria. He beat her mother. He did it right in front of the other children in the family. During his drunken rages, he would throw the whole family out of the house, just put them out on the street. Maria's childhood friend Janelle Laird knew him. She'd known Maria since preschool, and even she remembered being afraid of Maria's father. She remembered him vomiting in front of them when he was drunk.

She remembered watching him hit Maria and her mother. A neighbor named Dolores remembered it too. She said Maria's father would threaten to kill Sylvia and

Which meant Maria was on her own a lot, no one watching her, no one knowing where she was or who she was with. And at school, Maria experienced racism from other kids. She was struggling in class and had learning disabilities that no one diagnosed. She just didn't fit in, and she didn't want to be there. By the time she was eleven, she started skipping school.

She was shooting up speed balls dozens of times a day for weeks at a time. A speed ball is cocaine and heroin cooked together. The cocaine hits first. Right. This burst of energy, but it burns off fast. And when it does, you feel the heroin. It drags you down hard, so you shoot up again and again. Every half hour, your body is screaming for more.

That's why Maria was shooting up dozens of times a day. She wasn't partying. She was just trying to stay ahead of the crash. A counselor at her school saw the signs. He called her mother Sylvia into his office. He slid the paperwork for a rehab program across the desk. Sylvia picked it up. She looked at the numbers. She worked 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and it's still worked. She couldn't afford to save her own child.

During that time, no one was watching. No one knew where she was. Her hands were shaking, her stomach was cramping. She needed to get high. Not wanted to, it's important here, needed to. The sickness wouldn't stop until she got what she needed, and this was her life now. She started running away for days at a time, and her mother would find her on the streets, dirty, hungry, shoeless.

and Maria needed money constantly. Her habit didn't come cheap, and at thirteen years old she couldn't exactly just go and get a job.

Men who didn't care. She was a child, but that didn't matter to them. And for her, she was an addict who needed a fix. Her mother Sylvia knew her daughter needed help. Help that she couldn't give her. At some point, she even sent Maria to live with her grandmother in Mexico, hoping that getting her away from Anaheim, away from the drugs, would help.

But after five months, Maria came home, and nothing had changed. But this time, Sylvia managed to get her into a rehab program. However, after ten days, her money ran out. She couldn't afford to keep her there.

By the time she was fifteen, Maria was barely recognizable, and her mother watched her deteriorate right before her eyes. Sylvia would later say she wore heavy makeup, black clothing, and was always dirty. She didn't care how she looked.

Then, somewhere in those years, Maria met Manuel Cueva. We don't know where or what the circumstances were, but he became her boyfriend. And unlike the other men in her life, The dealers, the strangers, the blur of faces she couldn't remember, Manuel stayed. At seventeen, Maria had another baby, a boy named Manuel, after his father. They called him Manny. By all accounts, Maria loved her two children. She worried about them.

But even so, her addiction always came first. She put drugs over everyone, over her partners, her children, her friends, and even herself. She took advantage of people, and after years and years of struggling, Maria had damaged most of her relationships.

A dimension of truth, lies, and murders. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance of deadly secrets and explosive ideas. You've just crossed over into. The Conspiracy Zone. I'm your host Colin Brown. Join me now on this journey into the world of secret pedophile rings, government cover-ups, and suspicious suicides on my new show, The Conspiracy Files. Available now on all streaming platforms.

People who knew her described Maria as erratic and unpredictable. She would show up at people's houses at all hours, asking for money, asking for rides, always with some excuse for why she needed help. And one of those people was April Wallace, Autumn's older sister. Before Maria had dropped out, she and April had gone to school together. For a while, they were friends.

Maria visited the Wallace home on many occasions. She even lived there for a short time when she was pregnant with her second child. The Wallace family saw that she was struggling, and they wanted to do what they could for this pregnant teenage girl who clearly needed some stability. Linda got to know Maria, and so did Autumn. Like any little girl, Autumn looked up to her big sister and wanted to be around her all the time.

When April had friends over, Annum would knock on her bedroom door, hoping to hang out with them. Sometimes they let her, other times they didn't. It was your typical sister relationship. When Maria came to live with the family, Autumn would hang out with the girls from time to time. But by nineteen eighty nine, things started to sour between Maria and April.

