Hello and Welcome to AlitaDogma’s Shades of Murder, a podcast where I will share and discuss tales of true crime, mysteries, and all things dark and macabre. If you eat, play, and dream in shades of murder like me, then welcome my kindred spirits to your new podcast home.
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Please be forewarned that each episode contains specific, and at times very graphic and disturbing details of the case, and may not be intended for all audiences.
Familicide. Family annihilation. Familial homicide. All of these are different terms that describe the killing of one’s own family which all fit under the umbrella term of mass murder. How familicide is quantified is quite complicated, and it is often not agreed upon by law enforcement nor researchers. Some use familicide as a term to define the killing of family members which can encompass a wide range of related offenses. These can include parents who kill their children, also known as filicide. It may also involve crimes where children kill their parents, which is called parricide, or it may include any perpetrator within a family who takes the lives of another family member, including that of the extended familial circle.
Familicide is very rare, but more than 50% of all mass murders within the U.S. involves the killing of one or more of their own family members. Take the monstrous twisted individual behind the Sandy Hook Tragedy whose first killing that day was the murder of his own mother. The media has barely focused on this fact. This is understandable of course given how he committed the most heartbreaking and senseless of crimes that day, but it is interesting to note that the crimes which unfolded that day began first within his own family. The definition of familicide, and therefore the statistics, are often met with obscurity and confusion and are often embedded within the hierarchy of other crimes. This makes the real number of familicide acts very difficult to measure.
In a study on familicide conducted between 2000-2009, there were 629 incidents with 207 that involved the murder of the spouse, or intimate partner, and at least one of the children. The high majority of the recorded acts of familicide are committed by the father or a primary male figure of the family. Due to this fact, studies on women who have committed familicide are very uncommon, and thus the literature is minimal. However, it is estimated that women comprise as high as 5% of the perpetrators of familial homicide. Interestingly enough, women are overrepresented in the murder of family members. This means that female homicide offenders’ victims are predominantly their spouse, or an intimate partner, or exclusively their children. Having their victims be both their partner and their kids is extremely rare, and almost unheard of. The case of Isabel Martinez is an exception to this rule.
Loganville, Georgia is a quiet little town with around 15,000 citizens centrally located between the larger cities of Athens and the capital Atlanta. The town’s official motto is “Where People Matter” which signifies the importance it places on traditional values and principles, in particular, God, schools, and family. On July 6th, 2016, this hometown community would forever be shattered by a family massacre. As dawn began to peak its way into the sticky warm summer night, somewhere between 2 am and 4 am, a wife and mother of five young children, would brutally attack one by one her entire family as they slept. Yielding a serrated kitchen knife, she ambushed and viciously stabbed all five of her young children in bed. When her husband awoke to witness this nightmare, he pleaded with her and begged her to stop. Martin Romero attempted to escape her and get help, but Isabel attacked him, stabbing the father of her children into eternal silence. The mother called 911 afterwards and frantically reported that her entire family had been fatally stabbed. When investigators arrived, she was found cutting away at her own wrists. She initially told the DFCS investigators, which is The Division of Family & Children Services, that someone else had come into their home and slaughtered her family. Isabel Martinez swore that it was a family friend, who came around regularly, although she would not identify them by name. Little did she know that her second-to-oldest daughter Diana had survived.
Diana Romero’s account of the night’s events goes as follows. The little girl, who was only nine years old at the time of the attack, awoke in the middle of the night to see her Mom grab a knife from the kitchen, and calmly walk towards her in the bedroom. Her mother, the woman who had fed and clothed her, and tucked her and her siblings into bed at night, now held her close with a knife pressed to her. She whispered to Diana “Forgive me, I love you…you are going to the sky to see Jesus" and then plunged the knife deep into her daughter’s flesh. The terrified little girl cried and told her mother that she did not want to go see Jesus. Isabel dragged Diana into her own bedroom so that she could watch her husband wake up, and show him what she had done. Her father, Martin Romero, flew to the living room in an attempt to escape to get help, but as he reached the door, Isabel stabbed him repeatedly until he died on the floor of their mobile home.
When her baby brother, two-year-old Axel awoke, Isabel stabbed him and then held his tiny nostrils together tight so he could not breathe. She then watched as her toddler gagged and choked on his own blood. Diana continued to watch in horror as her Mom stabbed her two other brothers Dacota and Dillian, and then her sister Isabela. She recalled how her Mom stabbed each of her siblings, and then suffocated them until they stopped breathing. She then carried them one by one into her parent’s bedroom and laid them all together across the bed. Isabel placed a Bible upon each one of their chests.
