Jose Landaeta: Schizophrenic man charged with beheading ex-GF Karina Castro claims he swung Samurai sword in 'self-defense'
REDWOOD CITY, CALIFORNIA: A man accused of beheading his ex-girlfriend with a samurai sword during a savage daylight attack on a Northern California street in 2022 claims to have acted in self-defense. On September 8, 2022, Jose Raphael Solano Landaeta, 33, was arrested for the murder of Karina Castro in San Carlos.
Landaeta told ABC7’s Dan Noyes in an interview at the San Mateo County Jail that he "swung that sword in self-defense.” “He says she emerged from the driver’s side of that Volkswagen with the knife in hand and kind of marched towards him with this knife,” Noyes recounted after he left the jail as he was not allowed to carry cameras or pen to record the interview.
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What did Jose Landaeta say in the interview?
Landaeta, who has a one-year-old daughter with Castro, said he was unhappy with how Castro's grandmother and father described his mental state after seeing their interview, reported the New York Post. He said that he has had schizophrenia since he was a teenager.
Additionally, Landaeta expressed his displeasure that Castro had started seeing someone else. They quarrelled over Snapchat messages in the days leading up to the murder. She implied that she would publicly shame him for his statutory rape conviction from ten years earlier.
Landaeta refers to her as a "snitch lip" and urges her to "f*** around and find out," Noyes reported. "He insists that Karina Castro told him that she had hired people from East Palo Alto to carry out a hit on him, his mother and his brother."
He claims he visited her apartment that day in an effort to calm down the issue. According to Landaeta, Castro left her apartment and went to her car to get a knife. “He says she emerged from the driver’s side of that Volkswagen with the knife in hand and kind of marched towards him with this knife. And he claimed that he swung that sword in self-defense.”
San Carlos murder defendant admits killing mother of his child with samurai sword, now claims the beheading was self-defense. I’m putting together our jail interview for the news at 5 and 6. pic.twitter.com/Nzu3T98K4h
— Dan Noyes (@dannoyes) February 2, 2023
Prosecutors and the victim's family, however, have doubts about Landaeta's account of what happened.
What did prosecutors and Castro's family say about the interview?
San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told Noyes, "We don't think that accords with the evidence that we've been able to collect in this case so far."
Noyes then asked, "Is there any indication that she had a knife?" to which Wagstaffe replied, "No, you know, this is a case that didn't occur in a closed room somewhere. It occurred out on the street in San Carlos, with lots of people walking by, and lots of people who witnessed this, what occurred. We haven't had any reports of her being armed with a knife or anybody even seeing a knife, much less using a knife."
Whereas for Castro's family, Martin Castro, Castro's father, claimed that the narrative is illogical. “He claimed self-defense against a girl who was a quarter of his size,” he told Insider on Wednesday, February 8. “She was like 5 [feet] 5 or 5 [feet] 6 and maybe 120 [pounds] at the time. And this guy’s 6 [feet] 2, 6 [feet] 3 … 300-plus pounds.”
In the meantime, Danielle Gannon, Castro's grandmother, told ABC7 that Landaeta will probably use his mental illness as a defense. "He is a diagnosed schizophrenic on meds. And he would use that as an excuse for his behavior. He drank excessively and you're not supposed to do that on those kinds of medications," said Danielle Gannon.