Jury Returns New Death Verdict in ’79 Taco Bell Slaying

An Orange County jury returned a new death verdict Wednesday for Marcelino Ramos, who told his victims during a Santa Ana Taco Bell robbery to “say your prayers” before he fatally shot the 20-year-old manager and wounded another employee.

Ramos’ 1980 death sentence for the June 3, 1979, murder of Katherine Parrott, a Taco Bell manager trainee, was overturned three years ago by the state Supreme Court because of faulty jury instructions.

Because the higher court upheld the murder conviction itself, the jury this time had only one decision: whether to return a new death verdict or vote for a lesser verdict of life in prison without parole.

Pent-Up Anger Blamed

Ramos’ lawyers argued that his pent-up anger over his poverty-stricken life in a Texas barrio led him to lose control and shoot the two during the robbery.

“We considered his background,” said jury forewoman Cindy Culpepper of Huntington Beach. “But the crime involved such extreme cruelty, we just couldn’t get past that.”

Leola Rosen, the mother of Katherine Parrott, grabbed her son Steven Parrott’s hand when she heard the verdict. “Thank God,” she uttered.

The 30-year-old killer lowered his head when he heard the verdict, then thanked his trial attorney, Joel W. Baruch.

The key witness against Ramos, at his 1979 trial and again this time, was Kevin Pickrell, now 27, the Taco Bell employee who survived the shooting. Medical testimony showed that the bullet bounced off Pickrell’s skull instead of penetrating his brain. He has fully recovered.

Pickrell said Ramos and another man--Ruben Gaitan--robbed the restaurant just before closing near 1 a.m., when only Parrott and Pickrell were present. Pickrell said Ramos, who worked at the Taco Bell and knew the victims, ordered them into a walk-in refrigerator. Armed with a .22-caliber rifle, he made them kneel against a back wall and told them to take their hats off and bend their heads. Ramos ordered Parrott to put a nearby rag in her mouth.

Pickrell said Ramos laughed when they begged him not to shoot them, and then told them: “Say your prayers.”

Ramos, who cried on the witness stand when he described how the young employees had begged him not to shoot them, did not dispute any of Pickrell’s testimony. Ramos said he shot them because he was angry that Pickrell thought the robbery by his co-worker was a joke and tried to wave his gun aside. Defense attorneys argued that Pickrell’s failure to take Ramos seriously unleashed years of anger and frustration.

At his first trial, Ramos told the jurors that he only shot the victims because Gaitan had told him to graze them. Gaitan was found guilty in 1980 and is now serving a 25-year-to-life prison term.

Ramos’ lawyers were pleased with his testimony this time, when he told jurors that he wanted to tell the truth and to take full responsibility for the shootings.

Unimpressed by Ramos’ Candor

Several jurors said later, however, that they were not impressed with Ramos’ candor.

“We thought that he was going to get up there and tell us what happened,” said juror Karol Weiland of Huntington Beach. “He didn’t do that at all. He just got up there and pussyfooted around.”

Ramos was asked repeatedly by Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrick W. Geary whether he intended to kill his victims when he shot them. The closest he came to saying yes was to tell Geary, “Sir, I was angry.” He told Geary several times that he could not remember details about the night.

Geary argued that Ramos intended to kill the two from the moment he walked into the restaurant because they could identify him.

Ramos denied that, claiming that he and Gaitan were leaving town, so it didn’t matter that the two employees knew him. When Geary continued to question him about the shooting, Ramos said he didn’t stay around to see if the two were dead or alive.

“That was a mistake, wasn’t it,” Geary told him.

The jurors deliberated five days. Culpepper said there were only a couple of holdout votes for the lesser penalty the last two days. But those two people switched their votes after another review of the entire case, she said.

“There was a lot of stress built up (in the jury room),” she said. “It was a very difficult thing to do, but we think we did the right thing.”

Katherine Parrott’s mother did not attend the trial on advice from doctors. But she was in court every day waiting for a verdict from the jury. “It’s been 8 1/2 years of hell,” she said.

Victim’s Sister in Tears

As Rosen hugged jury forewoman Culpepper, Katherine Parrott’s sister, Melody Crooks, who was not present when the verdict was read, ran down the hall in tears and grabbed her mother.

“Every night for 8 1/2 years I’ve seen his (Ramos’) face before going to bed,” Crooks said. “I won’t have to see his face tonight.”

Katherine Parrott’s father, Clifford, died in 1985, a short time after the state Supreme Court decision ordering a new penalty trial for Ramos.

Several of Ramos’ family members and friends were in court to support him throughout the trial. They were unable to attend Wednesday.

Baruch, who has spent two years on the Ramos case and called more than 40 witnesses, left the courtroom as if in shock. After talking to some of the jurors, he shook his head.

“It bothered them that he did not get up on the witness stand and beg for mercy from them,” Baruch said. “We didn’t have him do that because we thought it was too close a parallel with the ‘say your prayers’ thing and Katherine Parrott asking him to spare her life. How do you figure out a jury?”

Several jurors told Baruch, who shared defense duties with the public defender’s office, that they sympathized with Ramos’ difficult life. His father died when he was a baby, and his mother died when he was 15, leaving him and an older brother to live on their own with little or no money. But the killing itself was so inhumane, it offset all of that.

“The jurors accepted everything we gave them, just the way we wanted, and it wasn’t enough,” Baruch said.

Ramos is the third Death Row inmate in the past year and a half to receive a new death verdict in an Orange County court after winning a new trial from the Rose Bird court. The other two were Rodney James Alcala, now 43, and Theodore Frank, now 52, both convicted in sex slayings of children.

A fourth Orange County man to have his death sentence set aside by the Bird court, John Galen Davenport, now 32, is scheduled to be tried this spring.

Alcala had been awarded both a new trial to determine guilt or innocence and a penalty phase trial. The other three were returned only for penalty trials.

Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno set a March 7 sentencing date for Ramos. Briseno does have the authority to reduce the jury’s death verdict to life without parole. However, since the new California death law in 1977, no Orange County judge has set aside a death verdict from a jury.