Original subtitles

I was home in bed, and I received a call at

approximately 1:00 to 1:30 in the morning.

A neighbor saw a fight going on out in front of

the residence on Elm Street.

There was a man on the sidewalk in front of the residence,

and he was motionless.

I'm just trying to get there as fast as I can.

So when I arrived at the scene,

there was a body lying on the sidewalk, and there was

a mask between his legs.

The deputies were on the scene, and they were very,

very spooked.

They described going into the house and locating one body

and locating another body, and described it almost like

a Freddy Krueger coming out of a closet.

These were big, muscular type of deputies.

They didn't scare easy.

And when I went in,

and I see exactly what they were talking about.

I've never seen anything like that in my life.

That night, I believe it was a Sunday night,

between one and two o'clock in the morning,

I was notified by dispatch of a homicide.

I got out of bed and jumped in the shower real quickly.

And by the time I left the door, I had been called

four different times adding another body to

the crime scene...

...then I drove to the address on Elm Street in Salida.

Most homicide scenes, there's always going to

be evidence. You just have to find it.

And the first 48 hours are the most important

to get that case solved.

Deputies were telling me that they had located four bodies

at the scene.

At first, I didn't believe 'em, because I've never been

involved in a quadruple homicide, and I don't recall

a quadruple homicide ever occurring in Stanislaus County.

So there was no lights in the house.

It was really very horrific, a lot of blood.

Obviously the person lying on the sidewalk was deceased.

He was a white male adult.

There was three bodies inside of the residence.

Two of them were in the kitchen,

and one was in the living room.

All of the victims were bludgeoned with some type of

blunt instrument,

in addition to a signature stab wound,

and slices to the throat area.

It was a bloody scene, but as an investigator,

you don't care about how ugly it is, how much blood is there.

These are their bodies. They're part of this puzzle.

We identified three of the victims with ID that

they had on the persons.

One had been a Franklin Raper, who was 51 years old.

Richard Ritchey, he was 25 years old.

And Dennis Colwell, who was 35 years old.

The one that we did not identify right away

was a female.

Young female, about 22 years of age.

Her injury to her neck was so horrific that she was

almost decapitated.

Myself and the other investigators were all

wondering how these people all related.

We had no idea who knew each other because of

the different ages.

Immediately, it didn't look like home invasion or robbery

because these people are brutally murdered.

The people that did this wanted to kill people.

Their objective was to kill these people.

As far as who is capable of committing a quadruple

homicide, just almost unheard of, especially in Salida.

So at that point, we had no idea who the perpetrators were.

I observed a camouflage mask in between the legs of the man

who was lying deceased on the driveway.

And there was another camouflage mask lying on

the grass at the residence.

There was a knit cap that was on the lawn.

And when they looked at it, there was hair on it.

DNA wasn't around much at that time.

It was just in the beginning stages of it.

But you can still match that hair, blood type,

and stuff like that.

So that was a good piece of evidence.

I observed footprints leading from some dirt area near

the gutter of the house.

And that was going eastbound toward the railroad tracks.

Following the footprints, there was a bat,

a Ka-Bar knife, a knife sheath that they discarded.

That tells me that there's more than one person that did this.

So there was a trail, if you will, of evidence to

where they went to a vehicle and then left the scene.

A lot of the locals heard about it.

The large crowd were outside the crime scene, actually to

the perimeter of the crime scene.

Salida wasn't a very large town in those days.

It was a small farming community,

just north of Modesto.

I was a reporter at the Modesto Bee, and I covered crime.

And, soon as we heard about it, everybody went out

and started covering it. It just rocked the town.

The deputies know what to do.

They're basically freezing the crime scene, make sure

nobody comes in and out.

They're taping off the area and talking to people.

The lady came up, she was visibly shaken

and said, "Hey, I'm the sole survivor.

I was there when it happened."

The killers didn't know they had missed somebody

and they had missed her.

So we had a witness, a survivor, if you will,

right at it.

Pure evil came to the house on Elm Street that night.

And I don't think detectives expected to find what they did.

By the next morning, everybody in Salida knew about

the massacre on Elm Street.

It was just a horrible crime. It was a bloodbath.

There was a lot of fear.

They were afraid at that point that, hey,

what's going on here?

Somebody going to bust into my home and kill all my family?

They had no idea yet who the killers were,

so it was tense.

Luckily, there was one survivor.

Her name was Donna Alvarez, and I interviewed her for

approximately an hour.

Donna Alvarez told me that that was her first night

being at that residence.

She had never been there before.

She said she was somewhat homeless.

