letters from a purported killer. plus a diagram of what s certainly looked like the actual bomb that killed roberto ayala. was it real, a ruse, a lucky guess? if it was real, who sent? it was it from the lead suspect, peter moore or a hitman as the letter claimed? or was it from somebody who is not even on david salm s radar? whoever it was, five weeks in and it was the only lead investigators had. so they played along with the guy, played an ad, as requested, in the sacramento bee . and sure enough, somebody responded. cops rushed to see him, perhaps arrest him. he was pretty surprised when he got a visit. false alarm, it was just an unlucky guy looking for a job. the killer though? the killer never called. so the whole ms-13 thing, was just a game. the real bomb was playing this
that letter was the real thing. weird. all too weird. we detective david salm and the others went home for the weekend to digest what they had read and seen. and then monday morning the phone of david salm rang. we he said we have another one of those letters. i came to work, a second letter sitting on my desk. this one was a slightly smaller. a half sized manila envelope. but configured the same way, label maker, no address, ayala case. and way too much postage. what was inside? a diagram of a bomb. coming up. invitation from a killer. the letter said if you have any questions, place an ad in the sacramento bee . make sure its the last ad. and another victim in the crosshairs? we were thinking keeping that stuff confidential was important. but a man s life may be in
it was pretty light, so is way too much postage. because inside was just a single sheet of paper, an open letter to the cops. what did that letter say? it was claiming responsibility for the bombing. the letter, full of misspellings a bad grammar, had been written on the label maker and photocopied. its author claimed to be a military trained contract killer who had been hired to kill roberto ayala over a mexico deal gone wrong. and it was ms-13 behind it. what is ms-13? it s a violent el salvadoran criminal street gang. and roberto ayala was supposed to be a target of this group? the letter implied that roberto ayala had messed with a drug cartel and that ms-13 had been contracted.
the author of the letter taunted the detectives, writing that lab results will find military grade powder but no dna. which is true so far. but the point of the letter wrote that its author was a warning. roberto s brother, eduardo, was next on the hit list. the writer said he had turned down the job to kill eduardo, but a second assassin would soon be on the way. did you think it was a hoax or real? i didn t know what to think. i had never seen anything like that before, except something similar on tv. the one thing about that strange letter was all too obvious. whoever wrote it had inside knowledge. because nobody, besides the cops, new with the atf had discovered. we didn t tell anyone it was a bomb, so for someone to write a letter, claiming responsibility for a bombing, that landed some credence to the fact that the author of
a nine volt battery that we were able to determine had no business being in the panel. so if you found the writer of those letters you had found the killer? that was our opinion, yes. along with a diagram was a second letter, in which the bomber repeated his earlier claim that he was a reluctant assassin. after a career of killing, he wrote, i want to save a life before i take my life. the bomber repeated his warning, roberto ayala s brother eduardo was next. the whole ayala family was in danger. he said i want to make sure you get this letter to help these guys. so it was designed to do something, i don t want to happen, i want you guys to