Marrying Evil : The True Story of Rebecca Salcedo

By Pete Dove

Bruce Cleland was smitten when he first saw Rebecca Salcedo. The sexy Latina cook was mixing up spices at the local swap meet and he couldn't believe his eyes. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen...But in him, she only saw dollar signs. The two would marry and Bruce would shower his high-maintenance bride with extravagant gifts and vacations, even including a breast augmentation. Salcedo, on the other hand, would cheat on her dutiful husband with men...and women...Salcedo soon grew tired of Bruce's devotion and wanted out...but not without some compensation. Forging his signature as well as tallying up his assets, she figured she could get over one million dollars upon his death...but could she get away with murder?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201998905

Book preview

MARRYING EVIL

THE TRUE STORY OF REBECCA SALCEDO

PETE DOVE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MARRYING EVIL

TEXARKANA MOONLIGHT MURDERS

THE WOLF FAMILY MASSACRE

THE JUST DO IT KILLER

THE RAILROAD KILLER

ROSEMARY WEST’S HOUSE OF HORRORS

The Cost of Wanton Ambition

The 911 call came in during the early hours of the morning.  Another quickly followed. 

‘There were some gunshots outside my house, now there’s a car there, it’s just parked there.  I think they were shooting at the car and the car’s not moving at all.’  Then,

‘We’ve been hearing some gun shots.  There’s a guy laid out on my driveway.’

The residents of Boyle Heights were used to encountering violence.  Even on the quiet residential street known as Concorde, set below a freeway in Eastern Los Angeles.  After all, at the time some estimates suggested one in ten of its 100000 population had an association to a gang.  The region used to be ethnically diverse, but by the turn of the century nineteen out of every twenty residents came from Latino heritage.  This population was young, with an average age of just twenty-five.  Opportunities were limited and money short.

Bruce Cleland was not a usual visitor to Boyle Heights. When he was shot twice in the back, and then in the head, he was many miles from the route he had planned to take.  As life ebbed away, lying in a foetal position nearby was his estranged wife, Rebecca. 

She was a woman with ambition.  If her husband was used to wealthier climes, she had been born and bred in East Los Angeles.  And grew up determined to get away.  But for now, it appeared, she had been knocked unconscious in an unprovoked attack, one which led to the death of her husband.  Fortunately, remarkably, strangely, she recovered from her injuries with remarkable speed.

Tom Herman is a retired detective from the Los Angeles Police Department. He told of the hazy story to emerge in the chaotic aftermath of the vicious attack.

‘She had noticed a red light on the dash,’ according to the account Rebecca gave him, ‘indicating that the rear hatch was open.  She had gotten out to close the tailgate and at which time she was knocked unconscious.’

‘Rebecca claims that the next thing she remembered; she woke up on the ground.  Her husband Bruce was lying dead a few feet away from her,’ recalled Craig Hum, a lawyer with the Los Angeles DA’s office. 

As blue lights flashed on the access ramp to the freeway a crowd began to gather from the houses nearby.  As used to crime as the residents of Beswick and Concord Streets might be, the sight of a middle-aged man dead on a nearby driveway was still enough to cause shockwaves. 

A witness spoke to Detective Hum.  ‘What she had seen was a male Hispanic running down the East side of Concorde, about five eight, stocky build.  He had short hair and was wearing dark clothing,’ recalls the former officer.  ‘She lost sight of him as he reached the corner, and then she heard a car door slam then a car speed off.’

A failed carjacking?  That was certainly the impression the protagonists wished to create.

Bruce and Rebecca had met at a Swap Meet where the younger woman was selling spices.  Bruce was immediately smitten.  He was not the first.

Rebecca had grown up in one of the poorer districts of Los Angeles, on the Eastern fringes.  She was, though, a woman determined to leave her impoverished roots behind.  Right from an early age, she made it her intention to move upwards socially and geographically.  Rebecca was a woman with ambition.