She had no place to go, and she arrived at

the residence with one of the victims, Richard Ritchey,

and Franklin Raper, who was living in

the residence, told her she can spend the night there.

She was in one of the bedrooms.

And all of a sudden, she heard screaming.

She wasn't sure what was going on, other than it was dark.

And she knew something bad was happening.

She looked out the door and saw everybody had

a camouflage mask on.

One of the individuals removed his mask briefly.

And she said it was obviously a Caucasian,

but he had Afro type of hair.

And he had a gun, and told her to get into

the living room.

And then somehow he was distracted.

She felt that she got to get out of there, so she went.

The only place she could go was to the garage.

She then hid under a pile of laundry that was on the floor

of the garage.

After hearing all the commotion, she said it got

quiet, and she found out that everybody was murdered

except for herself.

Apparently, during the murder frenzy, they forgot about her,

and she was able to slip out of the garage.

I think the garage door was broken, and she was able to get

under it and run to a neighbor's house,

and called 911.

I was walking outside the crime scene, made contact with a lady

who stated that her daughter has been unaccounted for,

and she hopes that the victim was not her daughter.

And she said, "I heard my daughter might be one

of the victims."

And they said, "Well, can you identify

anything about her?"

And they said, "Well, she's real small and got dark hair,

has a little tattoo on her."

She had brought a photograph to us of her daughter.

And based on that photograph, we were able to identify

the young female victim as being the lady's daughter,

Darlene Parris.

These people all had families. A couple of them were married.

And it was just real sad for the families

that their loved ones were butchered like that.

That night, I just had a weird feeling, like I was uneasy.

I just, I don't know.

I remember hearing the phone,

probably two, three o'clock in the morning, and it was

my brother saying "Dad's gone."

And I just, you know, I think I fainted, I don't know,

I just went down hard and it just was this devastation.

I woke up from a dead sleep at that time and I heard my mom

sobbing, and she was on the phone

crying uncontrollably.

We turned on the TV and there it was,

bodies coming out of the house.

It was right there, it was kind of stunning.

You know you're never going to see your grandpa again.

I knew him as Papa Red, Franklin, Franklin Raper,

Papa Red.

He liked us to call him Papa Red.

My dad was very giving and loved his family and his

family also included what he would call his people,

which were not necessarily blood-related.

But if they needed him to take care of them, he would step in

and try to protect them as best as he could.

He would want to bring people into the home, you know,

that didn't have a place to go.

But my mom just couldn't handle that because she had

three kids. They did split up,

That was-- it was tough for him to deal with.

I remember at that time, it was kind of like, "What are

you going to do, Papa? Like, where are you staying at?

And he said, "Well, I'm staying close in Salida."

But he was having issues with some people.

I knew he was having some issues.

'Cause I-- I heard my mom maybe a couple of weeks before that

saying, "Dad, can you please come up here and just move up

here with us and get out of the area for a while?"

Detectives got a lead that Franklin had been in a fight

with a gentleman that owned a repair shop there in Salida.

They had some bad blood between them.

There was several altercations over a year's time.

And they actually got in a fist fight.

And Franklin came back to the shop

after they had had some words.

And he was in a car with another guy.

And they started spinning donuts outside the shop.

And um, unfortunately, Franklin's vehicle died.

And so the owner of the repair shop confronted Franklin.

They beat Franklin up pretty good.

Basically, Franklin lost the fight.

So I tracked him down by this auto parts place.

He was not feeling too great.

And I asked him, "Dad, what's going on?"

And he said, "These guys are a bunch of punks."

I didn't know who they were or had never met them

or anything, but I was quite worried about him.

Detectives zeroed in on the shop owner, tracking down

all the problems he'd had with Franklin.

They thought this could be the motive.

If the individual who owned the automotive store is one of

the persons that actually committed the murders,

then he was dangerous.

They didn't know what they were going to find.

But if they were the killer, they were pure evil.

Detectives started running down leads and chasing suspects,

and they found out one of the victims, Franklin Raper,

had had a beef with a guy that owned an auto body shop

there in Salida.

So we went to the auto body repair shop and met with

the owner and asked him if he heard about

the quadruple homicide in Salida.

And he tells me that everybody in Salida knows about it.

He was asked if he had anything to do with it.

And he admitted that he did not get along with Franklin,

that him and Franklin did not like each other, but no way that

he would kill Franklin Raper or anybody else.

He had an alibi.

He was home with his wife and family and in bed at

the time of the murders.

His family was interviewed, and they checked out his alibi.

We determined that there was no indication that he would

kill Franklin Raper.

So they let him go.

At this point, the town was on edge.

They couldn't believe it.

Salida's a nice little town.

And here's this horrendous murder of four people.

