Murder Suspect Is Jailed--11 Years Later : Crime: Salvador Casillas disappeared after his estranged wife was killed in Ramona in 1981. This week, he turned up in Los Angeles.

For more than a decade, the only trace of Salvador Casillas were footprints in a dirt lot in El Centro, pointed away from his abandoned car and toward Mexico.

Today, however, Casillas is locked up in San Diego County Jail on 11-year-old murder and attempted-murder warrants. In a strange twist of events, Casillas got mixed up with authorities Monday at Los Angeles International Airport, and the sordid events of the night of Nov. 1, 1981, finally caught up with him.

Casillas, now 37, was booked on the two felony charges Tuesday in connection with the fatal shooting of his estranged wife and the attempted murder of her companion, Donald Pozzi, at her Ramona home on that November evening, Deputy Dist. Atty. James D. Pippin said. Pippin, a member of the San Diego County district attorney’s office for 24 years, said cases like Casillas’ are rare.

“People are picked up on old warrants frequently, but not very often on murder charges,” he said. “Sometimes we are able to prosecute, sometimes not, because of the passage of time.”

Will the district attorney’s office prosecute this one?

“Absolutely,” Pippin said.

According to Pippin’s recollection of the crime:

Salvador and Maria Casillas were the parents of two children, ages 2 and 14 months, when they split up in the early 1980s. Maria Casillas, 23 years old on the night of her death, was a 10-year resident of Ramona who had gone to work for a real estate company after breaking up with her husband.

She met Pozzi at work and the two started seeing one another. On the night Maria was killed, Salvador Casillas had called her and pleaded with her to go to Mass or to dinner with him, but she declined.

Later that night at her home in the 1500 block of Montecito Street, where she was relaxing with Pozzi and her children, Maria Casillas was surprised to see a rifle pointed through an open window.

Pozzi grabbed the rifle and tried to wrench it away but fell, injuring his shoulder. A frightened Maria Casillas called the Sheriff’s Department, but was shot twice in the head with the .22-caliber rifle while she was still on the telephone.

The killer then pointed the gun at Pozzi and fired, but missed. Both men then fled.

Ten days later, authorities found Casillas’ car in El Centro, but they figured he had made his way to the freedom of Mexico, Pippin said.

“We tried to track him, but he got away,” Pippin said. “The case has been in the system ever since.”

A new lead in the case came out of the blue earlier this week. Pippin got word that Casillas had been questioned in Los Angeles.

Pippin said he didn’t know what tipped Los Angeles authorities to Casillas, but police there notified San Diego authorities and Casillas was transferred to County Jail.

The crime scene photos are still on file, as are the crime reports, Pippin said.

“We don’t ever throw those away,” he said. “There is no statute of limitations on a homicide case.”

Now, after 11 years, a trial might be under way. The witness, Pozzi, still lives in Ramona and is willing to testify, Pippin said.