Mother of 2 Suspects Held in Bribery Cases : Courts: Prosecutor alleges money, return of jewelry were offered to silence two witnesses in separate robberies. Defense attorney says actions stemmed from maternal instinct.

The mother of two gang members was arrested last week on charges that she twice offered bribes to witnesses who were prepared to testify against her sons in separate robbery cases, authorities said Wednesday.

Maria Trinidad Rodarte, 43, of Buena Park, arrested Dec. 23 on suspicion of witness bribery, is scheduled for arraignment Monday on the felony charges.

Rodarte allegedly offered witnesses hundreds of dollars and made veiled threats in two separate cases involving her sons, investigators said. In one of the cases, investigators wrote in reports contained in court documents, the mother succeeded in persuading a woman to abruptly change her account of a robbery, resulting in a dismissed case.

“This is an extremely serious offense,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Anderson, who is assigned to the Westminster anti-gang unit. “This type of crime violates the sanctity of the entire system. If this type of crime is allowed to go on, our system become valueless.”

Rodarte’s attorney, Malcolm Guleserian, said Rodarte is just a frantic mother who “tried something stupid” to keep her sons from going to jail.

“What’s a mother to do?” Guleserian said Wednesday. “I told the judge at the bail hearing that my mother would do anything for me if I was in a similar situation. She just wasn’t thinking straight.”

The Westminster police Tri-Agency Gang Enforcement Team also announced Wednesday the related arrest of a 16-year-old West Trece gang member on charges of felony witness intimidation. The youth, whom police say is a member of the same gang as Rodarte’s two sons, allegedly threatened and threw a bottle at the car of the same woman Rodarte approached, police said.

Rodarte is being held at the Orange County Jail on $40,000 bond. The charges she faces carry a maximum sentence of three years and eight months. Family members could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Court records indicate that police taped five phone conversations in June between Rodarte and the woman who had identified Lino Rodarte, 21, as one of the West Trece gang members involved in the robbery of a pizza delivery driver in December, 1992. Anderson asked that the name of the witness not be published to protect her from further harassment.

The phone tap was installed after the woman, the sole witness to the crime, told police that Maria Rodarte had allegedly suggested a bribe, court records show. Also, the witness told police that she had been harassed and threatened by West Trece members, court documents show.

The witness “said she felt intimidated and believed if she continued as a witness in this case and testified she would probably be killed by members of the West Trace gang,” the police report shows.

In a summary of the calls, investigators wrote that Maria Rodarte had told the witness that she could be paid as much as $500, and escape the gang’s intimidation tactics if she agreed to change her story or simply not testify.

In 1992, Lino Rodarte was sentenced to 120 days in jail after pleading guilty to the robbery. He is now on probation.

The taped conversations also tipped police off to an earlier case involving another of Rodarte’s sons, 24-year-old Raul Beruman Rodarte, Anderson said.

A woman said Raul Beruman Rodarte was one of the four men who allegedly jumped into her idling car on Dec. 21, 1990, robbed her of five or six rings and a guitar and fondled her, records show.

Then, 17 days later, the woman abruptly changed her account, submitting a handwritten note to the court that asked for the charges to be dropped because of mistaken identity, court records show. The charges were withdrawn, authorities said.

Police tracked down the witness, now living in Las Vegas, who said that she had changed her story after Maria Rodarte allegedly coerced her with both money and intimidation, court records show.

The witness, who was told she would not face charges herself, went on to tell police that she was given back her stolen jewelry and $200 in exchange for her cooperation, the records show. Raul Beruman Rodarte, however, is serving a prison term for an unrelated crime.

To Anderson, the elder Rodarte’s alleged attempts to tamper with witnesses was an “outrageous” attempt to taint the judicial process. He said he hopes jurors will not view the case sympathetically as a mother pulling out all the stops to protect her children.

“I would hope that would not be an issue,” Anderson said. “Jurors have a role they have to stick to. It either happened or it didn’t happen.”