Much like all of Maria's relationships, she started taking advantage of her, started lying, and April picked up on it. There were too many stories that just didn't add up, and she stopped trusting Maria. And soon enough, the friendship was over. Maria moved out of the Wallace home, but she didn't stop pursuing April. She would call her, asking for rides, asking for favors.

April would answer the phone, but she would make excuses. She was trying her best to distance herself, but Maria kept showing up.

On the morning of June 15, 1990, Maria woke up feeling sick. And it wasn't just morning sickness from her pregnancy. She needed drugs. She was staying at her boyfriend's father's apartment in Anaheim. Drug use was common there, and as soon as Maria opened her eyes, she got up and reached into her supply. Her one year old baby was right there in the room with her. For the next few hours, Maria injected drugs into her veins.

Feeling the effects of both cocaine and heroin. When she had used the last of the drugs, she immediately went searching for more. Nearby, In an area of Anaheim called Little Tijuana was an apartment complex where her drug dealer lived. At 11 a.m., Maria grabbed her one year old and made her way over. The dealer was named Huero. She bought two dime bags from him.

A couple doors down from the dealer lived an old friend of hers named Juan. People often came to Juan's apartment to shoot up. Maria stepped inside with her baby and her two dime bags. There were already several people using drugs in the living room. There was a girl named Sabrina. There was another man named Antonio Reynoso, who went by the name Shorty. He had just gotten out of prison the day before. He was an addict as well. And from here, everyone sat around the apartment shooting up.

They all took turns holding Maria's baby. Once someone would come down from their high, it was their turn to hold him, while the others grabbed their needles. This went on for hours. Eventually, Maria ran out of drugs yet again. But luckily, Shorty, the man she had just met, was willing to share with her. They all shot up some more, until eventually those drugs ran out as well.

Every person in the room had scraped their bags clean. There were no drugs left. There was no money left. But the need to keep getting high was very much there. That feeling never left. It was constant. But what would they do? Maria and Shorty began to brainstorm. She had already sold all things of value that she owned. She had already stolen from everyone around her. There was nothing else to pawn.

If she and Shorty were going to get money for their next fix, they'd have to steal from someone else. Maria racked her mind, thinking of who they could rob, and that's when she thought of it the Wallace family.

But soon enough, he met up with them at the Little Tijuana apartment complex. Maria tells the men at this time about the Wallace home. In the time that Maria spent living with the Wallace family the year prior, she knew that during the day their house was empty. Linda and April went to work, nine year old Autumn went to school. It was the perfect plan, or so she thought.

What Maria didn't know, but she had no way of knowing, was that today was a half day at Autumn's school. Instead of coming home at the normal time later in the day, Autumn would get out at two hundred thirty five PM. She was already on her way home as Maria was forming her plan.

And then there's the driver. Together, they all make their way towards Headland Street. It's a short drive, just a few minutes. Maria watches the streets pass by, bouncing her baby on her left. She sees the apartment buildings, the strip malls, the neighborhoods getting a little nicer the closer they get. Then she sees the street sign. Turn here, she tells the driver. Headland Street is a nice block. Working class. Kids ride their bikes here. Neighbors know each other's names.

The Monte Carlo pulls into the driveway of two hundred four three nine, the Wallace House. Maria looks at the home, the windows, the front door. There's no movement. It seems to be empty, just like she told them. She hands her baby to Shorty. Wait here, she says. I'll be right back. Maria gets out of the car, walks up the driveway, up to the front door. Inside the house, Autumn's in the living room.

Her paper doll spread out in front of her. She's been home for a while now. She did her homework, had a snack. She's just waiting for her sister April to get home from work, but then she hears a knock. Autumn gets up, walks to the front door, and looks through the window. Now Autumn knows not to open the door to strangers, but this isn't a stranger. It's Maria, April's friend.

Autumn smiles and opens the door. Maria stands in the doorway shocked. Autumn wasn't supposed to be here, but here she is. Now, later on, when questioned, Maria would say that she knew right then that she had to kill Autumn. Autumn knew her fate. She knew her name. If Maria took anything from that house, Autumn would tell the police what happened. So it's in that moment where she felt she had no other choice but to kill her. But Maria did have a choice.

