Description

---

AN ABUSIVE MOTHER
Raised in the suburb of Riverside, California, twenty-year-old college student Jason Bautista endured for years his emotionally disturbed mother's verbal and psychological abuse. She even locked him out of the house, tied him up with electrical cord, and on one occasion, gave him a beating that sent him to the emergency room. His fifteen-year-old half brother Matthew Montejo also was a victim to Jane Bautista's dark mood swings and erratic behavior, but for some reason, Jason received the brunt of the abuse—until he decided he'd had enough…

A SON'S REVENGE
On the night of January 14, 2003, Jason strangled his mother. To keep authorities from identifying her body, he chopped off her head and hands, an idea he claimed he got from watching an episode of the hit TV series "The Sopranos." Matthew would later testify in court that he sat in another room in the house with the TV volume turned up while Jason murdered their mother. He also testified that he drove around with Jason to find a place to dump Jane's torso.

A CRIME THAT WOULD BOND TWO BROTHERS
The morning following the murder, Matthew went to school, and Jason returned to his classes at Cal State San Bernardino. When authorities zeroed in on them, Jason lied and said that Jane had run off with a boyfriend she'd met on the Internet. But when police confronted the boys with overwhelming evidence, Jason confessed all. Now the nightmare was only just beginning for him…

About the Author

---

With more than a decade of reporting experience behind her, Tina Dirmann has covered some of the nation’s biggest news stories, interviewing notorious criminals and profiling A-list celebrities. She is a graduate of UCLA and worked for The San Bernardino County Sun and Riverside County’s The Press Enterprise newspaper before joining The Los Angeles Times, where she covered crime, courts, and county politics, and worked as a general assignment reporter on the state desk. Before leaving the Times, Dirmann earned a spot among a small team of reporters named as finalists for The Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 2000 Alaska Airllines crash, which killed 88 people. In recent years, Dirmann switched from crime news to entertainment reporting, working as a staff reporter for Us Weekly magazine before becoming Deputy Bureau Chief for Star magazine. Vanished at Sea is her second true crime book. Her first, Such Good Boys, is a chilling account of how two sons conspired to viciously murder their mother. Dirmann is currently a contributing entertainment reporter/on-air personality for E! Entertainment and a freelance writer living near the sand and seas in Santa Monica, California.