Nieves Spoke of Suicide, Jurors Are Told

In the months before the house fire that killed her four daughters and injured her son, Sandi Nieves said she planned to commit suicide because she was despondent over breaking up, her ex-boyfriend testified Monday in her capital murder trial.

Scott Volk, the first of three men to testify about their stormy relationships with the mother now accused of murdering her daughters, told jurors in a San Fernando courtroom about their on-again, off-again romance that ended in the weeks before the fatal fire in 1998.

Prosecutors allege that Nieves was desperate and angry after her three failed relationships, and killed her children during a suicide attempt to take revenge on the men, including an ex-husband with whom she was engaged in a custody and child support battle. They contend that the mother gathered her children in the family kitchen for a slumber party and then started the fire.

Her four daughters, Kristl, 5, and Jaqlene Folden, 7, and Rashel, 11, and Nikolet Folden-Nieves, 12, died from smoke inhalation. Her son, David Nieves, who was 14 at the time, was also in the house but survived. He testified earlier.

Deputy Public Defender Howard Waco said Nieves lacked criminal intent and has suggested that David Nieves--who cooperated with prosecutors before the trial but not with his mother’s defense--might have been the one who set the hallway carpet on fire.

The 36-year-old woman is charged with four counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder and arson causing great bodily injuries. If convicted, she faces a possible death penalty.

Volk, 27, said he began dating the mother of five after they met over the Internet through a singles Web site, and briefly lived with the family in their Saugus house. It was after one of their several breakups that she threatened suicide, he said.

“She told me that she was going to send the kids away, write a letter to let everyone know, and she was going to kill herself,� Volk said. “She said she was upset because I left her.�

Also Monday, Nieves’ first husband, Fernando Nieves, took the stand before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge L. Jeffrey Wiatt against the woman who was once his high school sweetheart.

Fernando, the father of the woman’s three oldest children, said that toward the end of June 1998, Sandi asked him if all five of her children could stay with him for the weekend because she was pregnant with Volk’s child, and wanted an abortion.

The abortion, which defense attorney Waco said strongly conflicted with the woman’s Mormon values, occurred five days before the fire.

Three days before the fire, the woman seemed furious because her second husband, David Folden, whom she also had divorced, had just served her with legal paperwork to reverse his adoptions of the three Nieves children, Fernando Nieves said when questioned by Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman.

After the fire, Fernando Nieves tearfully recounted, he spent days in the hospital at the side of his son, David, who suffered smoke inhalation.

During opening statements, Waco said that evidence would show that David had burn marks on his fingers after the fire. But the father said Monday there weren’t any.

“I was squeezing his hands tightly the whole time,� Fernando Nieves said. “I looked at them all the time. I don’t remember seeing any burns on them.�

Folden is expected to take the stand after Nieves, whose testimony continues today.