SAN JOSE, Calif. — A woman and her boyfriend were sentenced to prison Monday in the April kidnapping of a San Jose infant, drawing to a close a case that drew national notoriety because of its apparent motive — the woman’s desire to fool another extramarital lover into believing the baby was theirs — and its overlap with the alleged exorcism death of another child.
Yesenia Guadalupe Ramirez, 44, was given a prison term of 13 years and four months in prison, and 29-year-old Jose Roman Portillo was sentenced to five years in prison at a court hearing Monday in San Jose.
Ramirez and Portillo pleaded no contest in August to eight charges, including kidnapping, attempted kidnapping, conspiracy, burglary and vehicle tampering, after the judge in the case offered reduced sentences to the pair if they pleaded to all of the charges.
Both faced a maximum term of 16 years and 4 months, but the judge’s proposal capped Ramirez’s possible prison exposure to 14 years, and Portillo’s at five. The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office had objected to the offer, with prosecutor Rebekah Wise advocating for tougher sentencing.
The April 25 abduction of 3-month-old Brandon from a San Jose apartment came after at least four previous, failed kidnapping attempts, and an incident of sabotage where the woman and a different boyfriend cut the brake lines of the mother’s car, authorities said.
Police say that Portillo grabbed Brandon in his family’s second-floor apartment in San Jose as the baby’s grandmother was unloading groceries, and fled toting the child in the baby carrier Portillo brought along for the heist.
“No matter what happens, there’s a child victimized and a family forever changed. The victim’s family is extremely emotionally traumatized. There is no sentence that can take that fear away,” Wise said
But, she added, it was “better” the case was resolved within a year of the crime rather than “letting it drag on. Hopefully the victim’s family can move forward in the healing process.”
Ramirez’s attorney Cody Salfen said he respected the court’s sentence and that it was expected, but also reiterated his pleas to the court to recognize Ramirez’s own life of trauma — including family sexual abuse — in weighing its decision.
“We have a defendant who has truly suffered in life. It’s not an excuse for her conduct, but an explanation,” Salfen said. “There should be a result that doesn’t just punish someone, but heals a person. Yesenia Ramirez is going to be free someday, and if our true goal here is public safety, they should want to rehabilitate her when she is released.”
At a Jan. 13 court hearing, Wise revealed that in the weeks after her plea, Ramirez had claimed someone forced her to commit the kidnapping at gunpoint, and said it was one of several lies Ramirez told over the course of the investigation, including that her husband forced her to commit the crime.
Wise said Ramirez’s claim as an attempt to absolve herself after already accepting legal accountability, leading the judge to ask Ramirez in open court whether she understood what she was doing when she entered her no-contest plea. Ramirez said she did.
On Monday, Ramirez offered her first extensive public statement of contrition about the kidnapping. Through a Spanish interpreter, she said “it hasn’t been until recently that I finally comprehend all these parts of myself. I am deeply embarrassed and regretful,” according to KRON4.
Portillo’s attorney with the county Alternate Defender’s Office reiterated a stance made last fall that Portillo was a lovesick accomplice manipulated by and carrying out the bidding of Ramirez, who authorities say masterminded the kidnapping plot.
The child’s mother also offered a statement at the sentencing through a letter read aloud in court, saying of Ramirez, “We live in fear that she will be free and can try to retaliate against myself and my family,” according to KRON4.
Two San Jose detectives testified in August that Ramirez sought to convince one of her boyfriends that Brandon was his baby with her. That boyfriend told police that he had believed her claim, and only realized he was wrong when he saw news coverage of the kidnapping.
It was not clear what Ramirez hoped to gain from the deception. Wise argued at the preliminary examination that Ramirez planned to to raise Brandon as her own.
Ramirez was married but estranged from her husband, and Portillo and the other boyfriend may have been among several men she duped: Text messages by Ramirez detailed in court suggested that “multiple men believed they had birthed numerous children” with her.
Adding another salacious layer to the story was how Ramirez and Brandon’s mother first met, which was through their mutual attendance at a small Pentacostal church run out of a home on South Second Street in San Jose. That church is the subject of criminal charges connected to a 3-year-old girl who died from asphyxiation last fall in an apparent exorcism. That case appears to be unrelated to the kidnapping.
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