TRAGIC SLAYING Series tells of boy’s abuse and system’s failure
A young boy’s shocking 2013 murder gripped the nation and sparked the reexamination of a system that failed to protect him — and has now been made into a riveting docu-series for Netflix.
“The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez” delves into the torture and slaying of the 8-year-old boy by his mother and boyfriend because they thought he was gay.
Directed by award-winning documentarian Brian Knappenberger, the six-part documentary bares the horrific life and death of little Gabriel after repeated abuse by his mother Pearl Fernandez and her boyfriend Isauro Aguirre.
The Los Angeles boy was found naked, with a cracked skull and severe burns at his family’s home in Palmdale on May 22, 2013. He died two days later.
Pearl Fernandez was sentenced to life without parole, after confessing to the crimes in 2018. Her boyfriend was convicted of first-degree murder with the special circumstance of intentional murder by torture and sentenced to death — a rare conviction in California.
Knappenberger, 49, told the Daily News that only when he started filming inside the courtroom did he realize how important the case was.
“That’s when it really kicked in how powerful this story was,” the director said last week. “Everybody who worked on this was just blown away when we started hearing the details of what happened to Gabriel, and hearing the testimony.”
For months, Gabriel was beaten, starved, tied up and forced to sleep in a cabinet. The severely underfed boy was forced to eat cat litter, according to prosecutors, and once even got his teeth knocked out with a bat.
According to Jonathan Hatami, the deputy DA who prosecuted the case, Gabriel was killed because his mother and her boyfriend thought he was gay.
On one early morning in
May 2013, after a particularly hard beating,
Aguirre (photo) and Fernandez had to call 911 for help. The naked little boy was found with the unmistakable signs of his abuse and rushed to a hospital, where he died two days later. Aguirre and Fernandez were then arrested, charged with murder and convicted. “Because I deal with these type of cases a lot, I do believe that there are some people — and there’s not a lot — but there are some people that are bad and evil people; and bad and evil people can do bad and evil things,” Hatami, 50, told The News.
During sentencing in 2018, Judge George Lomeli called the defendants’ conduct “horrendous, inhumane and nothing short of evil.” he heartaking series rs an inside k at the intigation and l that ultitely led to ir convicns — and nes a light how the edy, which representaof the systematic failure of the Los Angeles County’s child welfare system, led to the boy’s death.
Despite several reports of abuse to the Department of Children and Family Service investigations into his family, and extensive visits from social workers, the protections put in place to protect the life of the most vulnerable did nothing to save his life.
“Gabriel is without question the beating heart of the series,” Knappenberger said.
It’s “striking” that nobody listened to his cries for help, he said. “Nobody heard him. Nobody reacted. People who had an opportunity to save him, for some one reason or another, chose not to.”
“I think the hero in this story is Gabriel,” Hatami told The News. “I think this story is, like Brian said, about the failure of government to help a little boy who was trying to reach out for anybody for help. But Gabriel is my hero and always will be.”
In April 2016, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced that four social workers had been charged with child abuse and falsifying public records in the death of the 8-year-old.