Moises Meraz-Espinoza: Maywood Murder, Trial, and Prison Stabbings

Moises Meraz-Espinoza is a California man serving 25 years to life for strangling and dismembering his mother, Amelia Espinoza, in their Maywood apartment on February 2, 2011, in what prosecutors described as a satanic ritual sacrifice.¹ He was 18 at the time. More than a decade into that sentence, a Monterey County jury convicted him in August 2025 of two more felonies for stabbing fellow inmates at Salinas Valley State Prison.²

The Killing in Maywood

Meraz-Espinoza strangled his 42-year-old mother at the apartment they shared at 5601 Maywood Avenue, then dismembered, skinned, and filleted her body.¹ Investigators recovered an electric circular saw from the bathroom with bone, blood, and flesh on the blade; the walls and floor had been covered in plastic. Skin and muscle tissue were bagged inside a freezer. Her skull was found in a backpack with the eyes removed, the teeth pulled, and two inverted crosses carved into the bone.³ Her internal organs were never recovered.⁴

Family members told investigators he had been depressed since his girlfriend was killed by a car roughly four months earlier.⁵ Neighbors had not seen Amelia Espinoza for about a week before her son surrendered, and during that stretch he kept turning the landlord away from maintenance visits.⁶

How He Was Caught

On February 4, 2011, Meraz-Espinoza walked into the Huntington Park Police Department and told officers he had killed his mother and left the body at the apartment.⁶ He had already admitted the killing to a cousin, who urged him to turn himself in.³ The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department took the investigation and he was booked on suspicion of murder, held without bail.⁷

Trial, Motive, and Sentence

A jury in Norwalk convicted Meraz-Espinoza of first-degree murder in June 2013. On July 17, 2013, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas I. McKnew Jr. sentenced him to 25 years to life, calling the case “one of the most disgusting, hideous and vulgar” he had ever seen.⁸

Deputy District Attorney Heba Matta told the court the killing was a deliberate ritual, not a crime of passion. She said Meraz-Espinoza was “heavily entrenched” in satanic beliefs and that February 2 fell on a day in the satanic calendar calling for ritual sacrifice.⁴ Prosecutors pointed to his tattoos, including inverted crosses and “666” behind his right ear, and to a satanic bible recovered near the scene with a chapter on human sacrifice.⁹ Matta added that Espinoza had disapproved of her son’s interest in death metal music and that he “regularly disobeyed her.”

Defense attorney Jonathan Roberts argued the prosecution overstated his client’s involvement in satanic worship, noting that the contemporary Church of Satan does not advocate human sacrifice and that he doubted an 18-year-old would adopt the tenets of an organization founded decades earlier.³

Two Stabbings Behind Bars

Meraz-Espinoza was sent to Salinas Valley State Prison in Monterey County, where he attacked two inmates in separate incidents.

On February 4, 2023, after the evening lockdown, he stabbed his cellmate more than 20 times in the back, chest, arms, and legs. Correctional officers found him straddling the victim at 9:08 p.m. The man was taken to Natividad Medical Center with life-threatening injuries and treated in the intensive care unit.¹⁰

On November 25, 2024, he approached another inmate in the prison yard and immediately began stabbing him. That victim also suffered life-threatening injuries and was taken to Natividad.¹¹

A Monterey County jury convicted him of two counts of assault by a life prisoner, and the District Attorney’s Office announced the verdict on August 15, 2025.² Sentencing was scheduled for August 27, 2025, before Judge Stephanie Hulsey, with a maximum of life in state prison on the new charges.¹¹

His Own Federal Lawsuit

Meraz-Espinoza is also a plaintiff in federal court. He sued prison staff over a June 21, 2023 incident at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, alleging another inmate threw containers of human waste at him in the yard and that officers failed to intervene, failed to summon medical care, and cleaned the area rather than preserving evidence. He said he developed fever, chills, and bone aches and contracted hepatitis.¹²

U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick let the case proceed on two Eighth Amendment claims, failure to protect and failure to summon medical care, against a single defendant, correctional officer H. Santoyo. The rest of the defendants and claims were dismissed. An April 2025 order denied Meraz-Espinoza’s request for appointed counsel and extended the defense’s deadline for a dispositive motion to July 7, 2025.¹³

Habeas Petition on the Murder Conviction

In June 2016, Meraz-Espinoza filed a federal habeas corpus petition in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, raising claims including ineffective assistance of counsel, improper expert testimony, the admission of photos of the dismembered body, flawed reasonable-doubt instructions, and the denial of his requests to represent himself and to substitute counsel. The court found the petition “mixed” because two claims had not been exhausted in state court and ordered him to choose how to proceed. The available record does not show how the petition was ultimately resolved.¹⁴

1
KTLA. Satan Worshiper Gets Life in Prison for Killing, Skinning Mom
2
Mercury News. Salinas Valley Inmate Convicted of Two Stabbings
3
Los Angeles Times. Man Killed Mom on Satanic Holiday for Human Sacrifice, DA Says
4
Los Angeles Times. Judge Calls Satanic Killing Disgusting, Hideous and Vulgar
5
Los Angeles Times. Amelia Espinoza
6
ABC News. Chilling Confession: Teen Allegedly Dismembered Mother, Stored Body
7
NBC Los Angeles. Son Held in Mother’s Murder
8
CBS News. Calif. Man Gets 25 Years in Death, Dismemberment of Mom
9
San Bernardino Sun. Maywood Man Sentenced to Life for Mother’s Grisly Murder
10
Salinas Valley Tribune. Jury Convicts Salinas Valley State Prison Inmate of Two Counts of Assault
11
Monterey County. DA Announces Conviction of Salinas Valley State Prison Inmate
12
GovInfo. Meraz-Espinoza v. H. Santoyo, Case No. 3:23-cv-05947-WHO – Order of Service
13
GovInfo. Meraz-Espinoza v. H. Santoyo, Case No. 3:23-cv-05947-WHO – Order on Motion for Counsel
14
Justia. Meraz-Espinoza v. Unknown, Case No. CV 16-04597 DMG (RAO)