The worst crime in Sonoma history: 30 years later

Thirty years ago today, Sonoma Valley experienced the worst crime in its modern era. Over the past three decades, court documents and a wide variety of news reports have filled in the blanks on a tragic story with no happy ending:

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On April 12, 1989, after a night of drinking and cocaine at McNeilly’s Bar in El Verano, Ramon Bojorquez Salcido, 28, scooped up his three young daughters from their Boyes Hot Springs beds in their pajamas and drove them to a quarry near the dump site on Stage Gulch Road and slashed their throats.

Salcido then drove to Cotati, where he killed his mother-in-law and her two daughters. He then drove back to the family’s rental apartment at 201 Baines Avenue, near the Boyes Food Market. When he arrived, he shot and killed his wife Angela. Salcido then drove to the Glen Ellen warehouse of Grand Cru Winery where he worked, and shot and killed his supervisor. Finally, he drove to the Kenwood house of another supervisor, who he shot and injured.

Identified by his surviving victims, Salcido was the suspect from the start. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office launched a massive manhunt. Salcido was caught five days later by Mexican authorities and turned over to sheriff’s detectives, who brought him back for trial.

In his defense, Salcido said his marriage was unraveling, he owed money and he was about to be fired. He and Angela had argued when he was served with child support documents from his second wife and he was angry having learned that his oldest daughter was not his biological child.

Longtime Sonoma County Public Defender Marteen Miller represented Salcido. In 1990, after a lengthy trial, he was convicted of the murders of seven people and the attempted murder of two.

Thinking back on the trial, Miller recalled how he and Chief Deputy Public Defender Bill Marioni did what they could in the face of overwhelming evidence. He told the Press Democrat in 2014, “They had a great prosecution team. The judge was fair. It was such a tragedy ... unspeakable violence.”

At the time, Mike Brown, who spent almost 16 years conducting violent crimes investigation for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s department told the Press-Democrat that Salcido’s murders were the most senseless slaughter of human beings to which he had ever been exposed.

Sheriff’s Capt. Dave Edmonds, who was lead detective in the case, added that he was struck by the callousness of the killings and sheer innocence of the victims. Vivid images of the murder scenes remain etched in his mind, Edmonds said. “It’s hard to think a human being could do that to another, especially to loved ones,” he said.

But the story didn’t end there. When Salcido left his three daughters in the Stage Gulch dump, his third daughter Carmina, age 3, was still alive - his knife blade had just missed her carotid artery. She was discovered by two quarry employees after 36 hours. She told a hospital nurse, “Daddy cut me.”

She was adopted by a family in Missouri and she dropped from the public eye until the release of her 2009 memoir “Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival,” published by Harper Collins.

In it, she describes her adoptive family as being physically and mentally abusive. One passage reads, “If I ‘mouthed off,’ or was otherwise disrespectful, they would pour Tabasco sauce onto my tongue or insert a bar of soap into my mouth.”

The book relates her difficult life afterward and her eventual return to Sonoma County and a hope for a better future.

But in the years since the book was published, Carmina, now 33, has struggled to secure her happily ever after.

She has an 8-year-old daughter, Zophia Angela Salcido, nicknamed Zoe, of whom she does not have custody. She split from Zoe’s father, Matthew Inocenio of Sonoma, and the young girl has alternated between being in his custody and foster care. Attempts to reach Carmina were not successful.

Today, Ramon Salcido is on death row in San Quentin prison where he is likely to remain. California has not executed a condemned inmate since 2006.