San Jose exorcism death: Detective testimony about child ritual opens preliminary hearing

Three-year-old Arely Naomi Proctor died in 2021; her mother, uncle and grandfather have been charged with killing her.

SAN JOSE — Three people facing charges of killing a 3-year-old girl during an alleged exorcism at a San Jose church had believed she was “possessed by a demon,” so they engaged in a ritual to “liberate” the child, a police lieutenant testified Monday.

One reason the girl could have been possessed, the lead police investigator said on the stand, was that her family believed she might have seen something sinister on her mother’s cell phone.

The hours-long testimony of San Jose Police Department Lt. J.J. Vallejo began a preliminary hearing to determine whether a case against Claudia Hernandez, Rene Trigueros Hernandez and Rene Hernandez Santos — the girl’s mother, grandfather and uncle, respectively — should proceed to trial. The hearing before Judge Hanley Chew in a San Jose courtroom is expected to last several days.

All three are charged with felony child abuse resulting in death related to the Sept. 24, 2021 death of Arely Naomi Proctor at a 25-member Pentecostal church south of downtown led by Trigueros Hernandez.

Arely’s mother was first arrested in early 2022, followed a few months later by Trigueros Hernandez and Hernandez Santos; they were all charged with the same crime and their charges were eventually consolidated.

A coroner’s report determined that Arely died by asphyxiation, and authorities allege she was subjected to more than 12 hours of physical abuse that included being “strangled multiple times to the point of unconsciousness, she had fingers shoved down her throat to the point she had multiple injuries to her mouth and to her tongue, and she had pressure put on her body, on her torso from the front and back, with so much force applied that she lost consciousness.”

Prior to his arrest, Trigueros Hernandez admitted to this news organization to performing the exorcism. Police alleged that he, Hernandez and Hernandez Santos held the girl down to try to make her vomit, and rotated between positions in which one person held her by the face and neck, one held her around her torso and the third held her around her legs. She had not been given any food and hardly any water in the 24 hours leading up to her death, authorities said.

Vallejo’s testimony to Deputy District Attorney Rebekah Wise on Monday consisted entirely of his recollection interviewing the defendants as the case’s lead investigator. The session that day revolved around accounts he gathered from Trigueros Hernandez and Hernandez Santos.

Vallejo recounted a recorded conversation between Hernandez and her brother in which she reportedly said “that God had taken (Arely) and everything was going to be ok,” and cautioned about how “it’s going to look like we intended to kill her, but we did not.”

Trigueros Hernandez also said in a police interview that one of the catalysts for Arely’s purported demonic possession was that the child was allowed to use her mother’s cell phone and might have viewed something sinister.

The child’s grandfather also told Vallejo that the girl struggled throughout the ritual, which he interpreted as “power” that he could not “destroy,” the lieutenant testified.

Wise also asked Vallejo about Trigueros Hernandez’s recollection of a years-past exorcism in El Salvador. According to Vallejo, Trigueros Hernandez described being part of a 12-man crew who held a woman down and prayed for six hours to cure her of a “spell cast on her.” Vallejo said the defendant claimed the woman’s stomach inflated throughout the exorcism, and at the end, a 12-to-18-inch lizard was “expelled from the woman’s vagina, and it was caught.”

Returning to the San Jose exorcism, Vallejo said the grandfather and uncle recalled the moment they noticed Arely appeared to be lifeless, pale in appearance, “like someone had passed.” Authorities allege that the defendants made no attempt to call for help for hours after the child became unresponsive.

Monday’s session left little time for the defense attorneys’ cross examination, but from the start, Dana Fite, representing Trigueros Hernandez, sought to establish the absence of homicidal intent by the defendants.

“None of these individuals said they intended to kill Arely, correct?” Fite asked, prompting an affirmative answer from Vallejo.

“In essence, they were trying to help her, to get rid of the demon, correct?” Fite continued.

The exorcism death did not draw public attention until nearly eight months after it occurred, by apparent happenstance: Police investigating an unrelated kidnapping searched the church attended by two suspects who later pleaded no contest in that case. That pointed public scrutiny at the church and the revelation of the exorcism, which was freely acknowledged by Trigueros Hernandez and congregants.

The preliminary hearing for the three defendants is expected to last through March 25, after which Judge Chew will rule whether there is enough evidence to allow the charges to proceed toward trial.