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By Lee S. Cole
Tony Barrajas was a carpet layer. His work took him all over the upper area of the San Francisco peninsula, and he was frequently seen in his 1981 Ford pickup, carpet rolls and tools in the bed and cab, on jobs in Daly City, Pacifica, South San Francisco, San Bruno, Millbrae and the other small towns and cities lying in the shadow of San Francisco. Sometimes he had to finish a job before he could leave for home, so he would arrive late at his South San Francisco apartment. If he was going to be quite late, he would call his wife, Marjorie, and let her know. Tony liked to drink. He might even be labeled a “heavy drinker,” but he would not drink and drive. A conviction for that offense a few years back had made a believer out of him, so he waited until he was home before he began to consume his daily portion of his favorite Scotch. At age 59, Tony’s life seemed reasonably happy. He had a good job and made decent wages. He and Marjorie, who was 36, had been married for over 6 years and had no debt problems. He was on reasonably good terms with his grown children from a previous marriage and was planning to visit a new grandchild, even though he had voiced his disapproval of the living arrangements of the unmarried parents. The only real problem was Marjorie’s son by a previous marriage. He was 17 and said he hated Tony. His name was Joe, and he and his 15-year-old sister lived with Tony and Marjorie. Joe’s animosity could be attributed to teenage rebellion against a stepfather. It wasn’t pleasant, but no one made a big deal of it.
At about 12:30 in the early afternoon on Friday, November 19, 1982, employees of a rifle range located in a remote area near a winding narrow road south of San Francisco called the police, advising them there was a Ford pickup at the bottom of a canyon near the range. The pickup was miraculously sitting upright on all four wheels after having plunged down the steep embankment from the roadway high above. The first policeman to arrive on the scene took one look in the pickup cab and called for the coroner’s office. Tony was lying dead on the floor of the pickup, his head smashed and bloody. He had not been wearing a seat belt, and authorities concluded that he had suffered his injuries while being flung about the cab after running off the road. He had a blood alcohol reading of 0.11, enough to qualify as legally drunk.
Tony’s movements for the preceding evening were traced. Marjorie said he came home at the usual time. He didn’t drink anything, and between 8:30 and 9:00 pm, he left their apartment to visit his daughter and his new grandchild, who lived a few miles away. He also told Marjorie that he might visit a friend in the same general area and that he might stay all night at his daughter’s place. When he didn’t return the following morning, she became worried and tried to make a missing persons report, but she was told by the police that she would have to wait until 72 hours had elapsed. In the afternoon of November 19, she was notified by the police and coroner’s office that Tony had been in an accident and that he was dead. Tony’s daughter said that he never got to her house the night before. The answer was simple. Tony went to visit a friend; they got to drinking, and by the time Tony decided he had better go home, he was drunk. He ran off the narrow, twisting road on the way home and the crash killed him. The death certificate gave the immediate cause as “subdural and subarachnoid hemorrhage, fractured calvarium, extensive trauma to the head. These injuries were sustained as the result of a highway accident.” Case closed. On November 22, he was buried in the Italian cemetery in Colma.
On February 8, 1983, I received a request from a client insurance company to meet with a young Deputy Fire Marshal in South San Francisco to assist him in examining a 1980 Chevrolet Malibu sedan that he suspected had been deliberately burned. I contacted him by telephone and arranged a meeting for later that day. He told me that he had recently been assigned to the job and that this was his first case involving a burned automobile. When I obtained the policy information from the insurance carrier, I learned that the name of the insured person was Marjorie Barrajas, a name that meant nothing to me at the time. There was no problem in establishing that the fire that had destroyed the car was arson. There was major damage in the passenger interior but very little in the engine compartment. There was no evidence of fuel leakage or electrical malfunction. Mrs. Barrajas had stated the vehicle was stolen from where she parked it on Mission Street in San Francisco. It was located in South San Francisco several hours later, burned. There was no evidence that the door or ignition locks had been forced. The location where the burned vehicle was found proved of interest. It was in the parking lot of a closed meat packing plant. Marjorie Barrajas had once been employed there. Why would a casual thief take the car there to burn it? Since nothing was stripped from it why burn it at all? Was there some connection between the person who stole the car and Mrs. Barrajas? If the car had been locked as she claimed, why were there no signs of forced entry?
These questions and a few more needed answers. We contacted Mrs. Barrajas and found her quite vague and evasive. She admitted that she had filed no report with the San Francisco police and she couldn’t furnish any descriptive information as to where and when the car had been parked on Mission Street. While we pondered the meaning of this turn of events we received a message that increased our suspicions. Mrs. Barrajas was dropping her claim against the insurance company for the theft and burning of her 1980 Chevrolet Malibu. When asked the reason for this action she replied that she didn’t want to cause the insurance company any more trouble. “After all,” she said, “they were so good to me when my husband was killed.” An alarm went off in my brain. “Who was her husband?” and “When and where was he killed?” Something was going tilt and we needed some answers right away.
At this point the insurance company could have taken a release from Marjorie and allowed the claim for the “stolen” and burned car to be dropped. No claim payment, no claim handling and no investigation expenses. An attractive offer with the savings of several thousand dollars. To their everlasting credit, the claims executives of the insurance company decided to push forward with the investigation and find out what was really going on.
We checked for other claims under Tony’s auto insurance policy and found that on October 10, 1982, over one month before his fatal accident, Tony had reported that someone cut all the brake lines on his pickup truck while it was parked outside the apartment. A search of Department of Motor Vehicle records revealed that on November 18, 1982, Marjorie Barrajas applied for a duplicate driver’s license in the name of Marjorie Hernandez. This was on the very date that Tony went for his fatal ride. We learned that at Tony’s funeral, Marjorie was accompanied by a young man named Jose Hernandez, whom she introduced as her nephew. Court records showed that on December 1, 1982, Marjorie had given a general power of attorney to Joe Hernandez to conduct all her affairs. His address was listed as the same as Marjorie’s.
