Jury Gets Fresno Murder Case

By Jocelyn Y. Stewart

June 4, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

FRESNO — A jury began deliberations Friday in the murder trial of Marcus Wesson -- a case that has captivated this town with talk of incest, vampires, a murder-suicide pact and nine slain children discovered in a back bedroom, their bodies stacked youngest to oldest, ages 1 to 25.

The day Wesson walked out of his home 15 months ago -- his clothes bloodstained and nine of his children dead -- he seemed well on his way to national infamy, the kind reserved for serial killers and child rapists.

The mayor called the case Fresno’s 9/11. Police called it Fresno’s worst mass murder. National media carried headlines: “House of Horrors” and “Suffer the Little Children: Murder in Fresno.”

But now, national media are mostly absent. They left for the Michael Jackson case long before testimony about Wesson’s fixation with vampires, his talk of being Jesus Christ and the “marriages” to his daughters.

“I love you, my Daddy, always know that. I am deeply in love with you. I will never leave you,” Kiani Wesson said on the witness stand, reading from a diary.

Although Jackson’s child-molestation case has dominated national news, the Wesson case has dominated the news here since it began in March.

The jury is deliberating on nine murder counts, nine counts of forcible rape and oral copulation, and five counts of continuous sexual abuse. If convicted on the murder charges, Wesson, 58, could face the death penalty.

The prosecution has argued that Wesson constructed a world in which child rape, physical abuse and polygamy were accepted. When a child custody dispute with two of his “wives” threatened to end that world, a prosecutor said, he murdered his children.

Even if Wesson didn’t actually pull the trigger, the prosecutor argued, he is still responsible for the deaths because of a murder-suicide pact he formed with his children, teaching them that it would be better to “go home to the Lord” than to allow authorities to separate the family.

The defense maintains that incest, polygamy and a perversion of Bible teachings do not equal murder. The killer, who later committed suicide, was not Wesson but his 25-year-old daughter Sebhrenah April Wesson, they argued. According to testimony, she was so obsessed with guns and knives that she carried bullets in her purse and painted her face in green and black camouflage so she could “play Army.”

Defense attorneys Ralph Torres and Peter M. Jones have also presented witnesses who allege that sloppy police work contaminated the crime scene.

“Does it matter?” prosecutor Lisa Gamoian asked, grilling one witness who questioned police handling of the crime scene. “Does it change the fact that nine people were killed with a .22-caliber pistol?”

Testimony from about 50 witnesses over three months has unveiled a family whose history reads like a chapter from the Old Testament: a generational story of sin begetting sin, and children suffering for the indiscretions of their father.

It began in the 1960s. Wesson had sex with one woman, years later with her daughter, and decades later with her granddaughters.

By the time the story reached its tragic apex, an entire generation -- the children Wesson conceived with the granddaughters -- had been killed.

During the trial, Wesson has at times voiced objections and at other times sat eerily oblivious while witnesses testified about his life, his family and the killings.

Marcus Delon Wesson grew up in Kansas and San Jose in what his mother described as a hard-working Christian family; they were Seventh-day Adventists. During the Vietnam War, Wesson was a medic in the Army, stationed in Germany and Vietnam. He was honorably discharged and returned to San Jose.

There he began a relationship with Rose Solorio, who was 13 years his senior and the mother of eight children. Eventually, Wesson moved into the Solorio household and became its head. They had one son together.

Then the family tree bent toward the bizarre: Wesson impregnated Solorio’s daughter, Elizabeth, when she was 14. With Solorio’s permission, Wesson and Elizabeth married. She was 15, Wesson was 27. It was 1974.

Over the years, they would have five boys and four girls. Their family ballooned even larger when the couple took in seven nieces and nephews.

Witnesses described life in the home with 16 children in strikingly different terms.

In Wesson’s view, the outside world was full of sin and danger, so the children were home-schooled. And Wesson taught from the Bible, often asking: “Are you ready for the Lord?”

Wesson spanked the children, but offered an explanation: “Well, you know I love you still, and the only reason I’m doing this is to make you a better person,” a niece, Rosa Solorio, quoted him as saying.

Wesson bought 10 caskets that were found after the killings, but he purchased them for their wood, Rosa Solorio testified. They also easily converted into beds, she testified. The family eventually moved to Fresno, owned property, boats and enjoyed a good life.

But testimony also portrayed a man who dominated his family through sexual and physical abuse -- beatings with a stick wrapped in duct tape -- and preached a twisted religion, emphasizing biblical passages that justified polygamy.

He also talked of Christ and of vampires and the link between them -- eternal life. The family watched vampire movies, took vampire names and, the prosecutor suggested, fashioned a lifestyle with vampiric elements, including multiple wives.

