Ramon Salcido

The former wife of accused wine country slayer Ramon Salcido said he was a kind and gentle suitor, but he beat her regularly after they were married. In an interview with the Fresno Bee, Debra Salcido, 27, recounted how she hid in terror in a hotel after hearing reports that her former husband had killed his wife, two of his three daughters and four others in a violent rampage. She told of one incident--in late 1983, or early 1984--in the couple's Sonoma home when she said Ramon went into a drunken rage.

Ramon Salcido was sentenced to die in the San Quentin gas chamber for the 1989 wine-country murder spree that claimed the lives of his wife, two daughters and four other people. "I ask everyone to forgive me for the things that I have done," Salcido told Sierra County Superior Court Judge Reginald Littrell. "I want to express that I repent for the things that have happened to the family that I loved the most, and for all the grief and pain I have caused," he said.

Winery worker Ramon Salcido pleaded innocent to murdering his wife, two daughters and four others. In a brief appearance before Sonoma County Superior Court Judge J. Brian Jamar in Santa Rosa, Salcido's trial was tentatively set to begin Jan. 30. He could be sentenced to death if convicted. Salcido, 28, was arrested in his native Mexico several days after the April 14 killings. Public Defender Marteen Miller said he needed more time to prepare and will probably ask for a delay in the trial.

A winery worker known for his hot temper killed his wife, four other people and wounded another in three separate shooting attacks in the California wine country today, then fled with his three young daughters, authorities said. The rampage began about 8:20 a.m. in the usually bucolic wine country about 50 miles north of San Francisco, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department. The gunman was tentatively identified as Grand Cru Winery worker Ramon Salcido, 28. He was the subject of a statewide all-points bulletin and a widespread search.

A former winery worker was sentenced to death Monday for killing his wife, two daughters, mother-in-law, his wife's two young sisters and a co-worker in a wine-country rampage. Ramon Salcido's father-in-law, Robert Richards, called him a coward and tearfully asked for swift justice. Salcido, 29, was convicted on Oct. 30 of the April, 1989, murders.

Ramon Salcido, the California winery worker wanted in last week's slayings of six family members and his supervisor, was arrested peacefully at a roadblock near his hometown in northern Mexico and quickly confessed, a spokesman for the Mexican attorney general's office said Wednesday. Salcido, 28, was taken into custody late Tuesday night near Guasave by Federal Judicial Police "by chance . . . in a police anti-narcotics operation," said the spokesman, Fernando Arias. 'Extremely Nervous' "He arrived without identification and he became extremely nervous," Arias said.

Ramon Salcido left a note in his abandoned car blaming the "law" for a murderous rampage that left seven people dead and asking God to forgive him, authorities said Monday. "Forgive me, God, but this law made me do it. We could live better, me and my children, but what can I do," the note says, according to law enforcement officials. The note, written in Spanish, suggests that a demand, made under welfare laws, that Salcido pay $5,807 in back child support payments, plus $511 a month for support of a child by a previous marriage, led him to kill his second wife, Angela, two of their three daughters, his mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, and his supervisor at the winery where he worked.

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.

Nineteen months after Ramon Salcido slashed his wife and two of their daughters to death in a wine-country rampage that claimed seven lives, a jury Friday said he should die in the gas chamber. Salcido, 29, reacted with the same faraway stare he wore throughout most the trial, as a Spanish interpreter translated the jury's decision. "He doesn't know where he is," defense attorney Marteen Miller said. "He's not insane, but he's a little goofy."

A Sonoma County judge has cleared the way for accused mass murderer Ramon Salcido to travel to UC Irvine this month for a state-of-the-art brain scan that could aid his defense--if the university will accept him. Superior Court Judge R. Bryan Jamar on Tuesday denied a motion by Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Bummerts that Salcido not be removed from the Sonoma County jail without a special court hearing. Bummerts had warned that flying Salcido to Southern California could be a security risk.