Man Convicted of Slaying Girlfriend’s Husband

A man convicted seven years ago of swindling $1.5 million from a bank with a single telephone call was quickly convicted Tuesday of murdering his girlfriend’s husband in a plot to collect the victim’s $440,000 in life insurance.

A jury that began deliberations late Monday returned early Tuesday afternoon with a guilty verdict against Adam Salas Ramirez, 43, for conspiring to murder and murdering James Hughes, 37, a Huntington Beach computer engineer who was shot to death in his bed on Jan. 10, 1984.

Ramirez and Hughes’ wife, Jeanette, went on trial together on the conspiracy and murder charges, but near the end of the prosecution’s case, West Orange County Superior Court Judge Leonard H. McBride ruled that she should be tried separately later.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Rick Toohey told the jurors that Ramirez and Jeanette Hughes met at the coffee shop where they worked, became lovers and plotted to kill her husband to collect his life insurance.

On the morning of the killing, Ramirez had his son, Adam Jr., 22, drive him to the Hughes house and exchange jackets because the son’s was darker, Adam Jr. testified. After Hughes was suffocated with a pillow and shot, Ramirez fled the house in his victim’s car and drove it to a doughnut shop where he had parked his own car, according to testimony.

When he tried to enter his car, Ramirez realized he had left his keys in the jacket he had exchanged with his son, Toohey said, so he drove off again in Hughes’ car. Jeanette Hughes, believing that Ramirez had had enough time to escape, notified police that her husband had been shot and that his car was missing, the prosecutor said.

A policeman responding to the call spotted Ramirez driving the stolen car and arrested him, according to trial testimony. In the car were items stolen from the Hughes residence in what Toohey said was an attempt to make the murder of Hughes appear to have been connected to a burglary.

Adam Ramirez testified in his own defense at his murder trial, saying it was Jeanette Hughes who shot her husband and he simply went along when she begged him to help cover up the shooting.