A California inmate and self-styled satanist allegedly decapitated and dissected the body of his cellmate with a makeshift knife in 2019, though the act apparently did not catch the attention of prison guards.
Jaime Osuna, 31, beheaded his cellmate, Luis Romero, 44, but guards reported both men as alive after they made their rounds, according to two reports on California prisons from the inspector general’s office.
The reports did not address why the officers did not discover the incident sooner, but Romero’s family filed a lawsuit in March demanding a jury trial and an unspecified amount of damages over his death.
“The idea that my client had to sue in order to get basic questions answered about her son’s death is disheartening,” said Justin Sterling, an attorney for Romero’s family, according to the Associated Press.
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Guards are meant to check cells every so often, and the crime would have taken hours to commit, indicating that the guards were not properly doing their required checks, Sterling argued.
The Department of Corrections disputed the report’s findings, saying it had conducted a “thorough and complete investigation from the very beginning.”
Prison staff had not looked closely into the cell even after a bedsheet was visibly draped along the bars inside Romero’s and Osuna’s cell, court documents alleged.
“In the early morning hours of March 9, 2019, Corcoran officials finally conducted a safety check and looked on the other side of the bedsheet. At that point, Mr. Romero was found decapitated, and Mr. Osuna was found wearing a necklace made of Mr. Romero’s body parts,” according to the filing.
In his disfigurement of Romero, Osuna had allegedly cut out one of his cellmate’s eyes, chopped off one of his fingers, removed part of his ribs, and sliced out part of his lung. After cutting off his head, Osuna had apparently posed with the body and wore a necklace made of his body parts.
Prior to being put in a cell with Osuna, Romero had spent 27 years in prison for second-degree murder after fatally shooting a woman when he was a teenager associated with gang members. At the time of his death, he was nearing parole eligibility.
Osuna was serving a life sentence for the murder and torture of a woman in 2011. During the 2017 trial for his victim, Osuna reportedly mocked her family members and bragged to a reporter about his love of torturing people.
Osuna had never had a cellmate until Romero.
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The convicted murder was transferred to Salinas Valley State Prison’s psychiatric inpatient program. Osuna was diagnosed with unspecified schizophrenia spectrum, antisocial personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder.
Osuna is not competent to stand trial for Romero’s death, a judge ruled.
