Salcido Note Blames ‘Law’ for Rampage

Ramon Salcido left a note in his abandoned car blaming the “law” for a murderous rampage that left seven people dead and asking God to forgive him, authorities said Monday.

“Forgive me, God, but this law made me do it. We could live better, me and my children, but what can I do,” the note says, according to law enforcement officials.

The note, written in Spanish, suggests that a demand, made under welfare laws, that Salcido pay $5,807 in back child support payments, plus $511 a month for support of a child by a previous marriage, led him to kill his second wife, Angela, two of their three daughters, his mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, and his supervisor at the winery where he worked.

The note and a hand gun were found in Salcido’s blood-splattered car in San Rafael, 25 miles south of Santa Rosa. The car was discovered about 6 p.m. Friday, the day of the killings.

Sonoma County Sheriff Richard Michaelsen said he was at a loss to explain the note. But deputies served Salcido, 28, with papers last week demanding that he support Maria Crystal, 4, who authorities say was his child by Debra Whitten Salcido, 27, of Fresno. Ramon Salcido’s second wife, who apparently had not known of his past until the papers were served, told a neighbor that she was considering an annulment as a result.

Authorities in Fresno, where Debra lives, initiated the demand because Debra was seeking to draw welfare payments on behalf of her daughter. By law, authorities must attempt to obtain support from parents who receive public assistance for their child

The FBI, which joined an intensified hunt for Salcido on Monday, released the note as part of an affidavit to persuade a federal magistrate in San Francisco to issue a warrant for Salcido’s arrest on charges of flight to avoid arrest. The arrest warrant was issued.

Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents questioned acquaintances of Salcido’s on Monday, while helicopters flew above the Sonoma Valley wine country, searching for cars that Salcido might be driving.

In Cotati, police blocked the street of the home where Salcido’s mother-in-law, Marion Louise Richards, and sisters-in-law Ruth, 12, and Marie, 8, were murdered, and asked people leaving for work if they had seen anything unusual the previous Friday.

Rewards for Salcido’s capture were expected to reach $35,000 today. Gov. George Deukmejian posted $10,000 in state funds on Monday. Walt Dreyer, owner of Grand Cru Vineyards, where Salcido worked, put up $5,000 on Sunday. The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors was to consider adding $20,000 more to the bounty today.

But the fourth day of the hunt for the burly suspect ended with Sonoma County law enforcement authorities acknowledging that they don’t know where he is or might be going.

“As every day passes, it becomes a little more difficult,” Sheriff Michaelsen said, noting that the search continues to focus in Marin and Sonoma counties north of San Francisco.

FBI spokesman Chuck Latting said: “We will finally locate him and get him, but it’s hard work to do that.”

Carmina, Salcido’s 3-year-old daughter, was recovering in a Petaluma hospital. She was discovered in a garbage dump on Saturday, her throat cut from ear to ear. Carmina’s sisters, Teresa, 1, and Sofia, 4, were found dead at the site. Their grandfather, Robert L. Richards, visited Carmina Monday. Both were under the protection of deputies.

Debra Whitten Salcido was in hiding, protected by constant police patrols. “She’s frightened to death that he’s going to find her and kill her,” a relative said Monday.

Salcido is listed as the father on Maria Crystal’s birth certificate, and he told a friend last month that he planned to gain custody of the girl.

But Assistant Dist. Atty. George A. Grenfell Jr. of Fresno said in an interview Monday that in March, Salcido hired a lawyer who wrote a letter challenging the claim that Salcido was Maria’s father.

Salcido apparently never told Angela about Debra or Maria Crystal, who was born just four months before Salcido and Angela were married. (Previously, Times stories gave her name as Angelia based on a Sheriff’s Department misspelling.)

On his marriage certificate to Angela, he swore that he had never been married previously.

The courtship and marriage of Ramon and Angela seemed like something out of a romance novel. But the marriage soon became anything but storybook.

Salcido’s drinking, his demands that Angela stay at home, their ever-worsening money problems, and his fear that she would have an affair tore at the relationship.

Problems were compounded by conflicts between Angela’s parents and Salcido that some friends of the family attribute to racism.

“Ramon said they had hatred for us,” Javier Saldana, who worked with Salcido as a stableman in Sonoma County.

Angela Elaine Richards, the daughter of a hard-working delivery truck driver, grew up cloistered in a devoutly Catholic household. Like her two younger sisters, she always wore dresses her mother made. And as she did with Ruth and Marie, mother Marion Louise schooled Angela in her home because she was concerned about what was being taught in schools and about drug use among students.