This pending tragedy was rampant with warning signs and messages of doom days if not even weeks before. From the words of Isabel Martinez herself, she had warned several people in her life what she intended to do to her family. Her father had died a few weeks prior, and the sequence of events after that would unfold like a trail of breadcrumbs to her act of familicide.
Isabel was a deeply religious Christian woman. She was consumed with the notion that her father’s soul was in jeopardy since he had been a practitioner of Witchcraft in their native land of Mexico. Witnesses claimed that they watched her light candles in church, and burn her hands with the flames as she obsessively prayed for salvation for her father’s spirit. For Isabel, she believed that such a sacrifice in the form of her own pain would help her father find his way out of the pit fires of hell, and into heaven with God.
Now preceding the events of familicide, Isabel had conveyed to an employee of the Division of Family and Children Services that she had felt a devil-like force attempting to lure her children away while they played in the Ocean on a recent trip to Savannah, GA. It is beyond my understanding how such a delusional and creepy expression made by a Mother about her own kids was simply ignored. That it was ignored by an employee of an organization whose primary purpose, and thus responsibility is to protect, support, and preserve families warrants in my opinion that this individual be held partially responsible for their deaths.
To me, this person’s actions, or rather their lack of intervention, falls within the parameters of mandatory reporting which they should have been held accountable for.
Mandatory reporting varies from state to state, but it is a statute that essentially holds all adults responsible, who are in a position where their profession is frequently engaged with children. Under this law, such persons are required and can be held liable if they fail to report any known or suspected maltreatment or abuse of a child. The most obvious examples of mandatory reporters would be teachers, physicians, members of law enforcement, therapists, counselors, childcare providers, and of course, social workers. Some states apply this statute to all adults no matter what their profession is. Georgia’s statute includes those professions aforementioned, in addition to those who process or produce visual or printed materials, such as someone who processes private film. Needless to say, at the very least, this person who neglected to report these strange and disturbing comments a mother made regarding the lives of her children should have led to their dismissal in this position. Their decision to not report this concern, or even bring up the matter to someone else, is justifiably infuriating. In 2015, strangely enough, the family had been investigated regarding allegations that Isabel’s husband, Martin Romero, had harshly disciplined their kids. It was alleged that he struck them with a belt and a phone charger cord when they would refuse to stay asleep at night. It was decided at the time that the kids were in a healthy, happy, and loving environment without any real risk posed to them. How ironic that it was the Dad who was considered a legitimate threat to the family.
It was not only the Division of Family and Children Services who ignored the dire warnings which Isabel clearly had given them. After her father had died, Isabel told different members of her family, in particular one of her husband’s cousins Griselda, how she was willing to do whatever it took to save his soul and rescue her father from hell. Griselda, after the tragedy had already happened, told investigators how Isabel had told her that she had made a promise to hand her children over to an evil force. Her husband’s niece, Yohanna, also reported after the fact to investigators, that Isabel had said that she was even willing to make a deal with God to take her own kids if she could have her father back. Another niece, Edith, revealed how Isabel had shared only four days before the murders that she would “put to sleep” her family. How and why all of these cries for help, these obvious messages that these innocent young children were in grave danger from their Mother were brushed aside can only be answered by those who experienced it themselves.
I personally cannot imagine someone telling me these things, especially a parent, and taking any chance of their coming to fruition by failing to report my concerns to the authorities. Orlando, who was her husband Martin Romero’s brother, also gave insight into Isabel’s mental state preceding the events. Apparently, he was worried about his wife and had recently taken her to a doctor to prescribe her antidepressants. I could not find any information, or if it was known how long before the familicide this attempt at medical assistance occurred, and if, and how often she was taking the antidepressants, but at least her husband cared enough to try to help her.
It was also confessed by Isabel Martinez herself how she had visited a priest two weeks prior to killing her family. She had shared with the priest that she believed that bad people were after her, but the Priest told her it was all in her head. Even if hypothetically, it was only in her head, that does not negate what Isabel was feeling and experiencing, much less did it prevent the violence that culminated from her mental state. Isabel communicated to the investigators that she had sought salvation for her husband and children and that she believed she did what was right in order to achieve this. However, I can not help but ponder upon how this statement contradicts her conveyance to several people in her life. As they reported to the officials, after the crime had been executed, she was willing to sacrifice her children and her family for her father’s salvation. Why were these kinds of conflicting, if not outright misleading, and suspicious statements of the possibly true motive behind Isabel Martinez’s actions never used by the prosecution? Why did the state attorney not use this information to poke holes into and squash her use of the insanity defense in court? That they so easily accepted the insanity defense is really beyond my comprehension.
