By Anita Miller
From the outset, the capital murder trial of former Kyle resident Krystal Villanueva was anything but ordinary — but so was her crime.
Villanueva, 27, not only stabbed her five-year-old daughter to death, she cut off the child’s head, fingers and toes after the girl asked for cereal. Villanueva attacked her father-in-law with the same knife on Jan. 5, 2017 inside the mobile home they all shared.
Villanueva was found guilty of both crimes on Thursday by a Hays County jury that deliberated for less than four hours. Because it was a capital offense concerning the death of a child under the age of 10, Villanueva received an automatic sentence of life without parole.
Villanueva’s attorney didn’t deny her guilt but argued that she was suffering from a syndrome that made her believe her family had been replaced by imposters or clones. She removed her dead daughter’s fingers, the argument went, because she was looking for a ring that would help her restore her real family.
So deep was her delusion that when District Judge Bill Henry asked for her plea, her attorney rose to say the defendant “stood mute,” basically declaring she was incapable of knowing what she did was wrong.
“It’s fairly unusual for a defendant to stand mute and have the court enter a not guilty pleas on her behalf,” District Attorney Wes Mau said the day after the verdict was delivered. “But in an insanity defense you cannot enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, so I think it is probably more common in those cases.”
Another early indication that the trial was outside the purview of most murder cases were remarks by both the defense and prosecution advising jurors that although crime scene photos would be described in court and entered into evidence, whether or not to personally view them was the choice of each individual juror.
Again, Mau explained. “In every case where there are photos of a crime scene I would offer those photos into evidence,” he told the Hays Free Press. In this case the defendant’s guilt of the crime and how it was committed were not issues that the jury was likely going to struggle with, since the defendant was admitting to what she did.”
Mau said he made the decision to tell the jury what he did because “the graphic nature of the photos was such that I didn’t not want to put them on the big screen in front of the victim’s family and the more sensitive members of the jury, so I let them know they should look at the photos if they had any doubts that the pictures could resolve.”
Law enforcement personnel who responded to the scene that day of the little girl’s death had no such cushion, finding the girl partially dismembered after encountering Villanueva inside the home’s living room, just out of the shower and naked.
Villanueva’s father-in-law Eustorgio Arellano was home for lunch when he heard her daughter Giavanna whimpering in a bedroom, saying “mommy, no!”
Then, he testified, Villanueva came into the room with a knife and stabbed him in the back. He fled to call 911, advising what had happened and that Villanueva was still inside with the girl.
The SWAT team had been called and had arrived and surrounded the residence when Villanueva placed a call to 911 complaining that people were outside who wanted to kill her. Then she added that she had killed her daughter “because she asked for cereal” and that she had also stabbed her father-in-law.
That’s when SWAT forcefully entered
Testimony in the trial went on for eight days, with witnesses including members of the SWAT team and other law enforcement personnel and expert witnesses called by both sides. Eustorgio Arellano also took the stand.
Mau argued that Villanueva didn’t suddenly “snap,” and pointed to her history of mental health issues and drug use, as well as that her “symptoms” at the time of the crime had not surfaced before nor after her arrest.
In addition to the automatic life sentence, Henry gave Villanueva 20 years behind bars for the attack on Arellano.
“A case like this leaves an unforgettable mark on everyone involved, especially the child’s family,” Mau said. “Every law enforcement member who worked on this case will forever be traumatized by what Ms. Villanueva did to her innocent daughter. I commend all the investigators and officers who endured this horror with calm professionalism so that justice could be done.”
