More than 50 people packed a courtroom Monday afternoon to
listen to family and friends of Franca Barsi deliver damning words
to her confessed killer, 41-year-old David Vincent Reyes.
SAN MARTIN
More than 50 people packed a courtroom Monday afternoon to listen to family and friends of Franca Barsi deliver damning words to her confessed killer, 41-year-old David Vincent Reyes.
“My only comfort is that when it comes time to die – and die he shall, as we all will – God will be there to punish him for all of eternity,” said Barsi’s sister Lauretta Avina.
Standing at a microphone in a San Martin courtroom and wearing a button of her smiling sister, Avina fought off tears as she pleaded the judge to “send this confessed killer to the harshest and most brutal of state facilities.”
Superior Court Judge Kenneth Shapero responded by approving the plea bargain that the public defender and deputy district attorney hammered out last month – 32 years and four months in prison and more than $8,000 in reparations. In October, Reyes pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, two counts of felony robbery and failure to register as a sex offender. He has already served about 17 months.
On Sept. 14, 2006, after a hour-long car chase from San Jose to Gilroy and back again, Reyes confessed to killing the 38-year-old Barsi – his on-again, off-again girlfriend – during an argument. Barsi had been found a day earlier in her Westwood Drive condominium – arms and legs tied behind her back with a white electrical cord – suffocated to death, according to the county medical examiner. Reyes said he did not remember exactly what happened during the incident.
The murder shocked friends and family, who recalled Barsi as a vivacious woman with a bevy of talents. She was well known in the community and remembered for following in her sister’s steps to become Miss Gilroy Garlic Queen in 1986. The murder left her then 10-year-old son motherless.
At the sentencing, these emotions were still strong.
“Franca was a good and loving person and you destroyed her and took her life,” Barsi’s mother, Mara Barsi-Perez, said directly to Reyes – seated just a few feet in front of her. “I hope you’ll be living your life in a living hell like I am living.”
While Barsi’s family and friends spoke, Reyes sat facing the judge. He did not turn back and did not cry, but contorted his face, as if chewing his cheek. Since his arrest, Barsi’s family members and friends said Reyes never showed remorse.
Neither Reyes nor any of the more than 25 friends and family members who came to the sentencing – including his wife, parents and children – chose to speak. After the sentencing, however, Reyes spoke to his grandparents privately in the courtroom.
During the meeting, Reyes apologized to his family for the pain he caused them and other people, grandmother Virginia Delgado said.
“He’s sorry for what he did,” she said. “He might not show it, but (Barsi’s family members) don’t know what we know about him. When he turned to drugs, he turned into a monster.”
While Reyes’ friends and family members don’t want to see him locked away for 32 years, they hope that it will straighten him out, Delgado said. When he gets out, they will be waiting, she said.
“What he did was wrong, but we still love him,” she said.
