This story is about the interests of justice in Maricopa County, about the kind of man they protect, and the kind of man they don't. If I were a country balladeer, I'd call this tale "The Pistol Whippin' Rancher From Cave Creek." That would be Tom Rose, 53, an ex-cop from Kansas who likes to talk about the time he shot a man in the line of duty.
Adan Salcido's mug shot, taken after he was booked for assaulting Tom and Helen Rose.
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That was many years ago, back when Rose had a gun and a badge. Now he has a gun and a ranch -- Ponda Rose's Ranch, a well-kept, three-acre spread on Lone Mountain Road. It was there, on February 5, 1999, that Tom Rose began to put the interests of justice to the test. That was the day he pistol-whipped and tied up a ranch hand named Adan Salcido, a "damned Mexican sexual fetishist," says Rose, who dared lay hands on Rose's wife and got what was coming to him.
Salcido, 27, had worked as a horse wrangler on Rose's ranch for about a month when it happened, and it happened like this (unless noted otherwise, all information from here forward is taken directly from investigative reports of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office):
It was half past noon. Salcido was eating his lunch in a golf cart parked next to the Ponda Rose's guest house when he saw Helen Rose, Tom's wife of 25 years, walking toward the entrance to the guest house, carrying a bottle of wine (the wine was for her aunt and uncle, who were arriving later that day to spend their 50th wedding anniversary on the ranch). Salcido told investigators that he had thought for some time that Mrs. Rose was interested in him romantically, and got the wrong idea from the bottle of wine.
In any case, Salcido asked Mrs. Rose if he could accompany her inside the guest house. She said yes, unlocked the door, and went inside, with Salcido behind her.
Exactly what happened inside the guest house is known only to Adan Salcido and Helen Rose. What we know is this: A short time later -- maybe a minute -- Helen Rose ran out of the guest house in a fright and locked herself inside the ranch's office, 100 feet away. Salcido was a few steps behind her, yelling, in fractured English, "I sorry. Please, don't tell anyone!"
But Mrs. Rose did tell anyone, and probably just the anyone Salcido didn't want her to tell: Mr. Rose, who was southbound on Scottsdale Road near the Thunderbird Road intersection when his wife called him on his mobile phone. She was crying, her husband later told investigators, and kept saying, "Adan tried to get me inside the guest house."
At this point, it's important to note what ex-cop Tom Rose did not do. He did not tell his wife to hang up and call the police. He did not switch lines and call the police himself. Instead, he wheeled his truck around and drove like hell back to his ranch, 20 miles to the north.
In the meantime, Salcido knocked on the window of the office and pleaded through the glass, "I sorry. I quit, I go back to Mexico."
An immediate departure would have been a smart move on a day when Salcido had already made a stupid one, because if you're in a closed space with another man's wife, or any woman, and she flees that space crying and afraid, chances are you've made a stupid move, illegal or not.
Instead of leaving, though, he just hung around outside the office, hoping Helen Rose would come out so he could smooth things over.
Salcido's second stupid move of the day nearly got him killed. And now, a year later, may put him in prison.
There are so many conflicting versions of what happened when Tom Rose arrived at the ranch, most of them told by Tom Rose, that I'm going to leap ahead to the neutral observations of Detective Matt Simon of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, the first officer to arrive on the scene after Helen Rose called 911 at 1:36 p.m., nearly an hour after she ran out of the guest house.
According to Simon's report, as soon as he pulled into the Ponda Rose's driveway, he was met by Tom Rose, who told the deputy a ranch hand had just tried to rape his wife. Rose led Simon to the garage, where the deputy found Salcido lying on the floor, his hands and feet bound with plastic cables, bleeding from a gash in the back of his head.
Deputy Simon asked Tom Rose how the man on the floor had gotten his head busted. Rose told him he and Salcido had gotten into a fight, and Salcido had hit his head on the floor.
"He's lucky he didn't get shot," Rose told the deputy.
Naturally, Simon asked Rose if a gun had been involved. Curiously, Rose said no. He said he was a retired police officer, but he no longer owned a gun.
Detective Simon untied Salcido, handcuffed him, and locked Salcido in the back of his patrol car.
