REDWOOD CITY — Convicted killer Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta was sentenced to at least 25 years in prison Tuesday, some two months after a jury found him guilty of using a sword to brutally kill the woman with whom he shared a child.
Landaeta, 34, stared ahead and did not speak as the sentence — which could extend to life in prison — was handed down at the Hall of Justice in Redwood City. Solano, of Hayward, brutally killed the mother of his child, Karina Castro, in broad daylight on a suburban street on Sept. 8, 2022.
In handing down her sentence, San Mateo County judge Lisa A. Novak excoriated Solano for using “every avenue imaginable” to try to avoid responsibility for the killing, which was among the most gruesome that prosecutors and the judge have handled in their careers. The evidence was so bloody and stomach-turning that Novak took the unusual step of shielding some pictures of the crime scene from onlookers in the gallery.
“This is by far the most difficult trial I’ve ever presided over, because of the true horror of the crime you committed in butchering Karina Castro,” said Novak, adding that she was limited by state statute in how long she could incarcerate the man.
Over and over, Novak chided Landaeta for blaming his actions on mental illness — particularly after a parade of experts testified at trial that he appeared to be “malingering” or feigning symptoms. The judge called his actions an “affront” to people whose mental health was truly suffering.
“You are clever enough and manipulative enough,” Novak said. “You have utilized your mental illness in an effort to relieve yourself of the criminal liability in this case. It was not successful.”
As she spoke, Landaeta appeared to stare unflinchingly at a courtroom wall to the left of the judge. His only words came when he acknowledged understanding his rights at the end of the hearing.
The sentence included a term of 25 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Solano also must serve another year on top of that sentence for aggravating factors in the killing. That means he must spend at least 22 years behind bars before being eligible for parole.
That Landaeta could one day sit before a parole board was of dire concern to Castro’s family, who questioned why state statutes allowed him to one day ask to be set free. His “horrific” actions should have left him facing the death penalty, said Castro’s grandmother, Danielle Gannon, who wore a shirt emblazoned with a picture of Castro and her two daughters, ages 8 and 3.
The oldest of those girls — which Castro shared with Landaeta — still has nightmares of a man with a knife, causing her to cry out in the night for her mother.
“Please, punish this monster to the fullest extent that the law allows,” Gannon asked the judge, calling her granddaughter’s death “a public execution.” “Continue to protect her daughters, and any other female who has the misfortune of coming into contact with this purely evil man.”
A jury in November found Landaeta guilty of first-degree murder and found that multiple aggravating factors, including the use of a sword in the especially violent attack, were true.
Landaeta’s culpability in the attack was never in doubt: Eyewitnesses recounted watching the slaying unfold in the afternoon, in the middle of Laurel Street, not far from where Castro lived. They testified that they were walking by when they saw Solano and Castro argue, then watched in horror as Solano retrieved a sword from his car and brutally attacked a fleeing Castro.
Solano even offered a confession of sorts when he returned to the crime scene and reportedly told a San Mateo County Sheriff’s deputy, “She was trying to kill me, I’m sorry.”
Over the course of the three-week jury trial, prosecutor Josh Stauffer contended that Solano was driven to kill Castro, with whom the defendant shared a young daughter, out of vengeance as their toxic relationship devolved into social media and text message threats and insults.
Stauffer dismissed Solano’s legal defense, which right before trial pivoted from an insanity defense to one of imperfect self-defense, including claims that Castro attacked him first with a small knife. He called this theory a fabrication that did not align with the viciousness of the sword attack in which witnesses testified that Solano hacked at a prone Castro’s head and neck “eight to 10 times” after she had already been seriously wounded by a series of earlier sword slashes.
“This isn’t self defense. This was a man enraged,” Stauffer said in his closing arguments at the end of the trial. “He brutally murdered Ms. Castro, brutally murdered her, and then he played games with you.”
Called to testify in his own defense, Solano seemed to shut down mentally and physically during cross-examination and fell into a stupor. During his brief answers, Solano claimed to not recognize a photo of Castro and denied killing her, a fact not in dispute at trial.
But Solano’s defense team argued that the defendant’s behavior was indicative of legitimate effects from diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia.
Castro’s father, Martin Castro, wept in the back of the courtroom as a San Mateo County prosecutor asked for the stiffest possible sentence. Afterward, he expressed relief at never having to sit in that gallery again.
Instead, he planned to go home and sit next to his daughter’s ashes, which rest every day beside his bed. In that moment, even with his daughter’s killer finally sentenced, he expected to find little closure.
“Time is not healing any wounds for me. It’s making things worse,” Martin Castro said. “My closure will be the day I die.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com