Sara Rubin here, thinking about some of the limitations in how news organizations cover crime. There’s often very little information publicly released while investigations are underway. Some incidents happen in the middle of the night, and the scene is already cleared by the time reporters wake up. And while we make an effort to contact an alleged suspect or victim, they are often unreachable, meaning we have information from just one perspective—often that of an investigating agency—that tells just a piece of a more layered story.
I was surprised to learn from retired Assistant Salinas Police Chief John C. Murray that police also encounter difficulty in locating information about a victim. After Sergio Carcamo was shot and killed at close range in a front yard in 2018, detectives canvassed the neighborhood and found that nobody could say who the man was or where he lived.
Eventually, people started talking to police about Carcamo, although the migrant worker was renting a room only temporarily; they believed he was in his 40s (he turned out to be 37) and he was just minding his own business, trying to earn a living working in agriculture when he was murdered.
It’s a chilling story for many reasons, including the seeming anonymity of a person. Murray is the guest contributor of this week’s cover story, which revisits Salinas PD investigations into so-called “Murder Squad” killings, in which shooters allegedly targeted people like Carcamo—migrant workers who were less likely to have family members locally, and were unlikely to be armed.
Murray is revisiting this chapter in Salinas’ history because it has been a decade since Vice News labeled Salinas the “Youth Murder Capital of California,” putting an unwelcome banner on a violent chapter.
Murray’s story about Operation Redrum provides insight from the police perspective into how officers worked to connect the dots between brutal killings, eventually leading to indictments of seven suspects. It’s a deeper look into how the investigation unfolded than has been previously offered up publicly, with many court documents filed confidentially, under seal, and police reluctant to provide details about cases that are still pending.
Reporters usually get just a few minutes at press conferences to ask questions of federal officers, and then they stop talking, letting the justice system quietly play out. Murray’s cover story in this week’s edition of the Weekly helps connect those various announcements and indictments, showing the work that was done to build these cases—and more importantly, documents how it helped shape a safer Salinas for all of us.