Cut Brake Lines, Duped Lovers: The Wild Story Behind Baby Brandon’s Kidnapping

A wild kidnapping case that gripped California in April just got even wilder—and it allegedly involves cut brake lines, duped lovers and four previous abduction attempts.

In April, police arrested two suspects who they say abducted three-month-old Brandon Cuellar from a San Jose apartment as the child’s grandmother unloaded groceries downstairs. It prompted a frantic manhunt and generated national headlines. Police said they recovered the baby 20 hours later in Jose Portillo’s home, and cell phone evidence allegedly linked his girlfriend, Yesenia Guadalupe Ramirez, to the crime as well.

On Tuesday, Portillo and Ramirez pleaded no contest to all eight charges against them, including kidnapping, but not before a slew of shocking new details came out about the case. The plea meant that, while they didn’t admit their guilt, they will not contest the allegations.

Baby Boy Abducted by Stranger Right Under Granny’s Nose in San Jose

As the Mercury News reported, prosecutors alleged in court this week that Ramirez, 44, was the mastermind behind the kidnapping plot, which she began planning shortly after Brandon’s birth.

Citing phone records, a detective testified during the two-day hearing that Ramirez had several boyfriends and former lovers, many of whom “believed they had birthed numerous children” with her.

When one of her boyfriends demanded that she prove it, she set about snatching Brandon and convincing him it was their child, the detective testified.

It initially worked: The boyfriend, Francisco Marquez, told police he genuinely believed Ramirez, who is also married but estranged from her husband, until he saw reports on the news of her arrest on kidnapping charges.

“Our belief is that she was going to kidnap Brandon Doe to raise him, essentially as her own, to kidnap him permanently and keep him from his family,” prosecutor Rebekah White said, according to NBC Bay Area.

Prosecutors claim Ramirez started out by befriending baby Brandon’s mother, Jessica Ayala, shortly after his birth.

The pair met at tiny, controversial Pentacostal church run out of a home in San Jose. The Daily Beast previously reported that, in an unrelated case, a mother was arrested after her 3-year-old daughter suffocated to death during an exorcism at the same church.

“When my baby was two months old, she started to frequent my house more,” Ayala testified this week. Ramirez brought her baby gifts, she said, all while court documents allege that kidnapping attempts were underway. “She would come over to my house and tell me God would tell her that she was required to help me, because I was going through a difficult time.”

NBC Bay Area reported that police alleged Ramirez had asked to take the baby shopping twice, and had allegedly tried to snatch Brandon from his home, from church, and twice from Walmart before their fourth attempt in April, which was successful.

In one attempt, Ramirez and Portillo allegedly went to Brandon’s home when Ayala was out and pretended to be child welfare officials taking custody of the infant. Relatives who were home at the time called the local Department of Family and Children’s Services and learned that was not the case.

In the fourth and final attempt, police alleged that Portillo grabbed Brandon when his grandma was unloading groceries, put him in a baby carrier, and brought him home.

As if the multiple attempts to steal Brandon weren’t bad enough, Ramirez also allegedly targeted Ayala personally. In her bombshell testimony, Ayala told the judge that she realized her brake lights were not turning on a few days prior to the April kidnapping. When she took the car to a mechanic, he told her that the lines had been deliberately cut.

Portillo, meanwhile, was just a lovesick patsy, blinded by his love for Ramirez and duped into carrying out her sick plan, his attorney said, in a version of events that was largely accepted by prosecutors and the judge.

“He fell in love and followed the wrong woman,” his public defender Karri Iyama said outside the courthouse. “Since then, he has fallen into circumstances that gave rise to this case.”

For all of Ramirez’s false friendship and criminality, though, Ayala testified that she’s not angry and has forgiven both Ramirez and Portillo. She said she did, however, fear that the two will target her or others again once they get out of jail.

Indeed, the suspects will get out sooner than prosecutors hoped on account of their no contest plea. The pair had faced more than 16 years in prison but Ramirez now faces a maximum of 14 years and Portillo a maximum of five, on account of his lesser involvement.

While Ramirez’s attorney considered that proposition a “reasonable offer,” prosecutors are displeased. Since the suspects pleaded no contest, prosecutors say, the judge alone determines the sentencing parameters.

“There should have been an opportunity to have a sentencing where they could have been sentenced up to the maximum,” Wise said. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for October 28.

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