Jose was a small time criminal with an arrest record for auto theft, petty theft and grand theft burglary. He was 23 years old and listed a prior address less than two blocks away from Tony and Marjorie Barrajas. Tony’s daughter told us that she was suspicious of her father’s death and that Jose was Marjorie’s boyfriend, not her nephew. She furthermore said that her father had not told her that he was coming over for a visit on the night of the November18 and that he had called at about 8:30 pm and made some general conversation, saying that he was “just lying on the waterbed watching T.V.” He sounded a little drunk, but there was nothing about the conversation that caused any alarm.
The insurance company’s file on Tony’s fatal accident held even more disturbing information. Marjorie told the adjuster that Tony didn’t come home at all on the night of November 18 but had called her at about 8:45 pm and said he would be stopping off at his daughter’s house. At about 11:00 pm, Marjorie said, she had called the daughter, asking for Tony, but was told that he had not been there. However, Tony’s daughter told us that this was a lie and that Marjorie had made no such call to her. The adjuster’s photographs of the 1981 Ford pickup that Tony was driving showed no interior damage that would have likely occurred when his head struck with such force. A request was made for the Coroner’s report. Photographs showed Tony’s body crammed into the floorboard of the pickup as if he had been shoved in from the right door side. His massive head wound clearly could not have been caused by anything inside the cab. So far Marjorie had been paid $56,000 in insurance settlement money and was due another $40,000. She and Jose bought a new Ford Van and, as neighbors reported, were having “one big party.” Hardly what you could call a grieving widow!
Another interview with Tony’s daughter produced even more suspicious circumstances. She pointed out that her father was lightly clothed and stated that he would not have gone out that way on a rainy night. He was a heavy smoker, but no cigarettes were found on the body. He always carried a pen and pencil in his shirt pocket, but neither one was found on the body.
At this point a very serious problem presented itself. Unlike the tales of television and the movies, the real-life private investigator does not welcome an opportunity to prove the authorities wrong or mistaken in a criminal case. We presented the complete case to a lieutenant of the California Highway Patrol responsible for the investigation of “staged” accidents. He agreed that the fatality was no accident and accompanied us to the police department responsible for the original investigation. We laid out the entire case, along with statements and evidence gathered, before the captain of the investigation division. The case was immediately reopened and two detectives assigned. The Coroner’s office was also persuaded to re-examine their findings in light of new developments. They agreed and soon a new opinion was rendered. Tony Barrajas was not killed in an accidental plunge over a cliff. He was murdered.
Marjorie’s daughter had moved to Texas and was located there by police investigators. After a short interview she agreed to tell the truth. She didn’t take part in her stepfather’s murder, she said, but she had been in the apartment when it happened. Marjorie had put some drugs in Tony’s food. He had some drinks at dinner and then drank some more while he was in bed. He went into a deep sleep and Marjorie called Jose who came over with a friend. Jose and Marjorie’s son Joe went into the bedroom where Tony was asleep and struck him on the head with a baseball bat. They came out into the living room afterwards, thinking they had killed Tony. A few minutes later, however, they heard Tony groan and gasp for breath. They re-entered the bedroom and struck him again with the bat. This time the job was done. Tony was dead.
They carried him out to his pickup truck, his shattered head wrapped in a piece of carpeting. With great effort he was stuffed into his pickup and the door was closed. Joe drove the pickup, straddling the body on the floorboards while Jose and his friend followed in Marjorie’s Malibu. She stayed behind to tidy up the apartment. They arrived at a point on the lonely road where the drop off would be most unobstructed. Lights were turned off. The Malibu was parked, and the pickup was turned sharply toward the roadway edge. The accelerator was pushed and the engine raced. The drive selector was placed in “D” and the truck roared over the edge. Sounds of metal against earth and trees echoed back through the darkness. Satisfied, the three men ran to the Malibu and drove back to South San Francisco. The bloody bedding and the baseball bat were tossed into a convenient dumpster. Mission accomplished. And so to bed.
The skein now unraveled completely as more bits and pieces of evidence fell into place. On April 29, 1983, Marjorie was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. A few weeks later, Jose and Joe met the same fate, as did Jose’s friend.
The trial was held two years later and was highlighted by the defendants’ bitter denunciations of each other and self-serving statements, each claiming to be the dupe of the other. The jury promptly found them all guilty of murder. In June of 1985, Marjorie and Jose were given life terms of imprisonment. Joe was committed to the California Youth Authority. Jose’s friend received lesser punishment because of his testimony.
What did all of this have to do with the 1980 Chevrolet Malibu Marjorie reported stolen and burned? Jose tracked bloody footprints on the carpeting after Tony’s truck had been sent on its journey over the cliff. A few weeks later Jose was arrested for burglary and Marjorie had to bail him out. She was in between payments from Tony’s insurance settlement, so she put the car up for security. Jose jumped bail and Marjorie heard that the bondsman was looking for the car to seize on the bail default. If that happened, she was afraid someone would notice the blood stains in the carpeting. The car was driven over to the old meat packing plant parking lot and burned. Then came the theft claim.
I think about Tony when I drive by the Italian cemetery in Colma. I never knew him in life, only in death; but I came to know him well. Rest in peace, Tony. At least your assassins have not gone unpunished.
Lee S. Cole is the president of Lee S. Cole & Associates in San Anselmo, CA. He can be reached at (800) 828-3550.
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