Given the indisputable evidence that was provided by her surviving child Diana to the investigators, Isabel Martinez did finally admit the truth about murdering her family. For the murders of her husband Martin Romero and their four children which included Isabela 10, Dakota 7, Dillan 4, and Axel, who was barely 2 years old, she was charged with five counts of murder and five counts of “malice murder”. Malice murder, according to Georgia law, equates to the totality of the circumstances. The totality of the circumstances within criminal law means that the sum of all of the elements of the criminal act involved had demonstrated that the killings were evident of an abandoned and malignant heart. I will break these components of the criminal law into more digestible parts for you.
First, mens rea, which is Latin for “guilty mind” is one of the two most important elements which constitutes a criminal act. In the criminal law, mens rea describes an offender’s state of mind and indicates the degree to which they had knowledge of their actions, and their intent to fulfill the act. Now under the model penal code, which is the proposed criminal code that states can choose to apply to their own laws, there are four levels of mens rea. The first being purpose, or with intent. The second degree is with knowledge of the crime. The third level is recklessness, and the fourth is when a crime is caused by negligence.
Isabel Martinez’s mens rea was shown that she had acted with purpose demonstrated by the premeditation of the act. The actus reus, which in Latin is “the guilty act” is defined by the actual crime and the actions it involved. In this case, her actus reus involved the murder of her husband and four children. Aggravating factors describe the circumstances in which the crime was carried out which can increase the level of culpability, and escalate the severity of the punishment a convicted defendant can face. For example, aggravating factors in a crime may include the use of a weapon in carrying out a robbery or a sexual assault, a hate crime, or a crime carried out with excessive use of violence.
In Isabel Martinez’s case, the aggravating factors were the sheer brutality and heartlessness she exhibited when she executed the crime. Combined, these elements of the crime defined malice murder. She was also charged with six counts of aggravated assault, and indicted for the attempted murder of her nine-year-old daughter Diana. Isabel entered guilty based on insanity pleas to all five counts of murder for her husband, and their slain children, guilty to one count of aggravated assault, and to one count of cruelty to children for stabbing Diana.
There were several extreme signs of Isabel’s mental state and signs of psychosis before the massacre as previously discussed, as well as after the killings which she is now known for notoriously displaying at her courtroom hearing. Inside the court, in front of the judge and the press, she smiled jubilantly, placed her hands in a mockery of prayer, waved, and gave a big thumbs up to the media. She performed in front of the camera, and informed the judge that she did not need defense counsel. The District Attorney decided that based on the clearly poor state of her mental health, that the state would not pursue the death penalty.
I don’t doubt that she was mentally ill but the premeditation, calculated planning, and the execution of the crime raises some serious questions for me. She carried out the murders, calmly called the police to report that someone else had done it, and then once her daughter told the authorities what actually happened, she feigns insanity, and puts on a very publicized theatrical production of this mental illness. Maybe I am just cynical, but her behavior before and after does not simply equate to a mentally insane woman to me. If I had been the district attorney, I would have had several psychiatric evaluations conducted and inquired with behavioral analysts and criminal profilers to help gauge alternative motives to the commission of this crime.
Two years after the slaying of her entire family, Isabel Martinez, who was now 35 years old, was sentenced by a Judge to five life sentences for each of her family members’ lives. In addition, she was given twenty-one years for the other charges of assault and cruelty to a child. However, the actual punishment she faces is a 30-year minimum sentence in a mental health facility with the possibility of parole. Since she is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, if Isabel Martinez is ever released on parole, ICE would deport her back to her native country. Still, the sentencing is a bit convoluted and does not give proper justice to her five victims when she has the potential to be out of the mental health facility by her sixties.
For some of you, it may not be all that surprising to hear, given the level of violence our country engages in, but the United States has a significantly higher percentage of children who are murdered than other nations of a comparable level in regards to culture and economy. What can be shocking, or at least is horrible to hear, is that children are much more likely to be the victims of homicide by a parent than any other perpetrator in their life.
