Suspect in Car Seller’s Slaying Is Denied Bail : Courts: Judge says Will Nix, accused of hiring two hit men to kill a former associate who was suing him, poses a danger to the community and is a flight risk.

A former executive of a San Diego car dealership arrested earlier this month in an alleged murder-for-hire scheme was denied bail Monday in federal court.

William Wayne (Will) Nix Jr. is accused of hiring two hit men from Mexico to execute a one-time friend and salesman who sued his dealership five years ago.

Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz said Nix, 37, should be detained without bail because his release poses “an unreasonable danger to the community.” Nix was returned to his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown after court proceedings.

Nix, who more than six years ago was the general manager of then-Center City Ford, was arrested May 9 without incident at his home in the San Bernardino County city of Upland.

Most recently, he owned the Will Nix Ford dealership in Pomona, which he sold late last year.

Nix was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego on May 3 on charges of hiring for murder and conspiring to hire for murder.

The victim, Sal Ruscitti, was shot four times in the chest and head Sept. 17, 1988, after his wife told him that two men were waiting to see him at the front door of the couple’s home in Leucadia.

Nix did not request a specific bail at Monday’s hearing, but “even his counsel (Michael Pancer) conceded that bail would have to be high, given the nature of the charges,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Larry Burns said.

Pancer, whose list of past clients include former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock, told the court that he has not been formally retained as Nix’s attorney. Pancer said he will appear on Nix’s behalf until an agreement can be worked out or another attorney retained.

In denying bail, the judge said that, besides posing a danger to the community, Nix is a flight risk.

“We presented evidence that suggested he has a heavy addiction to cocaine and is otherwise considered quite dangerous,” Burns said. “We called three witnesses who said, among other things, that he’s volatile, irrational, paranoid and quick-tempered.”

An official from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department testified against Nix at the hearing, saying that, in an “unrelated” two-hour interview April 25, Nix reported being confronted by two men in a truck on the freeway.

Nix yelled out, “Friend or foe?” the official testified, then fired two shots into the air, raced downhill, broke into the first house he could find--that of a person he didn’t know--and phoned 911.

Ruscitti, Nix’s former salesmen, was a lead plaintiff in a 1986 class-action lawsuit representing more than 300 people who had sold cars for Center City Ford and later Kearny Mesa Ford after the San Diego dealership changed ownership and name.

The suit alleged that Ruscitti and the others had been cheated on their commission checks because the dealership’s owners had systematically altered factory invoices and other figures, effectively bilking salesmen an average of $125 commission on each car they sold.

At one point, lawyers for the salesmen contended, the dealership owed $2.9 million in back commissions, interest and penalties.