Ramon Bojorquez Salcido grew up in Mexico, the son of a fisherman. He slipped across the border when he was about 18 and lived in the country illegally, picking grapes in the Sonoma Valley, working as a stableman at a horse farm in Sonoma and finally working at Grand Cru Vineyards just up California 12 from Boyes Hot Springs where the Richards family was living at the time.

Angela and Salcido met at a community dance, then at a soccer game. Soon, Angela was sneaking out at night just to see him. Javier Saldana said that, as Ramon told it, he courted Angela by giving her books with pictures of horses, and she would practice drawing them. Saldana said Angela also was attracted to Salcido’s rugged cowboy appearance.

Once married, she set out to help him become a legal resident, vouching for him as her husband in a form submitted to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. He was granted permanent residency in January, 1986.

But the marriage was constantly troubled by a lack of money. In 1987, the couple was charged with a misdemeanor, accused of fraudulently obtaining welfare benefis for their children from December, 1985, to March, 1986. Authorities dismissed charges against Ramon, although Angela pleaded no contest and was fined $170 last year.

‘Very Good-Looking People’

“I specifically remember them because they were both very-good looking people,” said Deputy Public Defender Kathleen Pozzi, who represented the Salcidos and said neither of them fit the “stereotypes” of the defendants she usually represents.

At first, Ramon was adamant that he would plead guilty to spare his wife, Pozzi said. But he changed his mind because he was on probation from a 1984 hit-and-run accident, and worried that another conviction would cause him more legal trouble.

“Obviously, it was money, they needed money with three children. She had one, the youngest, in court with her. She was just learning to walk. . . . He was making $1,200 a month,” Pozzi said.

Salcido turned to selling wine stolen from Grand Cru and cocaine to make extra money, friends and acquaintances said.

“He didn’t have to steal it. They gave us two bottles a week,” said next-door neighbor Steve Nielsen, who worked for a short time at the winery, where Salcido drove a forklift and supervised bottling operations.

Another acquaintance, asking that his name not be used, said Salcido pushed $25, $50 and $100 quantities of cocaine. “He wanted to make a little money,” the source said.

Six months ago, Salcido asked a friend, Nicanor Saldana, a construction worker and former stableman at Arabian horse ranches in Nicasio in Marin County, if he would take over $197-a-month payments on a black 1982 Firebird.

Saldana said Salcido claimed he could no longer pay for the car--which he bought off a used car lot with no money down--because of medical bills for one of his daughters. Salcido said she was being treated for a leg deformity.

On March 29, Nicanor was $50 short on the monthly payment and asked Salcido if he could make up the difference. Salcido demanded full payment because he said he was expecting to get custody of his first daughter, Maria Crystal. It was the first that Nicanor had heard that Salcido had a fourth child.

An acquaintance of Salcido said that several days before the rampage, Salcido was drinking beer at a park in the Sonoma Valley trying to sell his Ford LTD. One man offered $1,000, but Salcido wanted $2,000.

Despite persistent money problems, Salcido drank often at bars in the town, choosing saloons where patrons drink hard, shoot pool and dance until closing. He rarely took his wife, preferring that she wait for him at home.

At McNeilly’s Tavern in El Verano, Salcido was always a perfect gentleman, even when he stayed through to the last call. To bartender Carlo DiClemente, he seemed like the typical hard-working immigrant who was trying to make something of himself.

“He always talked about his job. He was proud that he was making it,” DiClemente said. “He felt he was doing something really significant.”

But at a Mexican restaurant across town, owners said Salcido would swagger in, drink beer and try to leave without paying. “He was a moocher. If he could cheat someone he would,” said the restaurant owner.

For all the money problems, Salcido discouraged his wife from working. Like her mother, Angela helped out by doing her own sewing, making clothes for her daughters and husband, and occasionally selling a blouse or some other item. A woman who bought one of her blouses said it only cost $15.

Angela aspired to be a model and graduated from Covers Modeling School in Santa Rosa in January. An employee at the private school would give no other details.

In more recent months, there were increasing signs of trouble. Neighbors heard fights. One said he heard him hitting her. He threatened to shoot her with the gun he often carried, a neighbor said. Father Javier Ochoa said that last November, the Salcidos approached him at church and asked for an appointment.

“They didn’t arrive,” the priest said. When Angela finally showed up, she apologized by saying, “my husband cannot come because he is not well,” he said.