For some perspective, a 2012 study by Hatters-Friedman revealed that for infants, the rate of homicide is 8 out of 100,000 in the U.S., where in Canada, it is 2.9 infants who are killed out of every 100,000. On average, there are around 500 arrests for filicide, which is the intentional killing of a child by a parent, every year. As a child ages, their chances of being murdered by their parental figure decreases greatly. However, the manner in which they die is much more severe if they are killed as older children. Interestingly and horrifying to learn is that 90% of offenders who kill their children are the biological parents of their victims. Once again, as in so many other related crimes of abuse and violence, those closest to us, in particular our biological relatives, are the biggest threat to our well-being.
In a 2007 World Psychiatry study on maternal filicide, it was identified that the most common motivating factor when a Mother kills a child is that she is under the unwavering belief that it is best for the child to die.
What is so interesting and hypocritical about the criminal justice system, which unfortunately tends to reflect society’s warped perspective of all mothers, and most women who kill, is that they are treated with great disparity in comparison to men who commit the exact same crimes. Women who kill are by far dealt with more leniency in the courts, and given far less severe sentences than men who commit homicide. Specifically, when it comes to parents who kill their children, women faced an average prison term of 17 years, where men were regularly faced with life imprisonment, and some were even given the death penalty. Studies have also shown that women who kill their children are handled and perceived by the courts, and often the media, as an individual who is mentally ill, deranged, or crazy. This could be because women who kill, especially mothers who kill their children, don’t tend to fit within the tightly constrained gender boxes and roles women are expected to fit into in society.
This disparity is rooted in the patriarchal misconception that all women are nurturing, and are born to be caring and loving mothers. According to Phillip Resnick, a professor of psychiatry who spent more than four decades studying and analyzing parents who murder their children, there is no greater success when utilizing the insanity defense like when it is used by a woman who kills her kids.
The insanity defense as a type of plea can be utilized by a defendant in all but four states, those being identified as Idaho, Kansas, Utah, and Montana. There are many people in society, likely fueled by the salacious and often inaccurate media, that there are tons of criminals who escape true and just punishment by pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. However, this is a gross misperception. In fact, empirical evidence, which is simply data or statistics gathered by research conducted, shows that the insanity defense is only used in about 1% of all felony criminal cases. Within those cases, it tends to be successful in about 20%. In other words, out of 1,000 defendants being prosecuted for what is most likely an extremely violent offense, only two or three are found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Studies also demonstrate that it is a very risky move for the defendant to make. This is because if their defense strategy does not work and they are found guilty, that person will likely spend as much as 22% longer in prison than a defendant who did not use this plea. For defendants who do succeed in applying the insanity defense in a criminal court, only 1% are ever released, 4% are released under very specific conditions, and 90% spend significantly more time incarcerated in a mental institution than they would have spent for the same crime committed had they been within the prison system. When the insanity defense is utilized for violent crimes other than murder, the period of confinement within a mental hospital can be twice as long versus a convicted individual’s time in prison. For non-violent crimes, interestingly enough, a defendant can spend as much as ten times longer inside a mental health facility.
The insanity defense is an affirmative defense and has specific criteria which the defendant must be proven to have met. Since most defendants plead not guilty by reason of insanity, their trial is bifurcated, which means it is conducted in two stages. The 1st stage is when the jury, or a trial judge, determines whether the defendant is guilty or innocent. The 2nd stage involves determining whether the defendant was legally insane when the criminal act was committed. The burden of proof is therefore placed upon the defendant to provide evidence that demonstrates that they were so mentally ill, or so defective, that they were incapable of having the mental capacity to commit the crime. This means that their mental or psychological condition or disease ultimately tainted their mind to such an extent that they were unable to decipher or understand what is deemed as moral and that their actions were wrong. In contrast, a defendant who pleads guilty by reason of insanity, admits that they committed the crime, but that they lacked the mental capacity to understand right from wrong.
The two most effective insanity defenses are for women who have committed “altruistic” filicides, which are defined as murder having been committed in the best interest of the children. The second type are those categorized as “acutely psychotic”, which is defined by mothers who have hallucinations and messages which they hear, whether their origin is from a dark or light force, to kill their children. These types of filicide perpetrators are described as women who don’t attempt to conceal their actions, but rather seek immediate help and confess to what they have done. However, in the case of Isabel Martinez, she only admitted the truth once the horrific facts of what she had done were laid out to investigators. Her brave little daughter Diana, who narrowly escaped her Mother’s attempt on her life, is maybe the only reason she confessed. This places into question serious doubts about her intentions of concealment versus a sincere confession.