She could have turned around right then and there. By that point, she hadn't committed any crime. The reality was. She didn't decide to kill Autumn because her freedom was being threatened. When Autumn opened that door, Maria made a decision. To her, getting high was more important than this child's life.

And she was willing to violently kill her to make it happen. Once that decision was made, Maria smiled at the nine-year-old little girl. Hey, she says, Is April home? Autumn shakes her head. She's at work. Maria looks around behind her. What about your mom? she asks. She's at work too, Autumn responds. Maria pauses. Can I use your bathroom? I really have to go. Autumn steps aside, letting Maria in. The door closes behind them. The house is quiet. The bathroom's in the back, Autumn says.

You remember? Yeah, I remember, Maria says. She walks through the house, past the living room, but as she passes through the kitchen, she pauses. She stops to open a drawer. Inside is a pairing knife. Her fingers close around the handle. Autumn doesn't notice. Maria keeps walking towards the bathroom. It's small with white tiles. A big mirror above the sink. Maria steps inside and partially closes the door. She stands there, knife in hand.

She can feel the weight of it, the cheap wooden handle, the thin blade maybe four inches long. In her other hand is her makeup bag. She sets it on the edge of the sink, opens it up, and pulls out an eyelash curler. Her hands are shaking, not from the drugs this time, from something else. She stands there for several minutes, holding a knife in one hand, and the eyelash curler in the other.

Thinking, she can hear Autumn in the other room, scissors cutting paper, a little girl playing by herself on a Friday afternoon. But Maria has already made up her mind on how this is going to end. Autumn, she calls out. Her voice sounds normal, calm even. Can you come in here and help me for a second? Autumn sets down her scissors, gets up from the table, walks down the hallway towards the bathroom. She doesn't hesitate. Why would she? It's her sister's friend.

When she opens the door, Maria is standing by the sink. She holds out the eyelash curler. Can you clean these for me? It's a strange request, but Autumn likes being helpful. She takes the curler from Maria's hands and turns towards the sink to turn it on. Her back is to Maria. Maria raises the knife.

The first stab hits Autumn in the back. The blade punches through skin and muscle. Autumn's body jerks forward. She tries to turn around, tries to understand what just happened, but her brain hasn't caught up yet. One second she was rinsing an eyelash curler. The next, something is burning in her back. And sadly, Maria doesn't stop there. She stabs again and again and again, all over Autumn's chest, her back, her head, everywhere.

Autumn doesn't scream. That's what Maria would later tell police. She didn't scream. She just looked at her. Those big brown eyes, looking up at the person who was killing her. Trying to understand why. The eyelash curler drops to the tile floor, and makes a small metallic sound, barely audible over everything else, but the knife keeps coming down, over and over again.

Maria is on top of her now. Autumn is on the floor, the white tile turning red, blood pooling around her small body, spreading outward in a dark, slow circle. Maria plunged the knife into her fifty seven times. In her head, neck, chest, and torso. The wounds to her heart and larynx are what killed her.

By the time Maria stops, there's almost nowhere left on the little girl's upper body that hasn't been punctured. And then it's quiet. Maria stands up. She's breathing hard. Her hands are covered in blood, her clothes, her shoes. She looks down at what she's done, and then Maria walks over to the sink. She turns on the faucet, washes the blood off her hands, watches it swirl down the drain, pink, then clear. Then she gets to work.

Maria walks out the front door and across the driveway to the Monte Carlo, where Shorty and the driver are waiting with her one year old child. She's carrying a television in broad daylight on a quiet street where neighbors know each other's names. She loads it into the car, goes back inside, and comes out with a VCR. The driver helps her load it. She then goes back inside, grabs a typewriter, a mirror, a telephone, a clock radio.

Next she goes into April's room. She takes some of her clothing, a pair of April's boots. She goes into Linda's room, takes another telephone, an iron, a lamp, a radio, a Nintendo console, Autumn's Nintendo, the one she loved to play. She takes a clock from the living room. A calculator. She tries to take the microwave, but it won't fit in the car, so she leaves it. Trip after trip, in and out, loading the trunk, the back seat, whatever will fit.

