Farmworkers who found bodies testify in Benton County triple homicide trial

Jose Barrera was in his last hour of work checking the irrigation systems in a Benton County cornfield when he came upon an SUV with its back doors open.

The Easterday Farms employee drove up and down the gravel road looking for potential trespassers, and that’s when he spotted two bodies on the private property.

He drove his pickup closer, then got out and walked toward the bodies — stopping about four feet away — before he started calling for help on his work radio and cellphone.

Barrera was one of the first witnesses to take the stand Wednesday in the trial of Francisco J. Resendez Miranda.

Resendez Miranda, 24, of Umatilla, is accused of helping to kill David Perez-Saucedo, Abigail Torres-Renteria and Victoria Torres in the early hours of Aug. 9, 2014.

The victims, all of Pasco, were shot to death.

Attorneys gave opening statements Wednesday, a day after seating a jury of six women and eight men in the Benton County Superior Court case.

Resendez Miranda is charged with three counts of aggravated first-degree murder, including allegations that Torres-Renteria was almost nine months pregnant and that the crime involved several victims.

Prosecutor Andy Miller said the three victims, along with Marco Garcia, drove in Perez-Saucedo’s GMC Yukon to Umatilla on the night of Aug. 8, 2014.

Surveillance video from a Umatilla convenience store taken at 11:30 p.m. shows that while Garcia was inside, Resendez Miranda separated Perez-Saucedo from the women and had his friends drive them to his nearby apartment, Miller said. Hours later, the three were found dead in the cornfield.

A search of Resendez Miranda’s apartment later turned up a shirt hidden in a closet and lab tests confirmed Torres’ blood is on the shirt, Miller said.

Shoe prints found near the bodies reportedly are consistent with the shoes that Resendez Miranda was wearing when arrested Aug. 10, 2014.

Miller told jurors that Resendez Miranda claims he was with his girlfriend for the time period of the fatal shootings, but she is expected to testify they were only together between 10 and 11 p.m, and she didn’t see him again that night.

“The defendant has confessed to four different people in three different conversations that he was indeed involved in the killings of David, Abigail and Victoria,” Miller said. “And we have an additional witness who will testify that he gave a .38 Special to (Resendez Miranda), and he got the gun back from the defendant after the murders with blood on the gun.”

Defense attorney Shane Silverthorn pointed out that his client shared that apartment with his father and two brothers.

Fidel Miranda-Huitron, Eduardo Miranda-Resendiz and Fernando de Jesus Miranda-Resendiz all are wanted for questioning in the case, and are believed to have gone to Mexico.

“Evidence will show one person doesn’t take three people out into a cornfield by one’s self and do all these things that the state of Washington says Francisco did,” Silverthorn said. “Evidence shows it’s not a one-man operation.”

There is no eyewitness testimony that actually places Resendez Miranda in that field, and the jury won’t be able to find beyond a reasonable doubt that his client ever held a gun or a belt and “ended the life” of the three victims, Silverthorn said.

On the witness stand, Barrera said he usually checks each irrigation circle every two to three hours during his 12-hour shift. He last checked the water in that field between 3 and 3:30 a.m. and saw nothing. He passed by again between 5 and 5:30 a.m.

Silverthorn asked if he heard anything that morning, like a gunshot. Barrera said he “hardly heard anything,” as he often listens to the radio while making his rounds and may have had the truck windows up.

Miller questioned if Barrera previously told sheriff’s Detective Lee Cantu that his earlier check on that circle could have been before 3 a.m. Barrera acknowledged telling Cantu he didn’t know the exact time, but testified that he remembers it was between 3 and 3:30 a.m. because he looked at the truck’s clock as he got out.

Barrera said after getting a close-up look at the two victims — later identified as Torres-Renteria, 23, and Perez-Saucedo, 22 — he tried repeatedly to reach his coworkers, even driving to another area for a better signal, before someone finally answered.

Assistant manager Jose Gonzalez testified that he called the farm’s manager and 911 as he joined Barrera at the scene. Gonzalez said it appeared from a distance that one of the victims might be breathing, and a dispatcher asked if he could tell if they were alive, so he got about four feet way from them.

“My answer was that I saw that there was a hole in one of them and that I didn’t want to get any closer,” Gonzalez said through a Spanish-speaking interpreter.

Deputy Brad Klippert said the 911 call came in at 5:49 a.m. and he responded because he was closest to the field near Nine Canyon and Coffin roads.

“It was not an easy scene to find,” Klippert said. A ranch foreman met him and led the patrol car through the gravel roads.

Klippert also said it was difficult for him “to even describe how to get there by radio to other responding officers.”

The body of Torres, 19, was not discovered until later that morning. She reportedly had run away after being shot, then struggled with her attackers until Resendez Miranda put a belt around her neck and “tightened that belt to hurry up the death,” Miller told jurors.

Bertha Alvarez with Easterday Farms’ payroll department told jurors that Resendez Miranda worked on the rural farm for one pay period, from Oct. 16-29, 2013. He was a truck driver during the potato harvest.

Teodora Saucedo also briefly took the stand Wednesday to identify her son’s GMC Yukon and tell jurors she last saw Perez-Saucedo driving it the afternoon of Aug. 8, 2014. “I never was able to see him alive again,” she said through tears.

This story was originally published November 4, 2015 at 9:18 PM with the headline "Farmworkers who found bodies testify in Benton County triple homicide trial."