Human Wreckage True Crime

Survival of Carmina Salcido

• Thomas W

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On a quiet spring morning in April of nineteen eighty nine, the sleepy vineyards of Sonoma County, California were interrupted by something so horrifying, so out of place that even seasoned law enforcement officers would say later they had never seen anything like it. Seven people were dead. Among them, a young mother, her two daughters, and her own mother and sisters. The killer? A man they all knew Ramon Salcito. Husband. Father. Employee at a local winery. A man whose rage turned deadly in the span of a single morning. Seven victims. Angela Salcito, 24, wife of Ramon Salcito. Sofia Salcito, four, daughter of Angela Salcito. Carmena Salcito, three, daughter of Angela Salcito, survived. Teresa Salcito, one, daughter of Angela Salcito. Marion Luise Richards, 47, mother of Angela Salcito. Ruth Richards, 12, daughter of Marion Richards. Maria Richards, eight, daughter of Marian Richards. Tracy Tuvey, thirty-five, winemaster at Grand Crew Winery. But in the wreckage he left behind, someone was still breathing, a three year old girl. Her name was Carmina. She had been left for dead in a remote ravine, her throat cut, her tiny body surrounded by the lifeless forms of her sisters. She had lain there for over a day alone, bleeding, silent, and yet somehow alive. This is human wreckage, and I'm your host, Thomas. Carmina was too young to remember the full extent of the massacre that nearly claimed her entire family. But memory has its ways of coming back in pieces, in nightmares, in fragments you don't always understand until you're older. And as Carmena grew, so did her questions. Who was her father? Why had he done it? Because survival is not just escaping death, it's learning how to live again in its shadow. This is human wreckage, the survival of Carmen Salcito. Stay with us. Ramon bullied and controlled Angela, and she was just about gaining the strength and independence to leave him. Moreover, Angela had just recently found out that Ramon had a second wife with whom he had a baby with. While Ramon and his first wife had separated, they never actually got a divorce, and now she had tracked him down and obtained a court order forcing him to pay her$511 a month in addition to$5,807 to the Social Service Department of Fresno County to repay sums turned over by that agency to her. Ramon was also angry by the fact that Angela had recently been approached by two modeling agencies who felt as though she could have a lucrative career in television commercials. Ramon was furious at the thought of his wife straying from home and having her own successful career. He became so jealous that Angela was forbidden from even going grocery shopping alone, and he came home from work several times throughout the day to check on her. Unable to come to terms with the seeds that he'd sown, Ramon did the unthinkable. On the 14th of April, 1989, after spending the night snorting cocaine and drinking, Ramon drove his three daughters to a dump on Stage Gulch Road. Once here, he placed his daughters over his knee and slit their throats one by one. He then tossed them into the brush. Afterwards he drove to his in-law's home in Kotati where he sat outside and waited for his father-in-law, Bob Richards, to leave home for work as a United Parcels service driver. Ramon then knocked on the front door and told his mother-in-law, Marion Richards, that he needed to borrow a tool. When Marion turned back into the house to retrieve the tool, Ramon knocked her to the ground with a blow to the head. He forced his way inside and closed the door behind him before stabbing Marion to death and then turning on her daughters. Both twelve year old Ruth and eight-year-old Maria were stabbed to death. Before leaving, Ramon placed a call to his wife Angela. When Angela confirmed that she was at home, Ramon stole a pistol from the Richards household and climbed back into his car. From here, Ramon drove to the family's home at Boys Hot Springs and shot Angela four times, killing her. There was evidence in the home that Angela had fought desperately for her life and a struggle ensued throughout several rooms. Afterwards, Ramon drove to Grand Crew Winery and lay in wait for Tracy Tuby, a married father of two children, including a newborn baby boy. When Tracy appeared, Ramon flashed his lights, signaling for Tracy to stop. When Stacy stopped, Ramon approached the car and shot Tracy in the head, killing him instantly. Ramon then drove to the Kenwood home of Ken Buddy, who was the supervisor at Grand Crew. He aimed his pistol and fired. Thankfully, he missed any of Ken's vital organs and shot him once in the shoulder. Ramon then aimed at Ken's wife, Terry, and pulled the trigger. However, the gun jammed and Ramon left. When police arrived at the scene, Ken identified Ramon as the shooter and said he had no idea why he had tried to kill him and his wife. At one point, Ramon had been a valued employee, and he had no issues with him. With a name, police set out trying to track Ramon