A woman suspected of killing her three children amid a bitter custody battle said she drowned them to keep them away from her father, a California television station reported.
In an interview in prison, Liliana Carrillo, 30, told KGet-TV on Thursday that she wanted to “protect” them from abuse.
“I drowned them … I didn’t want them to continue abusing them,” said Carrillo, who was interviewed at Lerdo Detention Center in Kern County. “When they were born I promised them I would protect them,” he added.
“I hugged them and kissed them and apologized all the time,” he said. “I loved my kids.”
“I wish my kids were alive, yes,” he stated. “I wish I hadn’t done that? Yes. But I preferred that they not be tortured and abused on a regular basis for the rest of their lives.”
Carrillo, who wore a brown prison uniform, had his arms tied around his waist. He had plaster or a bandage on his left arm. He cried several times during the nearly half-hour interview.
Carrillo’s children, 3-year-old Joanna Denton Carrillo, her 2-year-old brother Terry, and her 6-month-old sister, Serra, were found dead Saturday by their maternal grandmother in their apartment in the Reseda neighborhood in Los Angeles. Angeles. She was arrested later that day in Tulare County, nearly 200 miles (322 kilometers) north of the site.
In the interview, Carrillo said he had driven north with the intention of looking for a cliff and committing suicide, but the car ran aground in a ditch and instead took the vehicle of some people who had stopped to help her.
However, the woman pleaded not guilty Wednesday in a Kern County courtroom to four felony counts related to attempted car theft and car theft.
Carrillo has not yet been charged with the deaths of her children, pending further investigations.