Murder Suspect Weeps at Trial

A woman accused of murdering her four daughters by setting a fire broke down wailing in court Monday after testifying about a “flashback” of holding a lighter in her hand and seeing a blaze.

“I was hoping it would be a dream,” Sandi Nieves testified about the flashback, growing distraught. “It scared the hell out of me. I had a flashback of a flash . . . a lighter . . . a fire . . . I don’t know what it was!”

Nieves shouted at one point Monday, “I sit here and wonder every day what happened. I have no idea!”

Putting Nieves on the stand was part of a risky strategy by Deputy Public Defender Howard Waco to suggest that she was not “legally conscious” when the house fire started and should not be held legally responsible.

Prosecutors contend that Nieves tried to commit suicide and kill her children out of desperation and revenge. She had just undergone an abortion, a boyfriend had left her, and a former husband was trying to escape paying child support, her sole source of income.

Nieves, now 36, is accused of gathering her children in the kitchen of their rented Saugus house on the night of June 30, 1998, opening an oven and turning it on, then starting a fire. Her daughters, Kristl and Jaqlene Folden, 5 and 7, and Rashel and Nikolet Folden-Nieves, 11 and 12, died of smoke inhalation.