Between 1976 and 1990 Diana Lumbrera murdered seven children, all but one of them her own (Ages: 6 weeks, 2 ½ months, 5 ½ months, 3 years, 3 years, 4 years) in order to collect insurance payments. All but one was murdered in Texas; the final killing was done in Kansas.
“In Texas, authorities from Palmer, Lubbock, and Castro
Counties launched new investigations, discovering that each of Diana’s children
had been insured for amounts between $3,000 and $5,000. (In Melissa’s case a
second insurance policy was purchased one day before she died.) Diana was the
only person who observed the various convulsive episodes, and – with the
exception of Jose Lionel – all were beyond help when Diana sought medical
care.” [from: Michael Newton, An
Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans]
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Murders:
Nov. 30, 1976 – daughter, Joanna Lumbrera, 3 months old,
Friona, Texas.
Feb. 13, 1978 – son, Luís Garza, 2 ½ months old, Friona,
Texas.
Oct. 2, 1978 – daughter, Melissa Lumbrera, 3 years old,
Friona, Texas.
Oct. 8, 1980 – cousin, Ericka Leonor Aleman, 6 weeks old,
Muleshoe, Texas.
Aug. 17, 1982 – daughter, Melinda Lumbrera, 3 years old,
Friona, Texas.
Mar. 28, 1984 – son, Christopher Daniel Marcos, 5 ½ months
old, Dimmitt, Texas.
May 1, 1990 – son, Jose Antonio Lumbrera, 4 years old, Garden
City, Kansas.
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December 16, 1990 article – FULL TEXT: Bovina, Tex. (AP) – Friends and relatives say Diana Lumbrera cried and often fainted with grief when each of her six children died before their fifth birthday.
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December 16, 1990 article – FULL TEXT: Bovina, Tex. (AP) – Friends and relatives say Diana Lumbrera cried and often fainted with grief when each of her six children died before their fifth birthday.
No one who watched ever suspected her of murdering the
children.
As they were lowered into the ground one by one from 1976 to
1990, the young mother was on her knees, weeping and begging for her children
to come back.
Elaborate headstones in the Bovina cemetery, where five of
Mrs. Lumbrera’s children are buried, read “Darling we miss thee.”
“She was a loving mother and she took care of those kids,”
said Ms. Lumbrera’s aunt, Elodia Flores. “She worked hard every day and made
those kids number one in her life. I just don’t believe she killed those kids.”
The deaths of Mrs. Lumbrera’s children have law enforcement
in this tiny panhandle cattle town near the New Mexico border shaking their
heads.
For 14 years, authorities and child protection agencies never
were suspicious as seven chiokldren, six of her own and the daughter of a
cousin, died under Ms. Lumbrera’s care.
Doctors ruled the deaths natural.
Ms. Lumbrera, 32, says the the children were killed by a
damning curse.
Today, Ms. Lumbrera, a former meatpacker, is a convicted
murderer of her 4-year-old son.
A jury in Garden City, Kan., took only three hours last
October to determine that she smothered Jose Antonio Lumbrera on May 1, 1990.
She was sentenced to life in prison.
Ms. Lumbrera, who moved from Bovina to Garden City in 1985,
now faces murder charges in connection with the deaths of four of her other
children and the daughter of a cousin.
The death of another of her own children is under
investigation.
The children’s death certificates indicate various causes of
death including asphysiation by aspiration of stomach contents, heart disease
and blood poisoning.
“A death certificate may say death due to heart failure.
Everyone who dies suffers from heart failure,” said Parmer County Dist. Atty.
Johnny Actkinson, who will prosecute in an upcoming trial.
“The question is what caused the heart failure.”
Actkinson, who has had to trudge back in time to locate
doctors and witnesses familiar with the infants’ deaths, said the people
issuing the death reports probably did not want to think the worst.
“Those kids’ deaths were such a horrible state of affairs
that no one considered a mother would murder her own children,” Actkinson said.
“So the doctors look for another way to explain it. I am not being crirtical.
It’s just human nature.”
Maria Antillon, 31, a close friend of Ms. Lumbrera’s since
grade school, said the defendant is high-strung, emotional and frequently
talked about her fervent belief in spiritual healers and doomsayers known as
“curanderos.”
Curanderos are fortune tellers or witchcraft doctors
prevalent in Hispanic culture who have the power to bless or curse a person’s
life.
“She told me several times about witchcraft and things she
believed in like curses and things like that,” said Mrs. Antillon, a resident
of Bovina. “She used to tell me that her mother-in-law had cursed her. She said
if you believe in the curanderos they will get to you. If you don’t they
won’t.”
Mrs. Antillon said she believes Ms. Lumbrera is innocent.
“Diana went to church every Sunday when she lived here,” she
said. “Everybody liked her. She wasn’t the type of person that would get in
trouble with a neighbor. I never heard that she had gotten into an argument
with someone else. And she loved her kids.”
Lionel Garza, Ms. Lumbrera’s second husband and father of
four of the dead children, said most of his adult life he believed his children
died because God had called them home.
He said he has trouble with the chilling possibility they
were murdered by their mother.
“I was shocked when I found out she was convicted of killing
her boy,” said Garza, who has remarried and is now living near Pecos.
“All my life I lived thinking my kids died of natural
causes. Now all the doors of question are open and the pain is rushing back
in.”
“It is real scary to have somebody tell you that your
daughters and son were killed and didn’t die of natural causes,” Garza said.
“At first it gave me a lot of anger. But now I just want the truth. I want to
know if she killed my babies.”
Garza, who filed for divorce from Ms. Lumbrera in 1980 two
years after their third child’s death, declined to comment publicly about his
suspicions, but authorities say his grand jury testimony was crevealing.
