Salcido Guilty in Wine Country Killings : Mass murder: His wife and two of his daughters were among his seven victims. Jurors will decide next week whether to recommend life in prison or the death penalty.

Winery worker Ramon Salcido was convicted Tuesday of a murderous rampage through the Sonoma Valley wine country 18 months ago that left his wife, two young daughters, three of his in-laws and his boss dead.

Superior Court Judge Reginald Littrell told jurors to return next Wednesday to begin hearing testimony in the trial’s penalty phase in which they will decide whether to recommend the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Salcido, 29, rested his head on his hand, twice casting glances toward the ceiling as a court clerk read the guilty verdicts--six counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder.

The jury returned the verdicts after nearly four days of deliberations, following a six-week trial. The case was moved to the San Mateo County Courthouse after polls of prospective jurors raised doubts that Salcido could receive a fair trial in Sonoma County, where the crimes took place.

“There is nothing to celebrate,” Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Bumerts of Sonoma County said after the verdicts. Bumerts, who is prosecuting his first death-penalty case, said he will press for a death sentence. “If not in this case, what case?” he said.

Sonoma County Public Defender Marteen Miller holds out hope that the jury will return a sentence of life imprisonment. Attempting to persuade the jury that it should spare Salcido, Miller intends to call to the witness stand Salcido’s mother, brothers, grandmother and a sister, all of whom live in Mexico.

“Hope springs eternal,” Miller said of the chance that Salcido will receive a sentence of life in prison. Salcido showed “not a single bit of reaction” after the court session concluded, Miller said.

Salcido has been in custody since April 19, 1989, when Mexican authorities arrested him near his birthplace of Los Mochis, Mexico, and turned him over to U.S. authorities. After the murders, Salcido had traveled by bus to the Mexican border and walked across at Mexicali, then made his way to his hometown to see his mother.

Miller and co-counsel Bill Marioni contended that Salcido was in an alcohol- and cocaine-induced psychosis when he committed the crimes. Even during the trial, he was not fully aware of the gravity of his situation, a defense-hired psychologist, Frank Crinella of UC Irvine, testified.

The prosecution was built around Salcido’s detailed confession, which he gave to Sonoma County sheriff’s detectives as they flew him back to Santa Rosa from Mexico.

Salcido’s rage had been fueled by what he perceived as insults and injustices from his family and employer. He had been under pressure to pay child support to his first wife, and believed he was not the father of his eldest daughter by his second wife, Angela Richards Salcido, 23.

Angela Salcido evidently had begun thinking seriously about leaving Salcido and told a friend that she was hoping to get an annulment. She had discovered that he was married previously and may not have secured a valid divorce.

On the night of the murders, Salcido told authorities in his confession, he had been drinking heavily and using cocaine, having purchased what he estimated was three grams. In the early morning of April 14, 1989, he returned to his rented home in Boyes Hot Springs, a small community near Sonoma, to find that Angela was not there. He piled his three daughters into his car and began searching for her. She apparently had walked to a bank a short distance from their home.

Growing angrier, he drove to an isolated dump outside Petaluma and methodically slit the throats of his young daughters. Teresa, 22 months, and Sofia, 4, died. Carmina, now 4, was found alive the next day.

Salcido, still looking for his wife, drove to his in-laws’ home in the town of Cotati. There, he lured his mother-in-law, Marion Richards, 47, into the garage and bludgeoned her with a tire jack. He went inside, where he found Ruth Richards, 12, a sister-in-law. He asked for a kitchen knife, and she obliged. Fearing that she might call police, Salcido used the knife to slit her throat, and that of her sister, Marie, 12. When Marion Richards staggered back into the house, he slit her throat, too.

From the Richards’ house, he called his home, reached his wife, and told her to wait. He arrived 20 minutes later. As she ran to a phone to call police, he shot and killed her with a gun he had stolen from the Richards’ home.

Next, he drove across Sonoma Valley to Kenwood and the Gran Cru winery where he had worked. He found his boss, Tracey Toovey, and shot and killed him. He cornered another supervisor, Ken Butti, and wounded him. Jurors found him guilty of premeditated murders in the killings of six people. They concluded that he was guilty of second-degree murder in the killing of Marie Richards, though their reasoning is not known. He was acquitted of an attempted murder of Butti’s wife, Terri.