A convicted Cabazon child abuser who killed his 7- month-old son -- after which, prosecutors allege, he conspired with his wife to cover up the crime -- was sentenced Monday to 32 years to life in state prison.
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Jake Mitchell Haro, 32, pleaded guilty on Oct. 16 to second-degree murder, child assault and filing a false police report. His spouse, 41-year-old Rebecca Rene Haro, did not join in the plea, which was made straight to Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gary Polk, without negotiations between the defense and prosecution.
Rebecca Haro, who is charged with murder and filing a false police report, is slated to appear for a felony settlement conference on Jan. 21. She's being held on $1 million bail at the Robert Presley Jail and has no documented prior felony convictions.
Baby Emmanuel's body has not been located.
Jake Haro did not address the court, and there was nothing said about the tot, or where his remains may be located.
"I just wish you would look at me and tell me why," Rebecca Haro's mother, Mary Beushausen, said in a statement to the court, prior to the judge handing down the sentence. "If I'd have known what was going on, I would've gotten (my daughter) out of that situation."
The woman fumed that county Child Protective Services had failed Emmanuel and the other children on whom Haro exercised his rage. She insisted that, had she been aware of the defendant's history, her daughter wouldn't have been involved with him and "this wouldn't have happened."
"He takes it out on the babies," Beushausen said. "He's not man enough to face another man."
The woman acknowledged never seeing Emmanuel in his brief life, adding that because the toddler didn't receive a "second chance," neither should the defendant, on whom she wished "the maximum sentence."
In factoring Haro's prison term, Polk included his other previously unresolved cases, which were folded into the murder case, stemming from being a felon in possession of a loaded firearm, as well as probation violations.
Jake and Rebecca Haro were arrested on Aug. 22 following a San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department investigation.
"There was forensic data from the crime scene," San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said during a news briefing in late August. "That's how we learned the jurisdiction where this crime occurred (Riverside County). Forensically, there were a number of things we were able to prove up."
Emmanuel was reported missing in the 34000 block of Yucaipa Boulevard in Yucaipa on the evening of Aug. 14.
Rebecca Haro told deputies she'd been assaulted while standing near her vehicle, changing Emmanuel's diaper outside a Big 5 store. The defendant suggested she was knocked out, and that the assailant fled with the tot.
On Aug. 18, sheriff's detectives served a search warrant at the defendants' Ramona Street property, and "a large amount of surveillance video" was obtained from areas of interest for review, Dicus said.
Court documents revealed that Isabel Rebecca Gonzalez, Haro's former spouse, filed a domestic violence retraining order against him with a request to protect the couple's son, Eli.
District Attorney Mike Hestrin said Emmanuel's death was preventable, blaming a failure in the criminal justice system for enabling Jake Haro to remain free on probation after pleading guilty in a child abuse case involving his ex-wife and another infant, Carolina.
In 2023, Haro admitted a child cruelty charge, but again pled directly to the court, avoiding negotiations with prosecutors. Hestrin said the D.A.'s office had wanted prison for the defendant's extensive abuse of the girl, which resulted in broken ribs, a fractured skull and a brain hemorrhage, leaving her permanently bed-ridden.
"If that judge had done his job, Emmanuel would be alive today," he said.
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