Rosie Alfaro is a woman from California who was sentenced to death for the murder of a nine year old girl
Rosia Alfaro was planning to rob a home of a friend however when she arrived at the residence she would discover that the woman’s nine year old daughter was home. Instead of leaving and trying the robbery on another day Rosie Alfaro would repeatedly stab the nine year old girl killing her
Rosia Alfaro would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Rosie Alfaro Photos
Rosie Alfaro FAQ
Where is Rosie Alfaro now
Rosie Alfaro is currently incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility
Rosie Alfaro Sentenced To Death
Linda Wallace was sitting in the cavernous courtroom of the California Supreme Court recently when she started to cry.
“You would think after all this time, you would get over it, but you don’t,” said the Lake Havasu City, Ariz., woman.
It’s been 17 years since her little girl was killed; 15 years since the killer was sentenced to death.
Still, she cries. The tears come at her at odd hours in the day and the night.
“The hurt is still there,” she said. “It’s always there, no matter how much time passes by.”
Wallace has attended every minute of every court proceeding in the case since June 15, 1990, when 9-year-old Autumn Wallace was stabbed to death in her own home.
She has endured one trial, two penalty hearings, and more than 15 years awaiting an appellate review. The testimony, she said, has frequently been gruesome and hard to take, but Wallace persevered because “I was doing it for Autumn.”
Wallace will continue to travel from her home in Arizona, accompanied by her two surviving daughters when possible, no matter when and no matter how far, to represent Autumn.
“It’s the only thing I can do for her,” the mom said, “I need to be there to represent her, because she can’t do it. I go to be with my daughter.
“The hardest thing for me is to see people now who are Autumn’s age,” she said. “Not being able to see her grow up, that’s what bothers me the most. She would be 26 years old now. She could be married. She could have kids. That’s what I think about.”
• • •
Maria del Rosio “Rosie” Alfaro, grew up in the Anaheim barrio near Disneyland. She became a drug addict at 13, a prostitute at 14 and a single mom at 15. Eventually, she became a murderer at 18 and the first woman in Orange County to get the death penalty at 20.
On June 15, 1990, Alfaro was high on cocaine and heroin, and she desperately need money for another fix.
An easy target for stuff to steal, Rosie Alfaro thought, would be the Wallace residence in Anaheim Hills, a warm and comforting home she had visited many times before as a sometimes friend of one of Autumn’s older sisters.
Autumn, a pixie with blond hair and brown eyes, was home alone cutting out paper dolls when she heard the knock on the door. The teenager on the front porch was not a stranger to Autumn. It was Rosie Alfaro, her sister’s friend.
The killer was inside now, and Autumn was a perfect victim: She was a child. She was trusting. She was vulnerable.
She was also a witness. Years later, in a jailhouse interview, Rosie Alfaro said she had to kill Autumn because the little girl knew who she was. She remembered how Autumn looked up at her with a trusting smile, a smile that turned to fear when the stabbing began.
Linda Wallace found the body of her cherubic little girl hours later, in a pool of blood in the bathroom. She had been stabbed 57 times.
The Wallace home had been ransacked, and property was missing – including a portable television, a VCR, a typewriter, a telephone and a Nintendo set. Rosie Alfaro later sold all of it for $300.
Rosie Alfaro confessed to the slaying, but later changed her story and claimed that an unidentified male accomplice forced her to start stabbing the girl, and then he finished the slaying. Rosie Alfaro has adamantly refused to identify the mystery man, and continues to do so. The police say he never existed.
Jurors did not buy her version of the facts.
Rosie Alfaro was convicted of first-degree murder, plus special circumstances. The same jury deadlocked at 10-2 for death penalty, and a mistrial was declared. A second jury voted unanimously that Rosie Alfaro should die for taking Autumn’s life. Linda Wallace sat through both.
Superior Court Judge Theodore Millard, in confirming the death recommendation, said the slaying was “senseless, brutal, vicious and callous.”
That was 15 years ago this month. Wallace and her two surviving daughters are still waiting for Millard’s sentence to be meted out.
• • •
Linda Wallace knew from the beginning that it would take a long time for her courtroom treks to be over.
Chuck Middleton, the deputy district attorney assigned to her case, warned her before the first trial that it can take as long as 20 years for a death penalty case to wind its way to a conclusion – sometimes longer.
Wallace says that while she waits for justice, she does not spend her time or energy fretting about Rosie Alfaro.
“I know she is in a bad place,” Wallace says. “I know she will never see the light of day. I am fine with it.”
Rosie Alfaro, Wallace added, hasn’t had much of a life since she was arrested in 1990.
“She just exists,” the mother said. “It wouldn’t be any life I would want.”
Amber Wallace Zabo, who is one of Autumn’s older sisters, traveled with her mother to San Francisco last month when attorneys argued whether Rosie Alfaro’s death sentence had been fair. Zabo’s sister April made the trip to San Francisco for the arguments, but she couldn’t get to the courthouse in time.
They have waited nearly two decades for the case to come to a conclusion. They will have to wait awhile longer. The California Supreme Court has until the end of summer to issue a ruling.
And if justices affirm Rosie Alfaro’s sentence, it’s on to the federal court system for another round of appeals.
Linda Wallace says she is ready for that too.
Zabo gets mad every time she thinks about the woman who killed her younger sister.
For her, Rosie Alfaro gets one advantage after another: court-appointed lawyers, two penalty hearings, numerous appeals.
“We get nothing,” Zabo said. “And she gets all of these things. It makes me mad. … I just want to see her be put to death, and I want to see it faster than it is taking.”
Would she travel to San Quentin Prison to watch Rosie Alfaro be executed?
“Oh yes, I would go to watch her die, without a doubt,” Zabo said. “I would do it myself, if they’d let me.”
But what about Linda Wallace, now 58, a woman who lost her husband to cancer in 1987 and her youngest daughter to a murderer’s knife in 1990, a woman who has attended every single hearing in the case for 17 years.
Would she go to an execution?
“I am not that much for that,” she said. “If she is put to death, then another mother loses her child. I know what it feels like to lose a child.”