Jake Haro, in an unanticipated move during a court hearing to finalize arrangements for his preliminary hearing and that of his wife and co-defendant, pleaded guilty this morning, Thursday October 15, in Riverside Superior Court to second degree murder in the death of his infant son.
The plea provides some but not all of the answers to a set of evolving questions that have been extant for more than two months. It seemingly confirms what investigators and prosecutors and a significant portion of the public has believed and alleged for some time, which is that the original story about the disappearance of 7-month Emmanuel Haro told by the child’s mother, Rebecca Haro, was patently untrue.
In that version of events, provided to members of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department on August 14, she, her husband, Jake, Jake’s two-year-old sister and his ten-year-old half brother had driven to Yucaipa from the Haro home in Cabazon in Riverside County so the ten-year-old could partticipate in a football scrimmage/practice at the large sports facility there. According to Rebecca Haro, she went to the Big 5 Sporting Goods Store several blocks from the sports facility to purchase a mouth guard for her stepson, where in the parking lot she stopped to change Emmanuel’s diaper. As she was doing so, sometime 7:44 p.m. and 7:54 p.m., with the 7-month-old on the backseat of the family vehicle, she said, she was sucker-punched by a man who had greeted her in Spanish. When she came to on the ground moments later, she said, Emmanuel was gone.
Initially, her story was lent credibility by the consideration that she had a blackened right eye. An all points bulletin went out as an intensive search was initiated, which resulted in a report that the child had been sighted in Kern County near Bakersfield.
Within a few days, however, contradictions in Rebecca Haro’s story emerged, as video footage from cameras in the area either did not confirm her version of events or seemed at odds with it. A social media frenzy ensued, which entailed the relatively new brand of citizen journalists, among whom were both amateur and professional videographers, staking out the Haro’s home, following them and tracing their previous movements in the days and weeks prior to Emmanuel’s disappearance. Some of those efforts churned up information that went beyond what sheriff’s department investigators were able to obtain, such as indications that Rebecca Haro’s eye was blackened as early as August 3.
Both of the Haros were confronted with this information and other details gleaned by detectives when they were interviewed, reinterviewed and interrogated over the course of the next three days, at which point Rebecca Haro grew uncooperative. The investigation at that point made a crucial shift, with the parents now suspects in what was believed to be the death of their child.
Late in the evening on Sunday, August 18, an identification of Jake Emmanuel Haro and Jake Mitchell Haro as being one and the same was received through a backchannel to several media organizations and social media outlets. Riverside County Superior Court records showed that a conviction against Jake Mitchell Haro had been entered against him in June 2023, stemming from his arrest on charges of child cruelty in Hemet four years and 8 months previously. Both Haro and his then wife, Vanessa Avina, were arrested on October 13, 2018 after their 10-week-old daughter, Carolina Rose, was admitted to Hemet Valley Hospital. Doctors reported to police that the girl had a “fresh” and “acute” fractured rib, six previously fractured ribs, a previous leg bone fracture and a previous skull fracture, all of which were in a state of “healing,” swelling of the neck and a brain hemorrhage.
Carolina Rose, who was severely disabled after having had to undergo a tracheotomy and was rendered blind, unable to walk or speak, with three to seven percent brain function because of the beating to her head, making her entirely dependent upon her caregiver, was adopted by Vanessa’s sister, who changed the child’s name to Promise Faith.
A criminal case against Jake Mitchell Haro and Vanessa Avina was pursued by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office and dragged out for nearly five years, which concluded with his 2023 conviction for willful cruelty to a child.
It was incidentally mentioned that Haro had been arrested while in possession of a gun, and was yet facing charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The already pointed suppositions on multiple social media sites that were suggesting the parents were involved in the child’s disappearance reached a cacophonous crescendo thereafter, at which point the involved law enforcement entities echoed those accusations, albeit in less sensationalistic terms, and without disclosing the basis for that conclusion. A wide cross section of the traditional press and media, hamstrung by the standard limitations relating to sourcing and the production of verified specifics, while taken aback by Jake Haro’s criminal history that consisted of extreme abuse of a child, noted, without publishing as much, that the presumption of the Haros’ guilt was unaccompanied by any specific hard evidence to support the inferences being drawn.
Yet another corner on the case was turned when both Jake and Rebecca were rousted at 6:59 a.m., on August 22 by San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deputies and detectives, who arrested them on suspicion of the murder of their son. They were entrusted to the custody of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, which delayed in booking them. Rebecca was not booked into official custody at the jail until 12:32 p.m., more than a half hour after noon, five-and-a-half hours after her arrest. Jake was not booked until 5:33 p.m., a full ten-and-a-half hours after his arrest.
During that time, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department used the opportunity to place undercover officers into the inmate population in the holding cells where both were being detained. Those officers, in the guise of individuals who had just been arrested themselves, attempted to befriend the Haros in an effort to gain their confidence and thereby obtain statements from them that further implicated them in the murder of their son, together with possible hints with regard to where the child’s remains were located.
Within days, word of the undercover operation became public knowledge, as did investigators inability to locate the body of the child. Whereas previously, the detectives with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in investigating the matter had embraced the opportunity that the widespread public interest and accompanying social media scrutiny provided them in pressuring the Haros to further their effort to learn what the actual circumstances surrounding Emmanuel’s disappearance were, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and in particular Sheriff Chad Bianco, with the couple in their custody, proved to be far less adept at harnessing the glare of attention that attended the case for any positive effect. The public, expectant as a consequence of the arrests of the parents that at minimum an explication of the facts with regard to the killing of the child by his parents would be provided and anticipating an even more comprehensive detailing of what had occurred, found themselves stonewalled as the Riverside Sheriff’s Department showed itself to be far less forthcoming than the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Bianco and his crew grew even more coy when it was pressed about the most basic element of the murder, i.e., how the child had died. It was at that point that it was intimated that the child’s body had not been found. Two days after the arrests, amid reports that Jake Haro was cooperating with his jailers, what was hoped would prove to be a succesful shaping of the narrative, news outlets and agencies were tipped off about an out-of-jail excursion that Jake Haro was taking to the badlands outside Moreno Valley…