As the Monte Carlo fills up with items, Maria's baby starts to fuss. He's been out there for a while now, tired, hungry. A baby who has no idea what just happened inside that house. Finally, Maria climbs in and closes the door. She grabs her baby, putting him on her lap. She had just murdered someone else's baby, but that doesn't matter to her. All she cares about is getting her necks fixed. The Moni Carlo backs out of the driveway, on its way to sell the stolen items.

By the end of that day, Maria would sell everything the TV, the VCR, the typewriter, the Nintendo, all of it. Everything she had stolen from that house. Everything that a nine-year-old girl lost her life over, and all she got in return was less than three hundred dollars.

Little did Maria know, she matched the description that neighbors had seen earlier that day outside of the Wallace home. After her first interview with police, she started making plans to leave for Mexico. She must have felt the walls closing in. And they were. After finding the bloody shoes Maria left at her friend's house, investigators got the confirmation they needed, and after showing her the evidence, she confessed.

Now, during her interrogation, she admitted that a man named Shorty, who she met that very day, came to the scene. But she never named the driver of the Monte Carlo. Investigators suspected that Maria knew exactly who he was, but she refused to name them. She also said she acted alone inside that house.

that Shorty and the driver never stepped foot inside. They just helped her load the stolen items. At the end of her confession, investigators asked her, So, what did you end up getting out of it? And Maria replied, Nothing.

Although April and Maria were no longer friends, this was someone they let into their home, someone they fed and put a roof over. They took Maria in at her lowest. And this was how she repaid them.

But another neighbor, Jeff Mata, knew it wasn't over, saying, It's good they arrested her, but I know that there are at least two more to go. And he was right. After Maria's confession, investigators started looking for the man they only knew as Shorty, but he would actually turn himself in. Antonio Reynoso walked into a police station ready to confess.

He told investigators that he was there that day, that he helped Maria load all the stolen items into the car, but he said he never stepped foot into that house. It should be noted that his fingerprints weren't found in the house either, so he could be telling the truth. Antonio also claimed that he had no idea Maria had murdered a little girl that day until he read about it in the paper, and that's when he turned himself in.

Now, authorities weren't so sure about that part. After stabbing Autumn 57 times, Maria's clothing would have been covered in blood. But Antonio swore up and down that he didn't see any blood on her clothes. Maybe Maria changed while inside the house. Or Antonio was lying. Whatever the case may be, they finally had their second guy. Now they just had to find the driver. But like Maria, Antonio couldn't tell them who he was.

For months, investigators would comb through possible suspects. They looked into a hundred different men around town, but nothing panned out. With each lead, they hit a dead end, one that they'd never solved.

But investigators seem pretty confident, given the evidence at the scene, that Maria was the only person who went into that house. Now as for her trial, Autumn's family would have to wait two years before they got justice.

During that time, Maria would give birth to her twin. I also wasn't able to find anything about them and how they were doing, considering their mother's heavy drug use and utero. But finally, in March of 1992, Maria Alfaro would walk into an Orange County courtroom to stand trial. She was twenty years old, her four children growing up without her, and she was facing the death penalty.

Now, facing death, her defense team tried to claim that there was another man inside that house, a man named Beto. Maria claimed that Beto forced Maria to kill Autumn, that he threatened to kill her baby if she didn't. Her attorneys told the court, Afaro may have stabbed little Autumn Wallace, but she did not kill her. However, the prosecution was quick to point out that there was zero evidence of this.

Maria's fingerprints were the only ones found in that house. Antonio Reynoso, the other man who was admittedly there that day, also claimed that that wasn't true. He said that he and the driver stayed outside the entire time. There were no threats, no one forced Maria to go inside of that house, and no one had made her kill nine year old Autumn.

They don't look at her. Maria stands, her legs shaking. She reaches out and grabs her attorney's hand, holding it tight. Then, the judge reads the verdict. Guilty. For Autumn's family, they felt a relief that they hadn't felt in years. But the fight wasn't over just yet. They still had the penalty phase. Given her conviction, Maria was facing two possible sentences: life without parole or death. When it came to that decision, Maria Alfaro squeezed her attorney's hand even harder.

And soon enough a second jury would hear her case. Maria's defense brought in witnesses, childhood friends, her boyfriend, Manuel Cueva, her mother, Sylvia, They told the jury about Maria's childhood, her alcoholic father who beat her and her mother, the rape at nine years old, and the drugs at twelve, the prostitution at thirteen.

