Tough-on-crime DA let a man walk after rape and battery. He just beheaded his ex-girlfriend.
On Friday, police identified a suspect in the brutal murder of a San Carlos woman. 33-year-old Jose Rafael Landaeta-Solano, allegedly beheaded Karina Castro—the mother of his young daughter—with a sword on the street outside of her apartment.
San Mateo DA Steven Wagstaffe’s office encountered Landaeta-Solano twice in ten years. In both cases, Landaeta-Solano was accused of a violent crime against a woman and in both cases, Wagstaffe’s office let him off with probation.
If the gruesome murder had occurred in a jurisdiction of a reform prosecutor, pundits across the political spectrum would be frothing in rage about how “criminal reform has gone too far.” But no one is talking about Wagstaffe, who checks every box in the “tough-on-crime” playbook. He opposed a California proposition that would have made certain felonies misdemeanors. He’s refused to charge killer cops. He’s pro-death penalty and one of three California DAs lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsome to lift the moratorium on capital punishment. He opposes reform and he boasts about prosecuting low-level crimes. “In San Francisco or Alameda, they’ve got so much murder, rape, and robbery, that they honestly don’t have the resources to pay attention to the quality-of-life crimes,” Wagstaffe said in a 2022 profile. “Here we do.” Wagstaffe paints himself as an advocate for victims; apparently, his office is filled with pictures of victims of violence in cases he’s prosecuted over his decades-long career.
In 2012, Landaeta-Solano was accused of raping an unconscious woman, reports the SF Chronicle. The DA’s office reduced the charges to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a victim more than three years younger” and put him on a three year probation. Last year, Solano-Landaeta was charged with misdemeanor battery during a domestic violence incident involving Castro. He got one year probation.
Neighbors say she was terrified that he would kill her. “She said that he had put a target on her.”
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