This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
West Valley City resident Eddie Salazar is free after he was acquitted of all charges in a 2015 killing and robbery.
A 3rd District Court jury on March 8 found Salazar, 42, not guilty of murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault.
Salt Lake County prosecutors said Salazar was involved, along with two others, in the July 2015 slaying of Steven Louis Valdez, 63, who was found dead by police in his West Valley City home at 4150 S. Bluejay Street (4985 West).
Salazar's defense attorney, Rudy Bautista, said Tuesday the prosecution's key witness in the case came off as unbelievable after telling inconsistent stories about the night of the killing. Bautista added that there was no physical evidence linking Salazar to the crime scene.
"It was my opinion that Eddie should have never been charged," Bautista said.
Salazar was charged with first-degree felony murder with two others in the case: Arturo Frias-Gonzales, 26, and Bernadette Ramirez, 48.
Frias-Gonzales, who pleaded guilty to lesser second-degree felony counts of obstructing justice and tampering with a witness, was sentenced last month to prison for up to 15 years. Ramirez's case is ongoing.
Police said the threesome shot Valdez in the leg and beat him in an upstairs bedroom. Items including a cellphone and watches were taken from the home, they said. Ramirez told police she had been in an argument with Valdez over stealing her drug customers.
A young woman, Valdez's roommate and niece, was a key witness in the case. She gave varying accounts of the evening to police, according to charging documents.
She first said there had been a home-invasion robbery by a gang of masked men — a story she later said the defendants had told her to give police. Then, she gave a version that implicated the three defendants. That account included seeing the trio in the bedroom with a bloodied Valdez, before the woman fled the home with her infant child.
Bautista said he was able to demonstrate the woman's statements had been inconsistent and unreliable. She testified that Valdez's face had been brutally beaten, for example, and that Salazar had been holding a tire iron in his hand. But that wasn't actually the case, Bautista said: There were only minor injuries on the back of Valdez's head, and they wouldn't have come from a tire iron.
In addition, a tire iron wasn't found, Bautista said, and neither was any other physical evidence linking Salazar to the scene.
A neighbor's testimony also contradicted the woman's account of who left the house later in the evening, Bautista said. The account did not include seeing Salazar.
Salazar denied being there that night, saying he'd been home with his wife. The wife testified he had been home at least until 10 p.m., when she went to bed, though she couldn't say for sure after that, Bautista said.
Salazar spent 14 months in jail awaiting trial, and was released the night after the trial concluded, his attorney said.
"We respect the jury's verdict," Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Blake Hills said, adding that he could not comment further.
Twitter: @lramseth