Everybody was afraid.

I was in the fifth grade with Darlene's half sister,

younger half sister.

We realized that we were both part of this crime.

My grandfather was a victim. Her older sister was a victim.

For her being a sister and being so close like

they were, it was definitely something I noticed impact

her big time, from a change from when I knew her before.

We were going through different therapy sessions

and school counseling and connecting on our own.

It was devastating for that family.

It really was.

It was devastating for everybody.

These guys are, nobody's gonna be able to catch them.

Are they gonna find out who did it?

So it was a lot of fear at that time, a lot of fear.

Nobody knew who the killers were.

They didn't know if they were going to be next.

It was a rough time.

Detectives started looking elsewhere.

They went to Franklin's family.

I interviewed Franklin Raper's son, and he told me that

Franklin Raper asked his son if he could borrow a gun.

And his son said, "Why? Why do you need a gun, Dad?"

And Franklin says, "Well, I'm afraid of this guy,

Jason LaMarsh." And Franklin was no sissy.

So to be afraid of some guy, his son thought, this guy must

be a bad hombre.

And it turned out he was.

Jason LaMarsh was a bully.

My grandpa would talk about him.

And I know there was some bad blood there.

Jason LaMarsh had stolen Franklin's car, put it out in

the street, set it on fire.

But then Franklin knew, hey, this is serious.

I need to protect myself.

Jason LaMarsh, he threatened to kill me.

I knew that his car had been burned up, and they pulled him

out of the car and broke his collarbone.

So I went to see him.

I actually had tried to get my dad to move.

I cried and pretty much begged.

I said, "You need to get out of this area, Dad.

"It's really getting, this is too much.

You can stay with us."

He said, "No, I've been in this town a lot longer than

they have, and they're not going to run me out."

He said, "I'm good with the man upstairs."

And he looked me right in the eye and said, "Don't worry,

I'll be OK."

And that was the last time I saw him, so.

But I always felt that I at least tried.

I tried to give him that option, you know,

to get out of there.

So we really wanted to locate Jason LaMarsh and find out

exactly what was going on and interview him.

So I immediately called the Sheriff's Office and ran

a background check.

And we discovered that he had been arrested before,

which indicates that we have a photograph of him.

And I showed Dawn Alvarez, who was in the house that

night, the photo lineup and asked her if she could

identify the person she saw at the crime scene.

She immediately pointed to Jason LaMarsh.

She became hysterical, just as if

Jason LaMarsh was there in person.

Well, in trying to track LaMarsh down,

detectives contacted LaMarsh's girlfriend, Michelle Evans.

And his girlfriend didn't know where he was.

Or she said she didn't.

And they learned that her sister, Tanya Miller,

had also been living in that house where

the murders occurred.

But she was staying with her mother that night.

We thought that we had to find her and interview her to find

out if there was any connection between her

and the murders itself. Tanya Miller was stricken.

She had no idea why somebody would come in

and commit these murders.

At that point, we confirmed that

she was not there,

and no indication that she participated in the murders

or had any knowledge

of what had occurred.

They ask her, "Do you know Jason LaMarsh?"

She said, "Yes, my sister dates him."

She did not like him.

She did not like her sister hanging out with Jason LaMarsh

because he brought her into a group of people that

she did not like.

And these people, they had been known to cause trouble.

The group was living at a little ramshackle ex-labor

camp that had been abandoned there in Salida.

It was called "The Camp."

She stated that Franklin Raper

actually lived at The Camp for a while.

And then when he left The Camp, she allowed him to stay at

the residence on Elm Street to get away from the people

who lived at The Camp.

So the detectives decided, we're going to see for

ourselves what's going on.

And so we went out talking to people, gathering information.

The community felt like they didn't want anything to do

with those people.

They could see armed guards walking around the perimeter

of the place.

They had heard rumors

that there was satanic rituals being held there.

Community didn't really know what these people were

all about, they were just afraid of them.

Well, after we had developed this information, we're going

to go there and, you know, talk to them and see where

they were last night.

We arrived, I think it was

about five o'clock in the morning.

The camp itself was probably an estimated maybe

a half acre big, and the back of the residence was what looked

like a two-bedroom wooden construction home.

When they got there, no one was there.

There was a clothesline in front of the house.

And I go, camouflage clothing?

That's what the killers were wearing.

We were kind of real concerned about our safety.

We had to be aware of the danger that's out there.

They were vicious people.

Whatever triggers them, they can strike,

and they strike at any time.

If that was the group that actually committed the murders,

they probably would have no problems killing us.

You've got a bunch of people living here in the camp,

and Jason LaMarsh is one of them, and he's a prime suspect.

