Defendant Wanted to Kill Ex-Boyfriend, Victim’s Sister Testifies

Linda Ricchio, accused of the so-called “Fatal Attraction” killing of her former boyfriend after they broke up, was so angry at him that she told others she wanted him dead, according to opening testimony Monday at her preliminary hearing in Vista Municipal Court.

Among the witnesses were Susan Fisher, a sister of Ronald Ruse Jr., who was shot and killed outside his Carlsbad apartment Dec. 14.

Fisher quoted Ricchio, 27, as telling her two months before Ruse was killed, “I’m going to do something to your brother I’m going to regret.”

Fisher testified that several times in the same conversation, Ricchio said, “I just feel like killing him.”

Another witness testified that she apparently was mistaken by Ricchio for Ruse’s new girlfriend, even though the two were barely acquaintances. She said she was confronted at her place of work at Plaza Camino Real in Carlsbad.

“I told her I knew she and Ron had broken up, and she said, ‘Not yet,’ and that she would kill him, me or any of his friends who got in the way,” Viccie Young testified.

In the same conversation, Young said, Ricchio claimed she was pregnant by Ruse--a claim that was unfounded, according to prosecutors.

The district attorney’s office wants Ricchio convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Ricchio sat expressionless during Monday’s proceedings, occasionally glancing at three witnesses who described what they saw as her obsession with Ruse, 28, a car mechanic.

Ricchio and Ruse had a seven-year relationship, including five years during which they lived together, before Ruse dropped Ricchio.

Ruse then began dating another woman, Vicki Woodruff, and the couple moved into a new apartment in Carlsbad, in part to avoid Ricchio, Woodruff testified.

According to the district attorney’s office, Ricchio rented the neighboring apartment unit in early December, unbeknownst to the couple, and on Dec. 14, as Ruse returned home from work, shot him five times outside his front door with a recently purchased .38-caliber revolver.

The hearing was interrupted for an hour as Deputy Dist. Atty. Phil Walden, who heads the Vista prosecutor’s office, objected to the presence of two defense attorneys for Ricchio: court-appointed attorney William Fletcher and Jack Earley, who was hired by Ricchio’s family.

Walden argued in an acrimonious exchange with Municipal Judge Michael Burley that if Ricchio’s family could afford their own attorney to represent their daughter, she should not also have the services of a court-appointed and publicly paid defense attorney.

But Burley disagreed, saying that Ricchio is indigent and thereby qualifies for Fletcher’s counsel, while state law does not prohibit the family from hiring a second attorney to assist.

Further, Burley ruled, since Fletcher and Earley seemed to have divided their duties, taxpayers’ funds were actually being saved by the family subsidizing the cost of Ricchio’s defense.

Walden then asked to remain in the courtroom and serve as an assistant to prosecuting attorney Tom Manning.

In her testimony, Woodruff said she began dating Ruse in September and moved in with him Nov. 1, partly at the insistence of her mother, who was upset that Ricchio was harassing even her at home.

“She told me to keep my family out of” the problems Ruse was having with Ricchio, Woodruff said.

The couple obtained a restraining order in November to attempt to keep Ricchio at bay, but it didn’t work, Woodruff said.

On one occasion, she said, Ricchio left some of Ruse’s personal belongings at his front door and then, hiding outside, yelled, “You bastard!” as he and Woodruff left the apartment to go to work two hours later.

The preliminary hearing continues today.