down. Soon enough, the majority of the bodies were soon discovered. However, Ramon's three daughters were still missing. The entire town clung on to hope that they were okay and Ramon had simply run away with them. The following day, however, they would soon come to discover that this wasn't true. A young man was walking along the edge of a quarry bordering the dump and came across a gruesome scene. Three young girls lying motionless and surrounded in blood. He rushed to the quarry supervisor's office and called the police. When police arrived at the scene, both Sophia and Teresa were dead, but miraculously, Carmina was still clinging to life despite the fact that her throat had been slit from ear to ear. She was rushed to the hospital where she told staff, Daddy cut me. Dr. Dennis McCullod said that Carmina had managed to survive because she had been sitting up for almost thirty hours, and that had prevented her from choking to death on her own blood. Her larynx had almost been severed and the base of her tongue was torn in the slashing. One of her fingers had been sliced almost to the tendon, presumably from Carmina attempting to protect herself from her father. An autopsy concluded that the girls had all been molested before having their throats slit. Following the murders, Ramon fled to Mexico via Coleccio. He made his way to his hometown where his relatives turned him into police. As officers flew out to bring him back, officials at the Sonoma County Jail were worried that he would be killed due to his brutal crime. The inmates were so touched by the crime in fact that they mustered eight hundred dollars to donate towards a trust fund for Carmina. There were inmates who had maybe one to five dollars for buying cigarettes or toiletries, and they pledged every bit of it, said Reverend Robert Guttelbin, a former jail chaplain. After his arrest, he thanked the man who discovered his daughters and displayed concern over the custody of Carmina. Young Carmena underwent a tracheostomy and a tube had to be inserted into her windpipe to ease her breathing until the wound healed. She was adopted by a couple who were friends with her grandfather, Robert Richards. As an adult, she wrote a book about her survival titled Not Lost Forever. Ramon Salcito was found guilty of six counts of first degree murder, one count of second degree murder, and two counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to death and is currently on death row in San Quentin State Prison. Carmina Salcito was just three years old when the world she knew was destroyed. She was left in a ravine with her throat slashed, surrounded by death, discarded by the very person who was supposed to protect her, her father. But she didn't die. Somehow, against all odds, she lived, and her survival was only the beginning. For most of us, the word survivor suggests strength, triumph, a kind of victory. But as we've seen today, surviving a tragedy like this is not the end of a story. It's the start of a long, difficult, often lonely journey. One where the real wounds aren't always physical, where the battle is ongoing and sometimes invisible. Carmina grew up in the shadow of the violence that took her family. She was raised by strangers, lived with the questions, the whispers, the weight of being the girl who survived one of the worst family massacres in California history. For years she didn't know the full truth, but as she began to piece together the fragments of her past, she also began to reclaim her future. She changed her name. Then she changed it back. She confronted the legacy of her father. She visited him in prison. She demanded answers, and when he gave none, she found her own voice instead. Her story is not one of easy redemption or perfect healing. It's a story of scars both visible and hidden and the strength it takes to carry them every day. It's about growing up inside a narrative you didn't choose and still choosing to write your own ending. We often talk about resilience as something almost magical, as if some people are just born stronger. But what Carmena's life shows us is that resilience isn't magic. It's messy, it's painful. It's forged in moments of silence, in nights spent crying alone, in the decision to keep going when you have every reason not to. Today, Carmina Salcito is not just a survivor. She is a mother, a writer, a speaker, a woman who has spent her life searching for meaning in the wreckage and who, against all odds, continues to rise from it. We want to thank you for joining us for this episode of Human Wreckage. Stories like Carmena's remind us of the fragility of life and also its fierce, stubborn will to endure. They force us to look at the darkest parts of human nature, but also the light that sometimes refuses to be extinguished. If you or someone you know is living with the effects of trauma, you're not alone. Resources and support are available, and we've included links in the show notes. I'm Thomas, and this has been Human Wreckage. Until next time, stay safe, stay human, and remember in even the most broken places, survival is still possible.