So the detectives didn't know what they were going to find.

And then a man came up and started talking

to detectives.

He said he was named Gerald Cruz.

We learned that Gerald Cruz was the leader of The Cause.

He was a big man. He was 300 and... plus.

We started talking to Mr. Cruz.

And I asked him if he had heard about

the quadruple homicide in Salida.

And he said, no, he hadn't heard about it.

"I don't know anything. What are you talking about?

I don't know what you're talking about."

You know.

Which I thought was very strange, because everybody in

Salida had heard about it.

As an investigator, you can tell when people are

lying to you. Something's not right here.

What immediately struck me was his shoes had a couple of very,

very small specks on them that, in my mind, could be blood.

I told myself that I believe this guy could very well be

one of the suspects in the homicide.

I asked him if Jason LaMarsh lived on the property,

and he pointed to a trailer that Jason was staying in.

But he said he was not home, and he stated no, he does not

know where he's at.

Now, walking back, I know what I was thinking.

And I knew that, all right, there's something here.

I'm gonna start putting a search warrant together.

And at the same time,

we're gonna watch this place.

We found weapons that were illegal, bomb-making materials,

explosive materials that were illegal.

Now they're really concerned.

We're not sure what the intent was, other than somewhere down

the line, maybe they were going to do something else.

We also found books on Satanism and astrology,

and different type of materials such as that.

People that actually were in The Cause actually were forced

to get their finger cut and put their fingerprint in this book

that Gerald kept.

They were forced to write a diary, and he would read

the diaries, because in his mind, he thought, well,

if I know what they're thinking of then,

I can control them better.

And then detectives found things that were beyond

their wildest nightmare.

There was a wheel, a punishment wheel,

that we found.

It was called the "Wheel of Punishment."

And when Cruz thought somebody had done wrong or had screwed

up, he would throw it in the air and have them catch it.

Wherever their thumb landed, that was a punishment they got.

He would discipline them by doing things like withholding

food, withholding clothing, making them sleep on

the concrete without any type of blanket or anything.

He would use forced sodomy, he would use oral copulation.

It could be all kinds of bizarre happenings,

whatever Gerald came up with.

It would dehumanize the people that were under him,

and they would look to him for everything,

for their basic needs.

Gerald Cruz would exhibit a lot of the traditional types of

manifestations that cult leaders exhibit.

Mind control, physical torture,

financial control, sexuality.

His group dynamics were based upon his ability to control

everybody around him.

They were under the influence, the mental influence,

of Gerald Cruz.

That was scary.

So after the search warrant was conducted, we found receipts

where they had purchased a Ka-Bar knife and where

they had purchased camouflage masks.

Everything was falling into line as to leading to

the suspects at The Camp being the perpetrators

of the homicide.

But we don't have the suspects in custody.

Now they just needed to find out who was involved out of

the group there and what their participation was.

Now we're on day...

...I believe, day two, or two and a half.

And none of us have been to bed yet.

So I told Sergeant Larson that I was going to get a few hours

sleep, because if we did catch these suspects, one of us had

to be somewhat coherent in order to interview them.

When I got up, I had learned that Michelle Evans

was booked for murder.

Michelle Evans was Jason LaMarsh's girlfriend,

and her sister, Tanya Miller, had also been living there in

that house on Elm Street, so there was that connection.

Michelle Evans was very nervous, she was avoiding questions.

She did not provide any information as to

her involvement or anybody else at that time.

We found out at that time, she was a good friend of

David Beck, and Beck was also at the camp.

Jason LaMarsh, Beck, and Cruz were the main

characters at The Camp.

So we arrested Beck and brought him in.

Mr. Beck, Dave Beck, he wouldn't tell us anything.

Of course, denied it, and so did Michelle Evans.

And so we put them in the same interview room.

And that led to a big break in the case.

So this was a real rock they flipped over out there,

and all the snakes came out.

Detectives needed to find out who was involved in the murders

of Franklin Raper, Darlene Paris, Rich Ritchey,

and Dennis Colwell, the massacre on Elm Street.

They're starting to gather people up, you know,

and bring them in for questioning.

We arrested David Beck and brought him in and also

Michelle Evans.

And we put them in the same interview room.

That's an age-old tactic used by investigators.

And she went in there and started talking in a low

voice and telling him that she did not tell us that--

anything about him being involved.

And Mr. Beck was doing everything

with his hand motions without saying anything,

for her to shut up. But she kept talking.

And after that conversation, I immediately conducted my own

interview with Michelle to see what, if any, information that

I could obtain.

After back and forth for approximately one hour,

Michelle finally cracked and agreed to tell me exactly

what happened.

