Bay Area woman charged with torturing foster children dies in custody
(KRON) — A Bay Area woman who was charged with torturing three adopted children recently died in jail custody. Gina Centeno, 53, Rohnert Park, died of natural causes from a terminal illness at Sutter Hospital in Sacramento on Sunday, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.
Centeno had been transferred from jail into a hospital on December 29 because of complications from leukemia, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Centeno spent the last three years of her life in a Sonoma County jail awaiting trial in a shocking child abuse case. Gina Centeno and her husband, Jose Centeno, adopted three siblings in 2008, police said. For years, the children were allegedly abused in the couple’s Rohnert Park home, according to police.
Gina Centeno and her husband were arrested in the summer of 2020 and charged with torture, as well as kidnapping for ransom. Jose Centeno, 56, was also charged with rape by force, sodomy by force, oral copulation, lewd acts upon a child, and additional child sex crimes.
The foster parents were kept behind bars in lieu of $18 million bail each. They pleaded not guilty.
One of the Centenos’ adopted children, Kaya Marie “Kazzee” Centeno, is currently classified as “missing.”
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On July 24, 2020, Child Protective Services alerted the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety Detective Bureau about the three foster children. By that time, the Centenos had already left the country and were living in Mexico with the children.
Police were able to track two of the Centenos’ children — a 17-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, in Mexico. After speaking with the siblings, police officers said they made a shocking discovery.
The siblings told police that their older sister, Kaya, was missing. Kaya was between 8 and 10-years-old when she vanished in Rohnert Park a decade ago, according to the Polly Klaas Foundation. Kaya was last seen in 2011 when she was a 2nd grader, according to the California Department of Justice. That year, she was withdrawn from John Reed School to be homeschooled, police said.
Rohnert Park police detectives and the FBI worked with the US Embassy and Child Protective Services to get the brother and sister to a safe place in Sonoma County where they could be forensically interviewed.
“There were allegations of emotional, sexual and physical abuse. The children said Kaya went missing from their Rohnert Park home approximately eight to ten years ago, and she has not been heard from or seen since,” police wrote.
Rohnert Park police launched a missing person investigation for the older sister, but Kaya has never been found.
Gina Centeno was slated to stand trial in September 2023, however court proceedings were delayed for months. A hearing for the foster mother was held in court just two days before she died.
Her trial was scheduled to begin in May. Sonoma County Assistant District Attorney Brian Staebell said, once Gina Centeno’s defense attorney provides the DA’s Office with a copy of her death certificate, “we will dismiss the charges against Ms. Centeno. Her death does not affect the case against Jose Centeno.”
The child torture, kidnapping, and rape case against Jose Centeno is scheduled to move forward with a trial starting on May 24. He is being held in custody with no bail, inmate records show.
Rohnert Park police used a school yearbook photo of Kaya to digitally enhance and age-progress to estimate what Kaya would look like in 2020. She turned 21 in May 2023. The childhood photo and age-processed photo are shown above. Anyone with information can call the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety at 707-584-2612.
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