A mental health expert, doctor Consuelo Edwards, testified that Maria had an IQ of seventy eight. She had learning disabilities that were never diagnosed, attention deficit disorder, a dependent personality. A follower, Doctor Edwards called her, Someone with low impulse control, which was made worse by years of drug abuse. Maria cried throughout the testimonies.

She cried when her mother talked about trying to save her. She cried when Manuel described bringing their children to visit her at the county jail. And I'm sure that there were times when the jury felt for the child Maria once was, for the horrible upbringing she had to endure. But at the end of the day, she was an adult when she took the life of Autumn Wallace.

Whatever sympathy they had for her, if any, went out the door when they heard the details of Autumn's murder, when they saw the crime scene photos, the fifty-seven stab wounds on a nine-year-old girl. And this time the jury was unanimous. On july fourteenth, nineteen ninety-two, Maria Del Rosio Alfaro was sentenced to death, and at twenty years old, she became the first woman in Orange County history to receive the death penalty.

Superior Court Judge Theodore Millard called the murder of Autumn Wallace senseless, brutal, vicious, and callous. He said it was the worst crime he had ever seen.

So, Maria Alfaro remains on death row at the Central California Women's Facility. She's in her mid-50s now, older than Autumn would ever get to be.

The hurt is still there. It's always there no matter how much time passes by. She would be in her forties now. She could be married. She could have kids. That's what I think about. That's what bothers me the most. not being able to see her grow up.

I'm not that much for that. If she is put to death, then another mother loses her child. I know what it feels like to lose a child.

Following the murder, Linda couldn't even stomach being in that house anymore. She couldn't go back. Not to the home where she lived for seventeen years, not to that bathroom, not to any of it. She found a place in a gated community in Garden Grove. She tried to start over, but the grief didn't let up. Linda said that Fridays were the worst. Every Friday evening it came back. The front door, the ransacked house,

The bathroom. Linda started planning things after work on Fridays so she wouldn't have to go straight home. Anything to fill the hours, anything to keep her mind somewhere else. But another unexpected part of her grief were the relationships she lost over the years. Linda said that in the beginning, friends tried to help.

But one by one, they pulled away. They didn't know what to say anymore. They told her to try and move on, to put it behind her. But you don't put something like this behind you. Year after year, her circle got smaller. However, there was one person who never pulled away. Her name was Linda Hand. She was the mother of Autumn's best friend Rennell. The girls had known each other since they were four. Autumn used to spend almost every weekend at the Hans house, sleepovers, outings, short trips.

She was treated like part of the family. When Autumn was killed, Linda Han lost someone too, but she didn't have the uncertainties that keep some people from reaching out. She didn't wonder what to say to Linda. She just showed up. She was one of the first people Linda Wallace asked for on the night that Autumn was murdered. And she's been there for her ever since. In their weekly get togethers, the two Lindas would talk about autumn, look at pictures, remember the good times.

We both lost someone we love very much, Linda Wallace said. We both know how great she was. She was as near perfect of a kid as she could be. End quote. Linda Han even made Linda Wallace, a scrapbook of autumn. In the pictures, she's seen smiling, playing with Rennell. I always feel better when I'm with Linda, Hand said. I feel lucky she let me into her life. Otherwise, the pain would be unbearable.

Autumn Wallace should have turned 45 this year. She should have graduated from Salk Elementary, gone to middle school, high school, maybe college. She should have fallen in love, built a career, had children of her own, grown old alongside her sisters. Instead, she died on a bathroom floor at nine years old, stabbed 57 times by someone she knew, someone she let into her home. But Maria Alfaro will forever be known as the woman who killed a little girl for less than$300 worth of stolen items.

Autumn Wallace will be known for so much more. Her old classmates still think about her from time to time. They remember her smile, playing tetherball with her at recess, because she was never stingy and didn't brag about winning. They remember the girl who loved fishing with her dad, Nintendo, Chuck E. Cheese, and Crack. An old classmate April Cruz said this I wish that her name wasn't remembered as the slain nine-year-old girl, but as the person she really was.

An angel on earth who smiled and loved to laugh and loved life. Her smile was truly contagious. I truly am honored to have known her.

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