"She told me several times about witchcraft and things she believed in like curses and things like that," Antillon said. "She used to tell me that she felt her mother-in-law had cursed her. She said if you believe in the curanderos they will get to you. If you don't, they won't."
Antillon is one of Lumbrera's defenders.
"Diana went to church every Sunday when she lived here," she said. "Everybody liked her. She wasn't the type of person that would get in trouble with a neighbor. I never heard that she had gotten into an argument with someone else. And she loved her kids."
Her aunt, Elva Hernandez, notes that Lumbrera suffered from polio when she was a child. "Diana was often sick when she was young. How can they just disregard that the kids could have died because of sickness?"
Other friends and family members are suspicious of authorities' motives in pressing the case. Robert Olvera, 33, Lumbrera's cousin, says the police have actively pursued the case because the defendant is Latino.
"You think this would happen to a Diana if she was white? No way. Absolutely not," Olvera said.
"The police are just looking for publicity, if you ask me," he said. "That is the only way you can explain all this coming out so many years later. The doctors ruled the children died of natural causes."
Bribiesca fears that the Kansas conviction will doom her sister in Texas.
"She didn't get a fair trial" in Garden City, said Bribiesca, who resides in Kansas. "Before this, I think she could have gotten one in Texas, but not now. Not after this. They're going to think she killed all her kids. But Diana's not going to give up, I'll tell you that."
In late January, Lumbrera faces trial on murder charges in Parmer County in the deaths of Joanna, Melissa and Melinda; the grand jury said she smothered the three children to collect $15,000 in life insurance benefits.
She also faces separate trials in Lubbock and Bailey counties in the deaths of Jose Lionel and Erica Aleman. An investigation into the death of Christopher Lumbrera continues. If she is convicted in any case, she could face either life in prison or the death penalty, administered by lethal injection.
Gordon Green, Lumbrera's lawyer, would not allow her to be interviewed.
"It's not an everyday case," said Green, refusing to comment further.
Lumbrera is being held in the Parmer County Jail on $300,000 bond. Fifteen miles away, at the Bovina Cemetery, elaborate headstones stand over the graves of five of Lumbrera's children.
Each bears the same epitaph: "Darling, we miss thee."