Michelle Evans told me the night before they committed

the murders, they had a bonfire at the camp, and they all were

basically psyching themselves out, going over to kill

Franklin Raper.

He was the target at that time.

Besides Franklin Raper, everybody else

was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The suspects had no idea who was going to be there,

but they were instructed by Gerald Cruz not to leave

any witnesses. Everybody is to be killed.

She told them that when Franklin first moved on to

the property there at the camp, he was friends with Gerald

and the other members.

But he didn't like what was going on.

He didn't like the brutality of Cruz hurting other people.

They tried to get him to kind of be roped into

this kind of thing,

and there was no way he was having it.

I think he thought they were capable of a lot of evil.

So he was done, and he tried to get other people when he left

to leave with him, and that's why they were over

at the house that night.

Those were people that he helped get out of there,

and they kind of had their own little group, and that was

really ticking Cruz off.

Franklin wasn't afraid to stand up to Cruz, and I think that's

one of the reasons why Cruz had to eliminate him as a threat

because how are you gonna control your entire camp

and you let this one person basically leave without any

type of repercussions?

He had to take some kind of action.

Michelle Evans stated prior to leaving over there, Gerald Cruz

made everybody their assignments, which window

they're gonna to come through, and which door.

So she drove the car, and they drove to Elm Street.

Instead, she parked her car over by the railroad tracks,

and she pointed to where we found the murder weapons.

That's where she parked the car.

Michelle went into the home before the murders occurred,

because her sister lived there, so they wouldn't think anything

about Michelle just walking into the house.

They were in that house,

and Mr. Raper was extending hospitality.

Donna Alvarez was in bed.

That's when Michelle went in another bedroom and opened

up the window.

That's what the killers were looking for.

Michelle said somebody flipped the breakers off at the house,

which cut out the electricity to the house.

That's when they went in there like gangbusters, coming in

the windows, in the doors,

and they caught everybody off guard.

Those poor people must have been so freaked out when those

guys came in wearing masks and everything,

because they went right over and started attacking them.

Michelle said she was walking outside, and she walked by

a body right there in the front yard and waited in the car

until everything was over.

Michelle Evans provided me all the names

of everybody was there.

With that information, we put out a BOL, which is

"be on the lookout," or all the names that

we listed, and they're all wanted for quadruple homicide.

Dave Beck was already in custody.

The first individual that was picked up was Ricky Vieira.

And then Gerald Cruz, who's the ringleader.

Ron Willey was also arrested.

Everyone except Jason LaMarsh, they couldn't find him.

He's the final one they want,

and they want him bad.

LaMarsh, he had borrowed a car and drove with a female to

Oregon, and she did not know what for.

And on the way up, he told her, I was involved in the murders,

the massacre on Elm Street.

And she freaked out, but she was cool about it.

So when they got to Oregon, a little town called Pendleton,

they pulled in, got a motel.

She's still freaked out, thinking I'm here with

this killer.

So she finds a telephone.

Pendleton Police Department activated the SWAT team

and took him down at the motel where he was staying.

Breaking news today at Pendleton.

Police have just made an arrest at a local motel.

They arrested him without incident.

Detectives now have all the suspects in custody.

When they got into court, the suspects, all five of them,

were giddy almost.

They were joking around that they apparently didn't realize

the severity of what they had done.

And it just angered the families of the victims.

It was really, really hard for me for a long time to

hear the details of the crime.

They had no remorse at all.

I know that for a fact.

Everything was a joke.

Apparently, they thought they were going to beat the rap

and everybody was going to get off and eventually go home.

Jason LaMarsh and Ron Willey were convicted of four counts

of second-degree murder, and were both sentenced to

62 years in prison.

For Ricky Vieira, he is on death row right now in San Quentin,

along with Dave Beck and Gerald Cruz.

When you take four people's lives so violently like that,

I don't know what justice would be for a crime like that, to be

honest with you.

I actually told them, I want to be able to forgive you,

but I can never forget what you did to my dad.

After my dad was killed, I had this dream.

And it's um...

...and it was my grandma, his mom,

and all she was saying was, "It's about time you got

here, Franklin. I've been waiting for you."

And so it gave me a lot of comfort to have that dream,

because that dream came to me, and I knew...

...Dad's OK.

He's at peace.

In Cincinnati, we have RiverFest

and it's the biggest event of the year.

They have music. They have fireworks.

When you're on night crew,

you just sit around waiting for death.

They were wasting their time looking at me.

Word was spreaking among people.

Would they be next?

I was afraid to leave my house.

We start off today at a big party

and we end up investigating a murder.