Salvadoran child abuser who murdered his wife in San Francisco wins parole
A Salvadoran child sex abuser who stabbed his wife to death at their San Francisco home in 1996 has won parole after nearly three decades behind bars.
Fred Orellana was convicted of murder after attacking his wife, Alicia Orellana, with a kitchen knife as she pleaded for her life. She was found dead on her bed having sustained wounds to her chest. Moments before the assault she had told her husband the she wanted to divorce him.
Orellana, 74, was in the U.S. at the time of the murder after a San Francisco judge recommended he not be deported following a conviction for molesting a pre-pubescent child ten years earlier.
At a parole hearing held on July 10 2025, presiding commissioner Emily Sheffield described the murder as “an incredibly callous and cruel crime,” but conceded that Orellana had established detailed proposals for his post release life and was, as she saw it, unlikely to reoffend.
“You do have realistic and concrete plans for both El Salvador and the U.S.,” she said. “You have multiple family members in both locations offering housing, transportation, financial support, moral support.”
“We conclude that you do not pose an unreasonable risk of danger or threat to public safety and are therefore suitable for parole.”
Earlier Orellana told the parole panel how he came to murder his wife.
“She told me she wanted to divorce me because she had found someone else outside the home,” Orellana explained to commissioners via a Spanish interpreter.
“It was a bad decision,” he said of the killing.
In response to a questions from commissioners about what circumstances might trigger a deviant interest in children, Orellana listed potential areas of difficulty.
“Not to be at a pool or to have a child sit on my lap, a baby, a boy or a girl,” he said. “To be out of the schools…to not be in a community of kids or pools or schools and not touch or feel things.”
“I know that I am a new person and by entering my community,” he said. “I know that I can be free, and be with people that I know will be supportive and feel love and support for me.”
“The 74-year-old man that would walk out of CDCR if he received a grant bears little resemblance to the one which entered its doors back in 1998,” said Orellana’s attorney, Rashmi Birka-White of San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.
“After 29 years of programming, behavioral stability that commissioners can see in his ‘c’ file, rule abiding behavior and a lot of personal reflection, finally admitting years of abuse, finally admitting what he’s done to those around him. CDCR has created a better man, one that is presented to you as being honest, earnest, forthright and giving you his absolute best.”
At the hearing, San Francisco prosecutors recommended that parole be denied, arguing that Orellana was too high a risk to release and expressing concern for the safety of children.
“His comprehensive risk assessment had listed Mr Orellana as a moderate-medium risk and that is too high of a risk to undertake,” said assistant district attorney Allison Macbeth
“And if he had any proximate contact with children in an unsupervised setting that may increase the risk, and he does not have a deep understanding of the issues [relating] to the sexual offenses and intimate partner violence,” she added.
It emerged that Orellana was in the U.S. at the time of the murder after a San Francisco court had recommended that he not be deported following an earlier conviction for child abuse. A since-scrapped law allowed state judges to make a ‘judicial recommendation against deportation’ and block federal immigration authorities from using a conviction as a basis for removal. He was required to register as a sex offender.
Orellena remains in Valley State Prison in Chowchilla awaiting a mandatory review of his parole decision by the Board’s ‘decision review unit’, which checks all grants of parole for legal and factual accuracy.
After that check is complete, unless Governor Newsom exercises the authority he enjoys in cases of murder to modify or reverse parole decisions, or immigration authorities act, Orellana will be freed in California.
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