“Lionel was suspicious of Diana after the third death,” said
Bovina Police Chief Gary Coleman. “Especially since he said he was playing with
the child (Melissa Garza) early that morning before going to work.
“He said the child was healthy and he didn’t detect anything
wrong. Thirty minutes after he arrives at work, he’s called and told the child
has died.”
Garza, who works at the Reeves County law enforcement center
in Pecos, said he and Mrs. Lumbrera’s divorce came through in 1982 after five
years of marriage.
He said he fears testifying about the deaths of his
children.
“I don’t know how I will react. I try to avoid remembering
back then,” he said. “It only opens old wounds.”
Ms. Lumbrera has claimed that Garza’s mother placed a curse
on her, damning all of her children to early death.
Virginia Bribiesca, Ms. Lumbrera’s sister, said she
witnessed the curse’s pronouncement.
Garza’s mother told Ms. Lumbera her children would die at
their mother’s hands, Ms. Bribiesca said. “I herard the woman say it.”
Garza denies that his mother ever placed a curse on Ms.
Lumbrera.
“She never said anything to me about the children being
cursed by my mother,” he said.
Permer County Deputy Sheriff Richard Bonham, who helped lead
the investigation into the deaths of Ms. Lumbrera’s children in Texas, says the
curse is a scapegoat.
“Some people that believe in curanderos and witchcraft will
say it does have an affect,” Bonham said. “But in our investigation that holds
no water for defense of what she has done.”
Family members adamantly defend Ms. Lumbrera, accusing
authorities of racism and using her case for publicity.
“There is no reasoning for all this to come ourt so many
years later except that the police want to put their name in the paper,” Ms.
Flores said. “The medical records show the kids died of natural causes.”
Rober Olvera, 33, Ms. Lumbrera’s cousin, says the police
have actively pursued the case because the defendant is Hispanic.
“You think this would happen to a Diana if she was white? No
way. Absolutely not,” Olvera said.
Several of Ms. Lumbrera’s relatives who still live in Bovina
say she suffered from ploio as a child and may have passed on severe illnesses
to her babies.”
“Diana was often sick when she was young,” said Elva
Hernandez, Ms. Lumbrera’s aunt. “How can they just disregard that the kids
could have died because of sickness?”
In August, Ms. Lumbrera was indicted on three counts of
capital murder by a Parmer County grand jury in the 1976 death of 3-month-old
Joanna Graza; the 1978 death of 3-year-old Melissa Garza and the 1982 death of
Melinda Ann Garza.
The grand jury said she smothered the three children to
collect $15,000 in life insurance benefits. A trial of the charges is expected
to begin next month.
If convicted of capital murder. Ms. Lumbrera would face life
in prison or death by injection.
Ms. Lumbrrera was indicted on one count of murder by a
Lubbock County grand jury on Dec. 6 in the 1978 death of Jose Lionel Garza Jr.
She was indicted on one count of murder by a Bailey County
grand jury on Sept. 10 for the 1980 death of 6-week-old Erica Aleman, the
daughter of Ms. Lumbrera’s cousin, Benito Aleman.
Garza fathered Joanna, Melissa, Melinda and Jose Lionel.
Police believe Jose Luz Valvonis, who was never married to Ms. Lumbrera,
fathered Christopher Daniel Lumbrera, who died at 5 ½ months of an apparent
blood infection in Dimmitt, and Jose Antonio Lumbrera.
Gordon Green, who will represent Ms. Lumbrera in her
upcoming trials in Parmer County, refused to allow her to be interviewed.
“It’s not an everyday case,” said Green, refusing to comment
further.
Ms. Lumbrera had been held in the Parmer County Jail on
$300,000 bond since the Kansas trial.
Authorities say the death of Ms. Lumbrera’sixth child, Jose
Antonio Lumbrera in Garden City, triggered a massive investigation into the
other children’s deaths, resulting in the five murder indictments in three West
Texas counties.
Michael Quint, who defended Ms. Lumbrera in Garden City,
said the jury in the Kansas trial was prejudiced by pre-trial publicity.
Green said he is still considering a motion to move the
trial from Parmer County.
Ms. Bribiesca fears the Kansas conviction will doom her
sister in Texas.
“She didn’t get a fair trial,” in Garden City, said Ms.
Bribiesca, who resides in Kansas. “Before this, I think she could have gotten
one in Texas, but not now. Not after this. They’re going to think she killed
all her kids. But Diana’s not going to give up, I’ll tell you that.”
[Chip Brown (AP), “Mother says curse killed children,” The
Lawrence Daily-World (Ks.), Dec. 16, 1990, p. 12A]
***
Arrest & Convictions:
May 5, 1990 – Arrested in Kansas for alleged murder of José
Antonio Lumbrera.
Oct. 3, 1990 – KANSAS: Convicted for the death of José
Antonio Lumbrera. Convicted of murder after less than an hour of deliberation,
Diana was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum of fifteen years
before the possibility parole.
Apr. 23, 1991 – PALMER COUNTY, TEXAS: Found guilty of
murder in the first degree for the deaths of Melissa, Melinda, and Daniel.
Diana pled guilty to Melissa’s murder, while charges were dropped in the cases
of Melinda and Joanna.
DATE??? – LUBBOCK COUNTY, TEXAS: Lubbock County was next in
line, handing down a third life sentence after Diana pled no contest – with no
technical admission of guilt – to her
first son’s death.
DATE???? – CASTRO COUNTY, TEXAS: waived prosecution on
outstanding charges to save an estimated $50,000 in court costs.
June 1991 – Kansas, officially beginning to serve her time.
Sep. 9, 2004 – Began serving time in the Mountain View Unit
of a Texas prison.
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[7475-1/6/21]
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