Nothing wrong with that.  Indeed, it is an attribute to admire.  Perhaps, though the method she employed to satisfy that erstwhile ambition was less admirable.  For Rebecca, there was no intention to take the long road, to get an education, pursue a career and gradually see herself established in the higher echelons of Los Angeles society.

Such an approach was far too long-winded, and far too filled with opportunities for things to go wrong.  No, Rebecca wanted to improve her lot, but quickly.  She weighed up her attributes and decided that the ones to best deliver her desired intent were her dark-haired good looks combined with her effervescent personality.

She discovered from an early age that this combination produced an impressive degree of interest from many men.  Including, most importantly, those of means.  Rebecca decided that the quickest and easiest route to leave East Los Angeles behind lay in capturing a wealthy husband. 

‘She was always kind of flirty,’ remembers Rebecca’s friend Bertha Awana.  ‘She wore very low cut, revealing clothes.  Her hair was just out there, and she was just very, very sexy.’

By contrast there was Bruce.  His background was markedly different to that of his soon to be wife.  He grew up in South Pasadena, a wealthy part of the city where education and a good career were highly valued in a person. 

Bruce grew to be a shy, somewhat gawky looking man.  A receding hairline cut in a style which tried to compensate by sitting too long on his head was set off by a hanging jaw.  Social gatherings did not come easy to the young man.  And nor did relations with the opposite sex.  The urge was there, but the confidence to act on that, to speak with eligible women and ask them out was distinctly lacking.

In fact, it seems likely that by the time he met Rebecca at the Swap Meet, he was still waiting for his first serious, or even gentle, relationship.  It was a situation upon which she seized with remarkable perspicacity and skill. 

‘He was real close to his parents, he spent every weekend with his parents,’ recalls Bruce’s brother in law Ed Brown.  But whatever he lacked in social confidence he made up for with career success.  A Stanford graduate, Bruce soon found a position as a highly paid and well-respected software engineer.  Despite the financial rewards offered by such a career, Bruce lived a simple life.  He survived frugally and eschewed the material benefits his salary could easily have provided. 

Which was not the kind of life Rebecca wished to enjoy.  Her confidence, interest and attention worked its wicked magic on Bruce. In her company he became less tongue tied, and more out-going.  Had her intentions been as pure as he suspected such behaviour as she showed would have been praiseworthy indeed.  But, as we shall see, Rebecca’s aim was not to fall in love, or bring confidence to a shy and retiring man.  If these occurred, they were a mere by product of her intentions to ensure the couple’s relationship would develop in a direction which satisfied her own greedy needs.

Bruce was infatuated.  Otherwise, he might have picked up the signals on their very first date.  He arrived for that in his old, rented car and his new girlfriend looked, shook her head and promptly turned tail, telling him to get himself a new vehicle if he wished to be seen about with her.

It was a risky strategy; many men would have driven away with a sigh of relief that they had spotted a gold digger before she could do any damage. But Rebecca was nothing if not a skilful operator.  She instinctively knew that she had Bruce on a leash.  Like a well-trained dog, he would submit to her commands however bizarre they might be.

He set off for the show room with immediate effect and returned behind the wheel of a flashy convertible.  Bruce was hooked.  And Rebecca knew it.  She exploited her position for all it was worth, receiving expensive gifts and jewellery from a man completely besotted by her.  Trips to Hawaii and Australia soon followed.  But the love struck far from young man was given another indication that his new (and first) girlfriend of any note might not be quite as reciprocal in their relationship as he hoped.  Although we are talking about the 1990s, a time of reasonable permissiveness by American standards, sex was definitely a no-go area.  Yes, she would accept gifts and money, attention and fine dining.  But any physical advances were strictly off limits.

That was a condition, though, by which Bruce was quite happy to live.  In many ways, were there not some ulterior motive behind the relationship on the part of Rebecca, such a liaison might be seen as sweet.  An older man and a younger woman who were simply happy in each other’s company, without the need to confirm their love with a physical act.  But, as hindsight tells us, the relationship was simply a means to an end for the female half, a chance for money and luxuries to improve