Bob Richards, patriarch ‘broken' by Salcido killings, dies at80

Bob Richards, the quiet and diligent man of faith who 25 years ago suffered the butchering of his wife, their three daughters and two of their granddaughters at the hands of Ramon Salcido, died Sunday at his home in Montana.

Richards, whose despair was eased to a degree by the discovery that granddaughter Carmina had survived Sonoma County's ghastliest killing spree, died from an apparent heart attack. He was 80.

Son Robert Richards Jr. of Sacramento said that though his father remarried, he seemed never again to know joy. He had lost nearly every female member of his family and made the difficult decision to find an adoptive family for Carmina.

'Something was broken,' said the younger Richards. He said his father, who worked as a United Parcel Service driver at the time of the rampage by Salcido, appeared to cope with the unfathomable crime by getting in his car and going.

'I wanted to ask him, 'What are you going to do when you can't drive?' ' Robert Richards said. He recalled it was only about a month ago that his father came through Sacramento on his latest road trip.

His father dealt with the tragedy of 1989 'the best he could,' Richards said. 'That was always moving.'

Early that year a quarter-century ago, Bob Richards, a native of Ohio, was living on Lakewood Drive in Cotati with his wife, Louise, and the two youngest of their six children, Ruth, 12, and Maria, 8.

The Richardses' eldest daughter, Angela Salcido, 24, lived on Baines Avenue in Boyes Hot Springs with husband Ramon, then a 28-year-old Sonoma Valley winery worker, and their three daughters, Sofia, 4; Carmina, just short of 3; and Teresa, nearly 2.

The life of the hard-drinking, jealous and arrogant Ramon Salcido was crumbling that spring. He knew his wife was trying to pull free of him and his abusive control and that he was about to be fired from Grand Cru Winery.

Early the morning of April 14, 1989, Salcido struck out with an evil vengeance, committing a mass murder that shocked Sonoma County and the nation. He had already slashed the throats of his three daughters and tossed them onto a patch of ground at a county garbage-transfer station on Stage Gulch Road when he pulled up to the Richards home in Cotati.

He watched Bob Richards head off to work at UPS, then he went in and butchered Louise and her grade-school daughters. Salcido then stole a gun from the Richards home and, returning to Sonoma Valley, shot and killed Angela, then Tracy Toovey, the assistant winemaker at Grand Cru. Salcido moved on to shoot and wound Ken Butti, his supervisor at the winery, and he aimed the gun and fired at Butti's wife, Terri, but the pistol did not fire.

Salcido then fled for his hometown of Los Mochis, Mexico.

More than 30 hours after grim Sonoma County Sheriff's officials informed Bob Richards of the savage killings of his wife and his three daughters, the whereabouts of granddaughters Sofia, Carmina and Teresa were unknown — until a man spied them at the south county dump station and thought they were discarded dolls.

A short time later, Richards learned that Sofia and Teresa were dead, their throats slit, but Carmina had survived. He told The Press Democrat later that the miracle of Carmina gave him something positive on which to focus.

'It kept my mind off of everything else,' he said.

On April 21, 1989, five days after the killing spree, Sonoma County Sheriff's detectives landed in a jet at the county airport with fugitive Ramon Salcido in tow. Three days later, nurses celebrated Carmina's 3rd birthday with her in a guarded room at Petaluma Valley Hospital.

Her father would be convicted of the seven murders and myriad other crimes and sentenced to death. Now 53, he remains at San Quentin State Prison.

Carmina went on to write in a co-authored book, 'Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival,' that her heartbroken grandfather 'had no idea how to raise a 3-year-old girl on his own.' So Richards sought out members of the conservative Catholic organization to which he belonged, called Tradition, Family and Property, who might be interested in adopting Carmina.

After a couple of false starts, he agreed to pass his granddaughter to a couple in rural Missouri. Carmina, who's now 28 and living in Cotati, has said the couple abused her physically and psychologically.

Her grandfather left Sonoma County and lived for a time in Los Angeles, where in 1993, he married his second wife, Edna. The couple later settled in western Montana.

Carmina Salcido declared in the book she wrote with author Steve Jackson that her adoptive parents allowed Bob Richards to visit but made him feel unwelcome, so he came just once a year. He came to suspect that the couple was not treating her well, she wrote, and he inquired about reversing the adoption but was told that could not happen.

Carmina Salcido and Bob and Edna Richards did live together in Montana for about a year when Carmina was 18 and emancipated from her adoptive parents. She wrote in 'Not Lost Forever' that her feelings for Bob Richards were mixed.

'I loved him as my grandfather,' she wrote. 'In a practical sense, I also understood that he felt putting me up for adoption was the best option.

'But I believe he could have made a better choice. He could have placed me with family, like Grandma Louise's relatives or my uncles. I resented the fact that he seemed to leave me behind when he left Sonoma County, abandoning me to fend for myself.'

Carmina Salcido alerted The Press Democrat to her grandfather's death on Sunday, but then she could not be reached for comment.

Her uncle in Sacramento said he thinks Bob Richards 'made some mistakes, but he tried to do the best he could.' If some of his father's actions were imperfect, Robert Richards said, 'there was no malice.'

The younger Richards said his father's health declined in recent years. 'I think he had emphysema; I know he was on several different medications,' he said.

Despite that, Bob Richards kept on driving, striking out on road trips from his home in Hamilton, Mont. Said his son, 'It was incredible that he kept driving, the way he was.'

The younger Richards said it is of some comfort that his father's death at home early Sunday morning came quickly, as he had suffered enough.

In addition to his wife in Montana, his son in Sacramento and his granddaughter in Cotati, Bob Richards' survivors include son Gerald Richards of Indiana, son Lewis Richards of Sacramento, two sisters and a brother.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 521-5211 or chris. Smith@pressdemocrat.com.