'I Drowned Them': Mom Accused Of Killing Her 3 Kids, Murrieta Tie

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — A woman who once lived in Murrieta with her children that she's accused of killing in a Reseda apartment, told a reporter she drowned them.

Liliana Carrillo, 30, sat down for an interview Thursday with KGET 17 News reporter Eytan Wallace at a Kern County jail facility and said she killed her three young children to spare them from being "tortured" by their father.

"Did you kill your children,?" Wallace asked.

"I did," Carillo said.

Carrillo was arrested Saturday in the Ponderosa area of Tulare County, east of Porterville, according to Officer Rosario Cervantes of the Los Angeles Police Department.

The bodies of her three young children were found about 9:30 a.m. Saturday in an apartment in the 8000 block of Reseda Boulevard, according to Cervantes.

The coroner Monday released the names of the two girls and one boy: Joanna Denton Carrillo was 3 years old; Terry Denton Carrillo was 2; and Sierra Denton Carrillo was 6 months, 23 days old. Autopsies were pending.

According to NBC4 and ABC7, which both cited police sources, the young victims were found by their grandmother and had been stabbed to death.

In the interview with Wallace at a Kern County Sheriff Lerdo Detention Facility, Carillo said otherwise.

"I drowned them. I hugged them and I kissed them, and I was apologizing the whole time. I love my kids," she said.

Breaking down during the interview, Carillo told Wallace she wanted to prevent her children from being "further abused."

"I wish that this didn't have to be the case," she said.

Wallace asked if Carillo regretted her actions.

"I wish my kids were alive, yes. But I prefer them not being tortured and abused on a regular basis for the rest of their lives," she said.

The children's father, Erik Denton, was embroiled in a custody dispute with Carrillo and had made attempts to get the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services to intervene, according to multiple media reports.

Denton, who lives in Tulare County, sought custody of the children on March 1 in Tulare County family court and petitioned for a mental health evaluation of Carrillo, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In court papers filed in Tulare County, Denton claimed that Carrillo was "extremely paranoid," and that she said she was solely responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, had struggled with postpartum depression for years, expressed thoughts of suicide and self-medicated with marijuana.

For her part, Carrillo sought a temporary domestic violence restraining order against Denton on March 12 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the newspaper reported. That order was granted, but was due to expire at a hearing on April 6, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

Denton was supposed to see the children on Sunday, according to numerous reports.

Following the deaths, Carillo left her Reseda apartment Saturday and headed north, but her vehicle but broke down in Kern County. She allegedly stole a Good Samaritan's car after he stopped to help her. She was arrested a few hours later further north in Tulare County.

Court records showed that the children lived in Murrieta with Denton and Carrillo from September 2018 through March 2019, before moving to Porterville. The family lived in the San Joaquin Valley city until Feb. 25, after which Carrillo and the children moved to Reseda, according to a report from The Press-Enterprise.

A GoFundMe page set up to help the family included a photograph of Denton with the three kids. The page had raised $41,713 as of Friday morning.

As of late Thursday, Carillo had not been formally charged in the killings.

—City News Service contributed to this report.

—GoFundMe is a Patch promotional partner.