Atwater man charged with two homicides is a ‘sick and twisted killer,’ prosecutors say

An Atwater man accused of stabbing another to death did so out of anger in a drug-fueled encounter in which the victim threatened the life of the stabber, his defense attorney said Thursday.

Dionicio Gutierrez-Salazar, 38, has pleaded not guilty to the charges of murder in the deaths of Carlos Herrera and Ramon Jimenez, two men killed in unrelated incidents more than two years apart.

The defendant’s court-appointed defense attorney, Katherine Hart, said Herrera had been using methamphetamine the day he died, according to the Merced County Coroner. All four men in the room on the day of the stabbing had been drinking, she said.

Gutierrez-Salazar stabbed the 36-year-old Herrera in the chest, back, neck and eyes on Sept. 5, 2015, according to the coroner’s office. Two other men were in the Atwater home at the time.

Herrera, who was also called “Chihuahua,” was quoted by witnesses as saying, “I could kill you” and “Do you want to Die?” He also waved a knife, Hart said, asking the jury to convict her client of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter verdict rather than murder.

Herrera had also “rushed” Gutierrez-Salazar at some point during the day, the defense argued, and made sexually-aggressive threats about the defendant’s two teenaged daughters.

“That is the biggest ingredient to this case,” his attorney said. “The attack on my client, (according to) all the evidence, was unprovoked.”

The second man Gutierrez-Salazar is accused of killing, Jimenez, 71, was shot once in the head during an alleged home-invasion robbery on Feb. 19, 2013, at his home in the 19000 block of Lombardy Avenue in Ballico.

The defense did not dispute that Gutierrez-Salazar was at the Ballico home, but said he did not commit robbery or the shooting. The defense called into question the testimony of Rogaciano Munoz, who accompanied the defendant and a third man on the day of the shooting and testified for the prosecution.

Munoz admitted to using fake names, selling drugs and buying fake IDs, the defense noted, saying his testimony was not trustworthy. Munoz was going by “Emiliano Ruiz” when he was approached by police about five months later, according to the defense.

Travis Colby, Merced County deputy district attorney, repeatedly referred to Gutierrez-Salazar as a “cold-blooded killer,” showing “trophy photos” from the defendant’s phone taken just after the stabbing. In one photo, the defendant is crouching over the bloody body of Herrera, and the other shows him lying next to the body.

“The picture really is worth a thousand words,” Colby said. “The fact that the defendant wanted these photos taken ... tells you this is nothing but first-degree murder.”

Herrera, who was struck in the head with a toy car, was already on the ground by the time Gutierrez-Salazar crossed the room to get a knife and struck the first wound to the victim’s rib cage, according to testimony.

The defendant, in both incidents, shouted out the names of cartel gangs he’s associated with, according to prosecutors. Gutierrez-Salazar was also singing as he left the Ballico home, according to Nicole Silveira, the supervising deputy district attorney.

“Only a sick and twisted killer would do something like that,” she said.

Alexis Eduardo Garcia-Jimenez, 20, and Francisco Alvarez, 25, accepted plea agreements from the Merced County District Attorney’s Office in relation to the Atwater incident and were given credit for time served in custody.

Munoz too has accepted an agreement. The third man from the Ballico incident has never been apprehended.

The jury began deliberations on Thursday, and are expected to continue on Friday.

This story was originally published June 2, 2017 at 6:32 AM with the headline "Atwater man charged with two homicides is a ‘sick and twisted killer,’ prosecutors say."