‘I Closed My Ears’ to Pleas, Killer Admits

Marcelino Ramos told jurors Wednesday that he can’t explain why he shot two 20-year-old Taco Bell employees, killing one of them, in a 1979 Santa Ana robbery after they begged him to spare their lives.

“I closed my ears, for the first time in my life, to anybody asking me for anything,” Ramos said. “I just, I just closed my ears.”

Ramos, now 30, was convicted and sentenced to die in the gas chamber in 1980 for the murder of Katherine Parrott, the Taco Bell night manager, in the June 3, 1979, robbery. The second employee, Kevin Pickrell, survived a gunshot wound to his head and testified against Ramos.

The state Supreme Court in 1985 upheld Ramos’ murder conviction but set aside his death sentence because of faulty jury instructions, forcing the new penalty trial now going on. Ramos’ present jurors have just one issue to decide: whether to give Ramos a new death verdict or life in prison without parole.

Entered Near Closing Time

Pickrell testified that he and Parrott were the only employees at the Taco Bell when Ramos and his crime partner, Ruben Gaitan, entered near the 1 a.m. closing.

Ramos, armed with a .22-caliber rifle, forced them into the walk-in refrigerator, robbed the safe, then came back and forced them to kneel up against the back wall. Pickrell said Ramos told them to “Say your prayers,” then laughed when he begged for mercy. Both victims were shot in the back of the head.

Ramos’ testimony, which began Tuesday afternoon, has produced few details about the murder itself. On direct examination, Ramos gave no explanation about what he meant when he told the victims to say their prayers. Also, Ramos did not explain at what point he decided to kill the employees, which he said was not part of the original plan.

Ramos and Gaitan, who is serving 25 years to life for the murder, planned the robbery at Gaitan’s house just a block away from the Taco Bell.

Ramos’ contention is that he knew the Taco Bell employees would recognize him, but it wasn’t important. He was leaving immediately by bus for Denver, so in the original plan he was supposed to simply knock them out.

Ramos said that plan went awry once they got inside, but he did not explain why, except that he was scared and angry.

“Did they beg you?” defense attorney Baruch asked him.

“They asked me not to hurt them,” Ramos said.

“Did you listen to them?”

Ramos explained that he closed his ears to them.

“Do you know why?” Baruch asked.

“I was angry,” Ramos answered, after some hesitation.

Ramos said he became angry because Pickrell at first refused to believe that it wasn’t just a joke and shoved the rifle away.

Ramos later added that “I can’t believe I took somebody’s life for a selfish reason. It’s like seeing what I’m doing through someone else’s eyes. I try to stop myself, but it always keeps on happening.”

Ramos grew up in San Antonio. His mother died when he was 15, then he lived alone with a brother two years older. Ramos and his closest friend, Gaitan, came to California in April, 1979, because Gaitan was wanted by police in Texas.

Ramos told the jurors that he struggled to hold a decent job and could not make ends meet financially. He learned that Gaitan considered him a pest, and he felt alone and a failure.

“I was angry and depressed. I had come to California to learn a skill, and again I was empty handed,” Ramos said.

Ramos also admitted that in a diary he kept, he had made statements about killing people as the first member of a so-called “Spanish Liberation Army” of his own creation. He wrote angrily about trying to survive in “a white man’s world.”

Geary Hits Witness Issue

Ramos said that at the time he saw white people as authority figures who were the cause of his troubles. But today, Ramos said, he realized that race had nothing to do with his difficulties.

The day preceding the robbery, Ramos asked his supervisor at the Taco Bell for more working hours. She said she would try.

On cross-examination, Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrick S. Geary, asked Ramos why he didn’t wait to give her time to work something out. “I was desperate, sir,” Ramos said.

“You were impatient, isn’t that correct?” Geary asked sharply.

Geary also hammered away at Ramos’ contention that he did not intend to kill the two to eliminate witnesses. Ramos wasn’t to leave for Denver before 7 a.m., so didn’t he think the victims’ parents would discover them unconscious? he asked.

“I never thought about all those details,” Ramos said.

Geary asked Ramos what he would have done if a third employee had been at the Taco Bell that night. “I would have walked away,” Ramos said.

“So two was your limit?” Geary asked him.

Why were there bullets in the gun if Ramos only wanted to scare them? Geary asked.

Ramos did not answer.

Did Ramos put the victims in the cooler instead of the storage area because that would muffle the sound of gunshots? Ramos said the cooler was simply closer.

Geary also asked why Ramos said at his first trial that he only tried to graze the victims, on orders from Gaitan.

Ramos answered that at the time he tried to shift the blame away from himself, “but now I want to take responsibility for what I did.”