Salinas Police suspected a killer from the start, but it took nine years to make an arrest.

On Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008, two men five miles apart were shot and left lying in their own blood.

The first, Roberto Cervantes, age 55 and a father of five, was shot outside his West Alisal Street home across from Hartnell College. He died hours later in a hospital.

The second man, Adrian Carranza, 24, was shot 90 minutes later, on the 2100 block of Perez Street. A teen boy who was with Carranza was injured and survived, and a woman with them escaped uninjured. Carranza died three days later in a hospital.

Early on, police suspected Carranza was shot by Roberto’s son, Juan Antonio Cervantes, who at the time was just shy of his 20th birthday. Salinas Police won’t confirm many details about the case today, but in May 2009, Sgt. Don Cline told the Monterey County Herald that Carranza’s homicide was considered retaliation for Roberto’s death.

“I’m sure that’s what we suspected at the time,” says a now-retired Cline, declining to elaborate further.

Even with those suspicions in mind, when Cervantes was arrested seven months after the murder, on April 8, 2009, it was not for murder but for gun possession. A month later, the new police chief Louis Fetherolf touted that arrest, among others, at a press conference lauding members of the public for coming forward with information.

“Cervantes is the primary suspect in one gang-related homicide and is being investigated for other homicides and shootings as well,” he told reporters. The guns confiscated during the arrest, he said, were “directly tied to homicides in Salinas.”

Four months later, on Sept. 9, 2009, Cervantes entered a plea of no contest to felony possession of a firearm, and admitted to a gang-related charge.

He was sentenced to four years and four months in prison, but placed on probation. His probation was revoked a few months later, after he was arrested for hanging out with a gang member.

It would take eight more years – during which Cervantez had multiple interactions with law enforcement, including another arrest, conviction and time in prison on domestic violence charges – until Cervantes was arrested for the murder of Carranza and the attempted murders of the teen and the woman who were with him.

Salinas Police report that two officers spotted him on July 30, in an Oldtown restaurant. He was arrested without a struggle and booked into Monterey County Jail on charges of premeditated murder and attempted murder.

Police and Monterey County District Attorney’s Office representatives won’t say what changed in the nine years between the murder and arrest, but it’s a rare break in a cold case.

Former Salinas police chief Kelly McMillin theorizes some evidence came forward after all these years. He declined to comment about Cervantes’ case specifically, but says in cases like this, breaks include DNA testing, informants or cell mates trading information, or ex-girlfriends willing to talk.

And just because a suspect is in contact with law enforcement – and suspected of a crime – they need enough evidence before they can make an arrest. “There are a lot of ‘unsolved’ murders out there and we know who did it,” McMillin says. Those cases gnaw at detectives, he adds: “It’s an exercise in frustration and in patience.”