Jake Haro, who on October 16 abruptly pleaded guilty to killing his 7-month-old son, was given a 25-years-to-life prison term for that crime at his sentencing hearing on Monday, November 3.
Tacked on to that time will be 180 days for filing a false police report, which occurred when he and his wife initially contacted authorities about their child’s “disappearance” in August. The long arm of the law having at last caught up with him, he will also be required to serve the entirety of a 6-year sentence for having severely physically abused Emmanuel’s now 7-year-old half sister, as a result of his having violated the conditional parole he was granted when that earlier sentence was suspended. As a consequence, barring some unforeseen eventuality, Haro, 32, will remain imprisoned for the next 31 years.
Despite the criminal case against Haro having drawn to a close, the public – and perhaps even court, prosecutorial and law enforcement authorities – remain in the dark over what, precisely, or even inexactly, happened to Baby Emmanuel.
The case involved, paradoxically, a remarkable set of investigative efficiencies and obtuse acts on the part of the detectives assigned to what is now officially determined to have been a murder, as well as both the helpful and obstructive efforts of the newfangled class of social media “influencers.”
The extraordinarily twisted and not-yet-fully-resolved case lurched into public consciousness on August 14, when Rebecca Haro, Jake’s 41-year-old wife, came forward with a harrowing report of Emmanuel’s kidnapping. According to Rebecca, whose story was verified in most of its particulars by Jake, the couple, who lived in the Riverside County community of Cabazon, had come to Yucaipa late that afternoon with Emmanuel, Emmanuel’s three-year-old sibling and Emmanuel’s ten-year-old half brother so the ten-year-old could participate in a youth football scrimmage/practice at the outdoor sports complex in the city. She left the complex to go to the nearby Big 5 sporting goods store to purchase a mouthguard for her stepson. When she paused to change Emmanuel’s diaper with the child laid out in on the family vehicle’s backseat while the park was parked in the Big 5 parking lot, she claimed, a man came up behind her, greater her in Spanish and then bashed her over the head. When she came to, she said, Emmanuel was gone.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which serves as the contract police department in Yucaipa, swung into immediate action upon receiving the report.
An examination of video footage taken from security cameras in the parking lot, nearby stores and the surrounding area did not confirm but did not rule out the veracity of Rebecca’s version of events. Her story was in some measure supported by a black left eye she appeared to have sustained in the incident.
An all points bulletin went out for Emmanuel and anyone seen or with a child who resembled him, which led within the first 24 hours to a believed sighting of Emmanuel in Kern County near Bakersfield.
While there was instantaneous sympathy and a showing of support for the parents, as the Haros were subjected to further and repeated questioning by investigators, what came across as inconsistencies or implausibilities in Rebecca’s story emerged, and a statement to that effect was made by an investigators to a member of the press. When that statement widely circulated on August 18, social media influencers, which to that point had seemed so sympathetic toward and upportive of the Haros, turned on them. From that point forward, the new age journalists began staking out their home, trailing them wherever they went and even began using means previously unheard-of among civilians, extending to accessing cell phone emanations and geoposition data recorded at cellphone towers to track their whereabouts on the day of the disappearance and the days and weeks proceeding the report of the disappearance. Within days, the amateur sleuths working in the new media were churning up evidence of both questionable and significant value, including that Rebecca Haro was already bearing a black eye as early as August 4 or 5 and that the family had disposed of Baby Emmanuel’s clothing and bed clothes.
Word slipped out, either deliberately or inadvertently, that investigators were looking into the possibility that the child was already dead and his body had been disposed of in the trash, such that by that point his tiny corpse was buried in the East Valley Remediation Facility landfill or the Lamb Canyon Landfill near Beaumont.
With the social media and traditional press subjecting the Haros to constant pressure, investigators continued probing, questioning the Haros, in particular focusing on Jake. It is believed that Jake during one of these exchanges made an admission that he had killed his son. Circulating on social media shortly thereafter was that he had killed his son by rolling over on him in bed while they were asleep one night.
On August 22, at 6:59 a.m., San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputies in combat gear came onto the Haro’s property in Cabazon, where they arrested and cuffed the couple upon serving an arrest warrant, marching them off of the property in the full view of media photographers and videographers for transport to the Robert Presley Detention Center in downtown Riverside, where they were entrusted to the custody of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
Based upon the theory that the Haros were responsible for the death of their son and that the report of his kidnapping had been a deliberate falsehood they cooked up to mislead authorities, they were arrested and booked on suspicion of murder and filing a false police report.
There were conflicting reports, the provenance of which were unknown, given as they appeared on various social media outlets without any specific attribution to any authorities or officials, that the child’s body had been found and ones that Baby Haro was yet missing.
Meanwhile, reports abounded that investigators with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department were acutely conscious that the case against the Haros had been largely assembled by their counterparts in San Bernardino County. The theory under which they had been arrested and were being prosecuted was that the murder had occurred in Riverside County. In an effort to strengthen the case against the couple, which was being prosecuted by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office in Riverside County Superior Court, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department undertook to obtain even stronger evidence than had been developed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department detectives. In the case of Rebecca, deputies held her in a holding cell for nearly five hours before booking her and placing her into a cell on the seventh floor of the Presley Center. Jake was not booked for over ten hours, before he was ultimately moved into custody at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. During the time Jake and Rebecca were in the holding cells on August 22, the sheriff’s department took the opportunity to place into their immediate presence sheriff’s employees masquerading as arrestees whose assignments were to befriend them and win their confidence. Thereafter, the man comporting himself as an inmate would re-encounter Jake at the Larry Smith Correctional Facility and Rebecca would come across the female ersatz inmate she had met in the pre-booking holding facility after her booking when she was housed on the 7th floor of the Presley Detention Center. At some point, it was hoped, either Jake or Rebecca or both would convey to their newfound communicant details relating to the death of Emmanuel that would assist in obtaining convictions against them. On August 24,
On August 24, in a ploy to get Rebecca to talk, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Departeent took Jake Haro on a walking excursion around fire roads and chaparral covered ground near the turnoff to the Badlands bordering Gilman Springs just off the 60 Freeway east of Moreno Valley. .