MERCED, Calif. — When Kathy and her daughter Katrina first saw surveillance images of the man accused of kidnapping and killing four members of a Merced family, they did not immediately recognize him.
Jesus Manuel Salgado, now 48, had aged significantly and Kathy and Katrina weren’t sure if it was the same man who had threatened them with a gun as he robbed them in their dark garage 17 years ago.
But the man’s method seemed eerily similar: terrorize a family on their property at gunpoint and force them to follow his orders under threat of death. Kathy and Katrina survived their ordeal.
“My heart is shattered for this family,” said Katrina, who asked that she and her mother’s last name not be used.
For Katrina and Kathy, the murder of 8-month-old Aroohi Dheri; her mother, Jasleen Kaur, 27; her father, Jasdeep Singh, 36; and her uncle, Amandeep Singh, 39, took them back to the night of Dec. 19, 2005.
Salgado worked for their family’s trucking company, but was fired in 2004 because the family suspected him of stealing money, she and her mother said. Sukhdeep Singh, a brother of Jasdeep and Amandeep, confirmed that Salgado had worked for his brother’s company.
Kathy and Katrina both remembered Salgado as unfailingly polite, if quiet.
“It was always ‘yes, ma’am , no ma’am,’” Kathy recalled.
Katrina remembered mornings when he would come into their house before her father, Wade, drove Salgado to work.
“I never felt scared around him ... He was nice. I never put a fear with his face,” she said.
Katrina was 16 and hanging out with a friend that night when she got a rare call from her father.
“Tell mom to open the door ‘cause I bought a rug,” Wade told her.
She didn’t know that Salgado had sneaked up behind her father as he arrived home and pulled a gun on him.
Salgado held the family at gunpoint, binding up Katrina’s father’s hands with duct tape, she recalled. He rounded up the family as well as Katrina’s friend and took them to the garage, where the family kept a safe stocked with cash and jewelry, they said.
Kathy struggled with the safe’s lock, her fingers trembling as Salgado pointed the gun at her and the rest of her family, she said. Katrina lighted the darkened room with the single light from a phone, she said.
“I was so scared,” Kathy said. “And I expected to hear the shot as soon as it was open.”
The cash and jewels weren’t enough, Salgado even wanted her wedding ring, Kathy said.
“You want my ring?” she asked.
“Yes ma‘am,” he said, his polite voice belying the situation.
Katrina’s father had already recognized his former employee, despite the fact that Salgado was wearing a mask, Katrina recalled.
“Don’t use his name,” he whispered to Kathy.
Salgado led the family to the pool in the backyard and made them jump in as he escaped, Kathy and Katrina recalled. He was caught just a few days later after the family reported him to police.
Salgado was convicted in early 2007 of home invasion robbery with a gun, attempted false imprisonment and witness intimidation, Merced County prosecutors said. He served nearly 10 years in prison before getting paroled in 2015.
“Because of what he did to us, in his mind he had to smarten up. He didn’t get away with it,” Katrina said.
Video surveillance showed that like with Kathy and Katrina’s family, the suspect in the kidnapping held the Singh family at gunpoint, binding the men’s arms but not Jasleen Kaur’s.
The gunman led the family members in groups of two to a car and drove them away, the video showed.
The bodies of Dheri, Kaur and the two Singhs were found by a farmer in Dos Palos on Wednesday.
Salgado was jailed Thursday evening on suspicion of kidnapping and murder.
“Tonight our worst fears have been confirmed,” Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said.
On Friday, Salgado’s brother, Alberto Salgado, was arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy, accessory and destroying evidence in the case.
Family members of the victims have declined to comment to the Los Angeles Times.
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(Times staff writer Marcum reported from Merced, Calif., and Goldberg and Hernandez from Los Angeles.)
