By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

Search teams who spent the day sifting through garbage at a Pittsburg landfill Friday returned Saturday to seek for a missing Hercules man whose father was among four people murdered in a complex criminal case that also involved a kidnapping and the discovery of a cache of explosives, said Michelle Harrington, Hercules community relations officer.

The landfill search may continue for days for Frederick Sales, 35, who has been missing since Saturday, the same day the body of his murdered father, Ricardo, 73, was found at their home by Hercules Police.

Hercules police, members of the Rodeo-Hercules Fire Department search team, and volunteers from the Community Emergency Response Team tackled about an acre of the 244 acres at Keller Canyon Landfill, 901 Bailey Road, Pittsburg, which is used for trash collecting by Allied Waste.

“Keller Canyon Landfill staff were a great help,” Harrington said Friday. The effort also was aided by employees of the landfill’s subcontractor, Guinn Construction, who supplied both employees and an excavator. “We weren’t just doing this by hand,” Harrington said.

Garbage deposits arriving Friday were kept away from the search area. However, since the company deposits an average of 2,500 tons of waste each day at the site, and can receive as much as 3,500 tons each day, authorities said the search could take days, if not weeks, should Sales’s body have been dumped there.

The search is the latest development in a complicated, multiple-agency case linked by a suspect who died in a blaze of gunfire at the end of a three-county car chase that reached speeds of more than 100 mph.

That suspect is Efren Valdemoro, 38, a former security guard. He was the subject of a $1 million warrant in the bludgeoning murder of Frederick’s father, Ricardo.

Valdemoro was killed Tuesday night by California Highway Patrol after the chase that ended at 99 Ranch Market in Richmond, where Valdemoro threatened troopers with a cleaver before they opened fire. Also found dead in the getaway car was Cindy Tran, 46, Valdemoro’s girlfriend whom he had kidnapped earlier in that day from the Vallejo hair salon where she worked.

Valdemoro had fought with the two Sales men Aug. 22, possibly about their relationship with Tran, and had sworn out a complaint against them with Hercules Police. Called to break up the fight, officers arrived that day at Tran’s home at 1066 Crepe Mytle Drive. Tran rented rooms to Frederick Sales and his father.

Tran told police the two Saleses and Valdemoro were fighting in her room. Police found the elder Sales on top of a nude Valdemoro, who was face down on the floor. The younger Sales was gripping Valdemoro’s right arm and upper body, according to a police report released late Thursday by Hercules Police.

Police ordered the father and son to release Valdemoro, who said he had been asleep when Ricardo Sales had knocked on the bedroom door to talk about a letter Valdemoro had written him, ordering him to stay out of Valdemoro’s relationship with Tran, the report said.

Tran said Ricardo Sales had awakened her and Valdemoro as they slept in her room. When Valdemoro left the room, Ricardo Sales, soon joined by his son, attacked him, she said.

Ricardo Sales told police that when he went to talk to Valdemoro about the letter, Valdemoro attacked Sales, and his son had come to his father’s defense. The two said they were holding Valdemoro until police arrived, because when they would release him, he would keep fighting. Frederick Sales’ statement resembled his father’s, according to the report.

Before police left, Valdemoro signed a complainant’s arrest form for a battery charge against the elder Sales. Police then gave Valdemoro a ride to Creekside Shopping Center. He later told police he also wanted to press charges against the younger Sales. After being allowed to remove his belongings from Tran’s home, Valdemoro was taken to a church in Rodeo.

The two Sales men were reported missing Aug. 28, although Hercules investigators believe Ricardo Sales may have been murdered the previous morning, when neighbors heard loud music coming from Tran’s house. When officers arrived at Tran’s home Aug. 28, they found the elder Sales beaten to death.

Officers decided late Thursday to search the landfill for Frederick Sales after a Cadillac Escalade that Valdemoro previously had been seen driving was found Wednesday afternoon at North Shore Business Park, Hercules.

The car was parked in the vicinity of garbage containers used by a company where Valdemoro had worked as a security guard, Hercules Police said Friday. Trash from the business had been taken Wednesday to the landfill, police said. The business park is less than a mile from Tran’s house.

The Escalade belongs to Charles Rittenhouse, 72, of 111 Upland St., Vallejo, where Valdemoro has lived off and on for about 10 years.

Rittenhouse was found at home Tuesday by Vallejo Police, who had wanted to question him about his wife, Segundina Allen, 67, and her friend, Marcaria Smart, 60, who had last been seen alive Aug. 25.

Found with Rittenhouse was a decomposing corpse in one bedroom, and another buried in a shallow grave in back of the house.

Vallejo Police confirmed Friday that the bodies were those of the missing women. However, Sgt. Sid DeJesus said his department was declining to say which woman’s body had been in the home and which one had been buried outside.

In addition to the bodies, officers discovered a large quantity of chemicals at the home.

More were found at a storage unit Rittenhouse was renting. Some of the containers were labeled depleted uranium. Walnut Creek Police’s bomb squad and the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms were called to handle the chemicals.

Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with charges of illegal possession of explosives and manufacturing, importing, selling or transporting ammunition designed to penetrate metal or armor.

He pleaded innocent to those charges in court Thursday, in a move DeJesus said was not surprising. Rittenhouse remains in Solano County Jail, Fairfield, on $2,025,000 bond.

Vallejo Police have since said Rittenhouse is a “person of interest” in the death of the two women.

DeJesus clarified the term Friday. “He’s a person of interest because of the relationship. He was married to one of the victims. We believe he can help us,” he said. “We hope we can establish a rapport with him so we can work together.”

Rittenhouse has been employed at a Fairfield-based aerospace company. Representatives have told police the chemicals did not come from their firm.

Neither Vallejo Police nor ATF agents would describe what use the discovered chemicals might have. Homes in the area were evacuated, some until Wednesday, while the chemicals were removed.

Street was last seen by her husband, Joe Street, Aug. 25 when she drove her Pontiac to visit Allen. When the two first were reported missing by their husbands, Vallejo police initially thought they had taken the Escalade, possibly on a trip to one of the area casinos they would frequent. Street’s car later was found in Vallejo.