Mass Murders California

Susan Atkins, a follower of Charles Manson who admitted stabbing actress Sharon Tate to death in 1969, was denied parole for the eighth time. A three-member Board of Prison Terms panel decided after a four-hour hearing at the California Institution for Women that the 41-year-old convict will be eligible for another hearing in three years. She is serving a life term.

Ramon Salcido, the winery worker who allegedly slaughtered his wife, two daughters and four others during a murderous rampage in the wine country in April, 1989, is set to go on trial in Redwood City today, but the case may be delayed for two months. Salcido's lawyer, public defender Marteen Miller, said he would ask visiting San Mateo Superior Court Judge Reginald Littrell to reset the trial for September.

Tears in her eyes, In Or bitterly recalled the day her husband, then a rebel Cambodian soldier, was reported killed in a fire fight with forces supporting the murderous Khmer Rouge that once ruled that country. Alone with two young children, she made the brave but risky decision to flee. "I wanted to be in a place of peace and freedom--the United States," the slightly built Or, 36, recalled Wednesday.

The lawyer for Ramon Salcido says the former winery worker doesn't remember what "set him off" the night he allegedly killed seven people, including his wife and two daughters. "He would give his life to have them back," Sonoma County Public Defender Marteen Miller said shortly after a judge Thursday abruptly lifted a gag order in the case.

The preliminary hearing for landlady Dorothea Puente, accused of killing nine of her elderly tenants for their pension checks, will be open to reporters but not to TV or newspaper cameras, a judge ruled Friday. Municipal Judge Gail D. Ohanesian's decision ended a three-day legal battle by the news media over coverage of the event. Puente's attorneys had asked that the hearing be closed to all media coverage. The sensational case already has attracted nationwide publicity.

Three Vietnamese-speaking Orange County residents flew to Stockton Wednesday to help interpret for Southeast Asian students and families traumatized when a gunman opened fire on a playground Tuesday, killing five students and injuring 29 others. The three, Thang Nguyen, 24, of Garden Grove; Mai Nguyen, 25, and Sanh Tang, 26, both of Santa Ana, are employees of Pacific Bell at its Vietnamese Service Center in Tustin, said Linda Bonniksen, a company spokeswoman who accompanied them to Stockton.

A computer programmer who went on a rampage when he was spurned by a one-time co-worker was charged by the Santa Clara County district attorney on Thursday with seven counts of murder. Richard W. Farley, 39, was also charged with three counts of attempted murder arising from the bloody siege at Electromagnetic Systems Labs Inc., a defense contractor with high security in neighboring Sunnyvale where he once worked.

A gunman apparently distressed over being evicted went on a shooting spree across three picturesque Central California coastal towns, killing six people, including his former landlord, and wounding another man before killing himself in front of a hostage, authorities said Sunday. Lynwood (Jim) Drake III, 43, an unemployed construction worker, was on the phone with hostage negotiators Sunday morning when he shot himself in the head at a home in the rural town of San Miguel.

The last of seven bodies recovered last week from a boardinghouse graveyard was a woman, possibly 60 years old with an artificial hip joint; she was missing her head, hands and feet, the coroner said Tuesday. The woman's severed body parts were not recovered from the narrow yard where the bodies of three men and four women were unearthed over four days beginning Nov. 11, said Sacramento County Coroner Charles Simmons.