Taco Bell Murderer Just Said ‘Say Your Prayers,’ Jury Told

It has been more than eight years since Marcelino Ramos fired a rifle bullet into Kevin Pickrell’s head during a Taco Bell robbery in Santa Ana. On Tuesday, the 27-year-old Pickrell calmly told a jury the events of that night, when Ramos executed Katherine Parrott and left Pickrell for dead.

Ramos told them to “say your prayers,” Pickrell recalled, then laughed when Pickrell begged him to spare their lives.

But Ramos’ attorney told jurors about a different side of the defendant--how he grew up under extreme hardship in a San Antonio, Tex. barrio and had never committed a single crime until that 1 a.m. Taco Bell robbery June 3, 1979.

Testimony at Ramos’ second penalty trial began Tuesday in Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno’s courtroom in Santa Ana.

Ramos, now 30, and his crime partner, Ruben Gaitan, were arrested less than six hours after the shootings. Ramos was convicted and given a death sentence in 1980. His conviction was upheld, but the state Supreme Court, with Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird presiding, threw out the death sentence and ordered a new penalty trial.

This time, the jury is to decide only these issues: Was the shooting intentional, and did it occur in the course of a robbery? And if so, should Ramos be sentenced to death or to life without parole?

Despite Ramos’ lack of a criminal record, prosecutors believe Ramos should get the death penalty, pointing to the circumstances of the killing.

Ramos was an employee of the Taco Bell on Bristol Street at the time of the shooting but was not working the night shift. At 12:50 a.m., 10 minutes before closing, Ramos and Gaitan entered the restaurant, empty except for night manager Parrott, 20, and Pickrell, who were cleaning up.

Pickrell said he was unconcerned when Ramos came behind the counter on the ruse that he wanted to check the work schedule. Then Pickrell saw a rifle sticking out from under a denim jacket Ramos was carrying.

Pickrell told the jurors he laughed because he thought Ramos was joking.

“He looked at me and told me he wasn’t joking,” he said.

Pickrell said that Ramos’ voice was angry and that he spoke in a monotone and appeared cold.

Ramos, along with Gaitan, ushered the victims into the walk-in refrigerator and told them to sit on the floor. Eventually, he told them to kneel at the end, facing the wall. Ramos then handed Parrott a rag to put into her mouth.

Pickrell said he was very frightened and pleaded for Ramos to spare them. With his head to the wall, Pickrell said, he felt a knock on the head, then a second one, both of them hard. Pickrell was unaware that the second knock was a bullet, which passed through the right side of his head.

Prosecutors contend that Ramos and Gaitan, who is serving a life sentence, planned to kill both of them so there would be no witnesses.

But Ramos’ attorney, Joel W. Baruch, told jurors that Ramos and Gaitan did not plan the robbery until that afternoon and that they had not intended to kill anyone.

“But something went wrong, terribly wrong,” Baruch said.

He assured the jurors that Ramos would testify himself about the events of that night. “He is the one who is asking you to spare his life,” Baruch said.

The attorney also insisted that Ramos feels a great deal of remorse. He read to jurors a letter Ramos sent to Parrott’s mother, which said in part: “I have sat in my cell and have run through my mind what took place that night, and I can’t find answers to why or how I could have done something like that. . . . I have let the most important person in my whole life down, my mother. I have gone against the ways she taught me. I don’t think she will ever forgive me.”

Baruch told the jurors that Ramos’ father died when he was five and that his mother, whom he worshipped, died when he was 14. He had gone to church with her every day for nine years from age 5 to 14.

After his mother died, Ramos lived with his brother, Mario, who is two years older, and the two of them struggled to make it on their own, Baruch said. Ramos eventually met Gaitan, and the two of them came to California two months before the Taco Bell murder.

They planned to leave California right after the robbery, Baruch said in attacking the prosecutors’ theory that Ramos did not want to leave witnesses.

Parrott’s father has died since the murder, and her mother did not attend Tuesday’s court session. But several other family members were there. They declined to speak later.

“We don’t want to say anything that might lead to another mistrial,” one of them said apologetically.