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The three defendants in the murder of a Pittsburg husband and father were sentenced Thursday in a plea deal struck with prosecutors to resolve the case purportedly precipitated by a romantic triangle at the San Ramon senior home where they all worked.
Pablo Gutierrez-Morales pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Santiago Jacobo in February 2024, with Vanessa Vera-Aguilar and Jazmin Ruiz pleading no contest to felony and misdemeanor accessory counts, respectively, during an emotional hearing at the A.F. Bray Courthouse in Martinez.
All three had been employees alongside Santiago Jacobo, 37, at what was then known as The Watermark senior living facility in San Ramon – since rebranded as Discovery Commons – prior to his body being discovered by his wife at Pleasant Hill Park after he failed to return home from his second job as a janitor there one night.
Santiago Jacobo and Vera-Aguilar had been romantically involved at one point, with the murder having occurred after Vera-Aguilar became a target of romantic interest from Gutierrez-Morales. Ruiz reportedly joined them in a plan that was executed between the three to remove Santiago Jacobo from the picture.
Santiago Jacobo was found dead by his wife, Alejandra, at Pleasant Hill Park in the early morning hours of Feb. 10, 2024, with the three defendants identified and arrested four months later.
“My husband lying there lifeless is something I still think of every day,” Alejandra Jacobo said in court Thursday.
Alejandra Jacobo noted that her husband had worked two jobs with the goal of providing everything he wanted as a child to their children, who appeared with her in court Thursday along with more than a dozen family members and loved ones of her late husband.
In addition to losing her husband and proceeding to raise their two children as a single mother, Alejandra Jacobo said that the three of them now live in a “constant state of fear, sadness, and stress.”
“That park has become a place of pain and terror,” Alejandra Jacobo said of Pleasant Hill Park.
She said that she hoped to see Gutierrez-Morales spend the rest of his life in prison, a sentiment that was echoed by others in the Jacobo family in the courtroom along with a desire to see harsher sentences for Ruiz and Vera-Aguilar.
“My family is serving a life sentence of pain, grief and fear,” Alejandra Jacobo said.
Loved ones contended that the defendants – particularly Vera-Aguilar and Ruiz – had been dismissive and flippant about the case throughout previous court proceedings and appeared to lack remorse for their role in Santiago Jacobo’s death at Gutierrez-Morales’ hands.
“What happened was wrong,” said 9-year-old Santiago Jacobo Jr. in a statement read aloud by his aunt. “I hope the people who did this get 942 years, because that’s how long I’ll be sad for.”
Santiago Jacobo Jr., along with his sister and the loved ones spanning three generations, said that his life had been changed forever by the death of his father.
“He did not deserve this, not over Vanessa (Vera-Aguilar), not over a situation so senseless,” Santiago Jacobo’s niece Maria Negrete said as her mother, the victim’s sister, sobbed nearby. “How do you fix your mother’s heart when yours is broken too?”
In addition to their mother, the two children’s aunts, uncles and grandparents said that their grief over the loss of Santiago Jacobo Sr. was compounded by watching the two young children live without their father.
In a statement read by his wife, the victim’s brother Alonso Jacobo emphasized the roles of Vera-Aguilar and Ruiz in his brother’s murder and called for harsher sentences for all three defendants.
“They stalked Santiago – it was premeditated, and it was well-organized, like cat and mouse,” Alonso Jacobo wrote.
Alonso Jacobo’s statement said that the light sentences for Vera-Aguilar and Ruiz sent the messages “that if you’re not holding the knife, nothing will happen to you,” and that the two would be able to continue going on with their lives, unlike his brother and the surviving family.
“Vanessa and Jazmin – they have a careless attitude and are not taking the situation seriously,” Alonso Jacobo said. “They got away with it.
Gutierrez-Morales – who was already in custody – was sentenced to 15 years to life at the end of Thursday’s hearing upon pleading guilty to second-degree murder. Ruiz received one year of probation for misdemeanor accessory to murder. Vera-Aguilar was remanded to custody at the conclusion of the hearing for a one-year sentence in county jail for a felony count of accessory to murder.
As part of their sentences, all three defendants also received stay-away orders from one another, as well as from Alejandra Jacobo and her two children, who expressed fears for their safety ever since last year’s murder.
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