The insanity defense is even more successful when the mother has planned a filicide-suicide and has made an attempt to end her own life. It was also reported that 69% of these women were suffering from auditory hallucinations, such as a voice they heard instructing them to kill their children, and 74% were found to be delusional. The most successful of such psychotic mental states involved women whose beliefs were based on the death of the child or children being the answer, the sacrifice if you will, for the soul of the child, or even to save the entire world.
Severe depression has also been found to be a very strong factor in the state of delusion that has been determined to be necessary for a successful insanity defense. Depression can warp an individual’s perspective and thought processes, making the offender believe that it is in the best interest of the child for them to be in heaven instead. This is evidenced through the infamous child-killing mothers, Andrea Yates and Deanna Laney. There are also many other women who have been sent away to a mental health facility instead of prison for the horrendous acts of violence they committed against their children. Isabel Martinez was openly willing to sacrifice her entire family to save the soul of her recently deceased father, whom she believed was suffering in hell. It was not so much to save her children’s souls that she murdered them, but rather to save that of her father’s.
To me, this does not equate to the same belief system that other delusional and extremely religious mothers have held who have also committed filicide. There is no question that Isabel Martinez was depressed and suffering from some kind of delusions. Something in her mind led her to believe that she could bring salvation to her father through the deaths of her own children. Only Isabel herself can share what those delusions were at the time, and how deeply those impacted her mental state. Only time and her psychiatrists will be able to determine if her mental condition has improved to the extent that she is deemed no longer a threat to herself and others in society. I am not a therapist or psychiatrist, but I cannot fathom how it is possible to release anyone out of a mental health facility, who planned and carried out the massacre of her own children.
How can thirty years potentially be enough to justify that such a person be allowed back into society, and give them a chance at living the last of their years in freedom? There is something gravely wrong about how our criminal justice system can incarcerate an offender for a non-violent crime, such as drug trafficking, for more time than this woman will possibly serve. There are already known cases of maternal filicide where the perpetrator has been released from a mental health facility and is now free to live their life. I will not begin to travel down this road of the endless miscarriages of injustice our criminal justice system has dished out over the centuries. At least not this episode.
After the nightmare which her life had suddenly become, there was hope and positivity in the surviving daughter Diana’s life. She was now given a new home by her Aunt and Uncle who took her in after the tragedy. In a post by the Sheriff's Department only a few weeks after her Mother murdered her siblings and her Father, the officers involved in the case came by to visit the little girl. They surprised her with a bounty of gifts that were donated by people in her community. The officers were very surprised to see how fine Diana seemed to be. As you can see from the images in the link, Diana radiates health and happiness. She appeared to be adjusting amazingly well to her new family and life. There is something almost jarring and quite unexpected about this story ending with a sign of hope, but Diana absolutely deserves to have the best life possible. Only time will tell how much trauma this poor child has deeply suffered, and on levels she may not even be conscious of until she fully matures. Hopefully, her Aunt and Uncle will encourage her to talk about what happened, have regular therapy sessions, and perceive her journey of long-term healing seriously.
I am curious what all of you think about this case. Do you believe that Isabel Martinez was so mentally ill that she could not understand right from wrong or if she did, that she was mentally incapable of acting out in a moral way? Do you think that a minimum of thirty years inside a mental health facility with the chance of release gives justice to her victims?
If you or someone you know is suffering from depression, suicidal thoughts, or in any way needs mental support and assistance, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 24 hours a day. There are trained mental health professionals there for you, who communicate in both English and Spanish, 365 days a year, and can provide you with resources to help yourself or your loved one.
Thank you so much for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions, comments, and suggestions you may have for the show. You can email me at AlitaDogmas_ShadesofMurder@gmail, find me on Instagram and Facebook at AlitaDogmas_ShadesofMurder, and on twitter at ShadesofMurder.
I appreciate each and every one of you for being here with me, and I am beyond thrilled to be your host. Until next time, be safe, and watch out for shades of murder happening in the streets, next door, and especially inside your own home.
AlitaDogma’s Shades of Murder was created, written, researched, and edited by AlitaDogma. Music composed by Ashot Danielyan courtesy of Pixabay.
Research Materials and Degree Coursework:
ASU Courses: Substantive Criminal Law, Evidence and Principles of the Criminal Law, Research Methods
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/mother-who-stabbed-husband-and-five-children-spoke-of-promising-them-to-evil-force/85-2b8766f2-fae7-4ce6-b3b6-971518e770ec
Resnick, P. J. (2016). Filicide in the United States. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 58(Suppl 2), S203. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.196845
https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/the-sage-handbook-of-domestic-violence/i2695.xml
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