A Satanist prisoner has beheaded his cellmate and mutilated his body, the Los Angeles Times reported citing court documents. According to the papers, Jaime Osuna used an improvised knife to attack Luis Romero, 44, before dissecting his body.
He cut out his eyes and chopped of his fingers before removing some of his ribs and slicing out a lung. The guards that discovered Osuna said he was wearing a necklace of his victim’s body parts. In addition, he sliced Romero’s face to make it look as though he was giving a wide, happy smile. Osuna himself has a tattoo of a smile on his face.
California’s Prison Inmate Jaime Osuna (Sureno/Santanist) kills again as he tortures & beheads cell mate after prison officials overlook his high-security classification. https://t.co/K4soNtGYS3
— Edwin L. Santana (@GSTEP_org) May 28, 2021
Negligence of Prison Guards and Incompetence of Investigation
The gruesome killing has prompted several investigations, which revealed that prison guards lied that they checked on both men. The Los Angeles Times says that one report showed that the guards claimed Romero was alive when he had already been killed.
The same report criticised the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for what it described as incompetence in investigating the murder.
One of the issues brought up in the report is the fact that prison officials placed the victim with Jaime Osuna, despite Osuna's history of attacking cellmates. One time he actually managed to find a way into a cell and attack a prisoner by slashing his face. The man needed 67 stitches after his attack.
Romero spent 27 years in jail for killing a woman when he was a teenager. The Los Angeles Times writes that he was nearing his parole eligibility. His family filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Justin Sterling, a lawyer acting for Romero’s family, said it is an essential duty of guards to check on inmates so as to monitor their health and prevent attacks or suicides. He said Romero would still be alive if the guards had done their work as required.
He found fault with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for shoddy investigations and said: "The idea that my client had to sue in order to get basic questions answered about her son’s death is disheartening."
The department in its turn rejected these accusations and said it had conducted a "thorough and complete investigation from the very beginning". It refused to provide details about the guards’ activity at the time of murder.
