Colorado woman declared legally insane, not legally responsible for killing her 2 children
The books were closed last week in a bizarre, traumatic case against a Colorado woman accused of killing her children when she was judged to be legally insane.
Claudia Camacho-Duena, 39, of Glenwood Springs, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of child abuse resulting in death for the December 2021 killings. Monday, she was found not guilty for reason of insanity. A jury trial scheduled to begin Jan. 8, 2024, was canceled and the case was closed.
It was clear Camacho-Duena suffered from severe mental disease, Jefferson Cheney, 9th Judicial District Attorney, told CBS News Colorado. Years earlier, she expressed how important her kids were to her. But two and a half years before killing her kids, she began expressing concern that other people wanted to kill her and/or her kids.
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"The kids were kind of numb to it," Cheney said. "I've never seen a medical history like this."
Her defense team hired a doctor for a psychological evaluation and that doctor called her incompetent to stand trial. She was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and psychosis, Cheney said.
The judge in the case then ordered an independent evaluation at a state hospital in Pueblo, which reached the same conclusion.
Prosecutors, however, didn't give up on a trial, continuing to look into her medical and psychological history. They found she was hospitalized four times since 2015 after exhibiting suicidal and homicidal behavior and had two and a half years of documented severe mental illness.
"But each time, she was stabilized by those treating her and released," Cheney said.
While maintaining his point of view as a prosecutor and not a mental health specialist, Cheney said recent changes in the mental health industry that were meant to protect the rights of patients have had unintended consequences.
"We've chosen to close long-term in-patient facilities." The result, he said, is a lack of treatment for those who need it.
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Camacho-Duena had no drugs or alcohol in her system at the time and nothing more than old traffic tickets in her prior criminal history.
And her behavior continued after her arrest. That's often a time when prosecutors find evidence of arrestees faking or exaggerating symptoms, Cheney said, and prosecutors can use that to question their credibility. That was not the case here.
Prosecutors then realized the obstacles they faced to prove she was beyond a doubt legally sane when she murdered her kids, Cheney said.
"That's what hurt so much. I'm in this to make a difference. There were times that something could've been done (earlier in her treatment). But I have (the benefit of) hindsight," Cheney said.
Part of the killing was caught on surveillance video. Cheney described it, his voice cracking: When the 11-year-old daughter stumbled into the camera's view, she collapsed in a parking lot. She had already been stabbed inside the nearby apartment building. Her 18-year-old brother ran up and leaned over his sister to check on her wounds. That's when their mother ran up behind her son and stabbed him in the back.
When police arrived, a bystander was restraining Camacho-Duenas. Both children passed away at a hospital.
As district attorney, Cheney had to break down the surveillance video second by second.
"This is the toughest case I've had in 20 years. The brutality of it...I will relive it over and over and over again. I told the court I couldn't take another case like this," he said.
Cheney referred to the incident as a "tornado" that tore through the city. Glenwood Springs is still rebuilding from it, Cheney said. Especially with regard to the people whose jobs forced them address the deaths intimately, as he had to.
"It's affected our community. It shook the first responders. We had bodyworn camera. We live it vicariously (through video), but not directly. I can't even imagine how it's hurt our partners," Cheney said. "I lost some people who were on the case. They've moved on to be a different kind of attorney."
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Camacho-Duenas will be transferred to a mental health institution in Pueblo for psychiatric treatment and care.
Glenwood Springs is about 160 miles west of Denver in Garfield County.
