Jury Selection Under Way in Salcido Murder Case : Trial: The public defender says his goal is to save client from death penalty. The defense will center on an insanity plea based on cocaine and alcohol binges.

As jury selection began here Monday, Ramon Salcido wore the same seemingly emotionless look he had upon his arrest for the slaughter of his family in one of the most heinous crimes in California history.

Salcido, 29, short, somewhat chubby and pale from being in jail for the past 15 months, was dressed in a gray pinstripe suit as the first 130 of 480 prospective jurors appeared in San Mateo County Superior Court.

As the trial opened, even his own lawyers acknowledged that there is little mystery about what happened early on April 14, 1989.

In a detailed and chilling confession, Salcido told how he slit his three daughters’ throats, killing two of them, then murdered his mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, his wife and his boss at the Grand Cru winery where he had been a warehouseman.

“I hate to say it. We’re trying to save his life,” Sonoma County Public Defender Marteen Miller, who heads the defense team, said in an interview.

Unable to persuade judges that Salcido’s confession should not be admitted as evidence, Miller said he hopes to persuade jurors that they should spare Salcido’s life, perhaps even return a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder. To this end, Miller will contend that Salcido was so insane after binges on cocaine and alcohol, and stressed out and depressed over financial pressures, that he didn’t know what he was doing when he went on the rampage.

Miller, an affable lawyer who takes an occasional chew of tobacco, is handling the highest profile case of a career that began when he became a law clerk in the Sonoma County public defender’s office in 1961. He has been Sonoma’s public defender since 1966.

His opposition is Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Bumerts, 45, a veteran of 11 years in the Sonoma County prosecutor’s office. Bumerts, a former public defender, is trying his first death penalty case.

“If we’re going to have a death penalty,” Bumerts said in an interview, “this is exactly the type of case it should be used for.”

Bumerts said Carmina Salcido, 4, the one surviving daughter, will not testify. Carmina is living with a family outside California.

Among the 50 prosecution witnesses will be Robert Richards, father of Salcido’s wife, Angela, 24, and grandfather of Sophia, 4, and Teresa, 1. Richards had driven off to work as Salcido allegedly arrived at the Richards’ Cotati home.

There, Salcido admitted, he murdered Marion L. Richards, 47, by bludgeoning her with a tire jack and stabbing her, then slit the throats of Richards’ two youngest daughters, Ruth, 12, and Marie, 8.

Jury selection is likely to last through September, said Sierra County Superior Court Judge Reginald Littrell, who is hearing the case. The trial is expected to last at least six weeks, the judge said.

The case was transferred to San Mateo County from Santa Rosa after the defense contended that Salcido could not receive a fair trial in Sonoma County, where the murders occurred.

Miller said Salcido has spent much of his time in jail drawing pictures of his children that almost always show them smiling and happy. Miller said Salcido is in a state of “pathological denial” about the murders.

Salcido was arrested on April 19, 1989, five days after the murders, in his hometown of Los Mochia, Mexico. He had traveled there to see his mother, and quickly was handed over to U.S. authorities.

Miller argues Mexican authorities coerced Salcido into waiving his right to face extradition proceedings. The point is important, Miller contends, because Mexico, which does not impose capital punishment, could have demanded that as a condition of extradition Salcido not be sentenced to death. So far, no judge has agreed with him.

As Salcido flew back to Sonoma County on a plane owned by cartoonist Charles Schultz and piloted by Schultz’s son, Salcido told Sonoma County detectives how he methodically committed the murders.

According to the statement, his boss--and one of his victims, Grand Cru vintner Tracey Toovey--had told Salcido early in the week that he was going to be fired. His wife was planning to leave him. He also believed he was not the father of their first child, Sophia.

On the night before the murders, he had wanted to go to bars, but Angela left him with the children. He spent the night snorting cocaine and drinking heavily, he said in the statement. Then, with daughters in tow, he went looking for Angela.

Unable to find her, he recounted, he drove to a dump near Petaluma early on Friday morning, April 14, 1989. Then one by one, he carried the children from the car and slit their throats with a fishing knife. The bodies of Sophia and Teresa--and Carmina, who was clinging to life--were found the next day.

Still looking for Angela, he went to his in-laws’ home. Once there, he decided to kill his mother-in-law because, he said, she knew he was not the father of his first-born daughter. After clubbing Marion with a tire jack in the garage, he went into the house and, using a knife from the Richards’ kitchen, slit the throats of his sisters-in-law.

Next, he went to his home in Boyes Hot Springs, where he found Angela. When she reached for the phone, he shot and killed her, then drove off, drinking champagne. Finally, he found Toovey, 35, and shot him.

Along the way, he called his mother, and told what he had done. She implored him to make his way to Mexico to see her one last time. Mexican authorities found him based on a tip from one of his sisters. As Salcido told police what had happened, a detective asked what he thought should be done to him.

“I go to . . . the electric chair, or somebody kill myself,” Salcido said. “I have to pay (for) what I do to your country.”