An exchange between a prosecutor and Rosa Solorio illustrated the point:

Question: And what’s a “fledgling” in vampire terminology?

Answer: It’s like um -- they would be like people out there that would go out there and do the vampire’s work.

Q: And with regards to fledglings, isn’t it true that fledglings are females? They are women, right? ... And they hunt for the head vampire, correct?

A: Yes.

Wesson also practiced what he called “loving” -- teaching girls how to please their future husbands. Prosecutors called that abuse. By the time his daughters and nieces were 8 or 9 years old, according to testimony, Wesson began kissing and fondling their genital areas through their clothes. As they grew older, the fondling turned to oral sex and then intercourse.

The girls washed his long dreadlocks, scratched under his armpit and sat on his lap.”He would just ask us to do it,” Kiani Wesson, a daughter, testified.

The boys were encouraged to leave home when they grew up, but the women occupied a dual role that contorted the family tree once again: They were Wesson’s daughters and nieces, but they also became his wives.

In an informal ceremony, daughters Kiani Wesson and Sebhrenah Wesson and nieces Rosa Solorio, Ruby Ortiz and Sofina Solorio “married” Wesson and agreed to have his children. The women viewed themselves as surrogates for Elizabeth Wesson, who according to testimony, could no longer have children. According to testimony, Wesson told the women, who were not allowed to date and wore long skirts and scarves, they were having babies “for the Lord.”

Eventually, Ortiz and Sofina Solorio grew disenchanted and departed as other siblings had done, but they left their children behind to be raised in the Wesson household.

On March 12, 2004, the women returned to reclaim their children after learning that the family planned to leave Fresno. They also learned that Wesson was still having sex and children with his daughters and nieces, breaking a promise they said he made to stop.

That day, the two women gathered a group of friends and relatives and headed to the house at 761 Hammond Ave. When Sofina Solorio entered and grabbed her son by the hand, mayhem broke out. According to testimony, there was pushing, name-calling, yelling and tears. The child was pulled away from her. In the doorway, Wesson blocked others from entering.

Sofina Solorio testified that Kiani Wesson, Sebhrenah Wesson, Rosa Solorio and 17-year-old Elizabeth began taunting her with chants of “Judas! Judas!” Sebhrenah Wesson, the tomboyish daughter who wanted to join the Army, called Ortiz an adulterer for leaving the household.

The pandemonium continued. Witnesses testified that Wesson stayed at the front door, blocking others from entering. At one point, witnesses testified, he went back inside the house. When he emerged, his clothes were smeared with blood and everyone inside was dead.

The defense says that Sebhrenah Wesson placed a gun to the socket of each child’s right eye and fired, killing her own son, Marshey St. Christopher Wesson, 18 months, and six other siblings: Jeva St. Vladensvspry Wesson, 1; Sedona Vadra Wesson, 18 months; Ethan St. Laurent Wesson, 4; Johnathon St. Charles Wesson, 7; Aviv Dominique Wesson, 7; and Illabelle Carrie Wesson, 8.

Experts testified that Sebhrenah and Elizabeth died an hour to two hours after the children, bolstering the defense’s argument that after killing the children, Sebhrenah turned the gun on 17-year-old Elizabeth and then on herself.

A .22-caliber Ruger Mark II pistol, as well as a knife, was found underneath Sebhrenah’s body. The coroner testified that Sebhrenah Wesson’s wound could have been self-inflicted.

Jurors were also told that Marcus Wesson’s fingerprints were not found on the pistol and that gunshot residue was not found on his hands. Sebhrenah Wesson’s fingerprints were not found on the weapon, but her DNA was present. Her hands were also free of residue.

But the prosecution has tried to keep the focus on Marcus Wesson. Even if he did not pull the trigger, he influenced his children to kill, Gamoian has argued.

Attorneys for both sides declined The Times’ requests for interviews.

Marcus Wesson has not taken the stand. Jurors have heard his words read from transcripts of jailhouse conversations with family. In one he tries to explain “electrical sounds” in his head:

“I said, Lord, what is that? ... And then he said that I had an angelic brain. I started laughing so hard I was losing faith in him,” he said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Family relations

On trial for the murder of nine of his children, Marcus Wesson fathered them in a complex series of relationships:

Marcus Wesson + Rose Solorio

Rose’s children: Elizabeth Solorio, Rosemary Solorio and six other children

Marcus and Elizabeth’s children: Adair Wesson

Rosemary’s children:

Rosa Solorio

Sofina Solorio

Ruby Ortiz

and four other children