California IN BRIEF : REDWOOD CITY : Supervisor Abused Salcido, Court Told

Ramon Salcido was a friendly, diligent worker who put up with repeated verbal abuse from a supervisor at the Grand Cru Winery until just weeks before he killed seven people, co-workers testified. In the first day of defense questioning, witnesses recalled Salcido sometimes cooking Mexican dishes for co-workers, but they also recalled deep resentments that grew out of months of verbal harassment. In the weeks before he killed seven people in a nighttime rampage through the wine country, Salcido’s work performance suddenly dropped, Grand Cru officials testified. Defense attorneys, who conceded that Salcido committed the slayings, want to show that Salcido was in the grips of a cocaine-driven frenzy when he killed his wife, two daughters and a winery co-worker.