June 14, 2024 • 51 mins
If you’re intrigued by the darker side of vacation tales, tune into Slaycation. The show navigates through the sinister underbelly of travel, making you question whether your next getaway might be more dangerous than you think.
This episode of Slaycation: "My Big Fat Greek Murder" first ran in back in April. If you enjoy this episode, listen to Slaycation wherever you get this podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, I'd like to introduce you to a new
podcast that I know you're gonna love. Do you like
to travel, Do you like picturesque locations and getting away
from it all? Well, this new podcast has that and murder.
It's called Slaycation, and it's a darkly humorous look at
(00:21):
murders and mysterious deaths that took place on vacation. Hosted
by a true crime fanatic, her comedy writer husband, and
his TV producing partner, Slaycation brings a unique perspective to chilling, thrilling,
and WTF stories stories of vacations that go horribly wrong.
(00:44):
There's the twisted tale of Harold and Tony, whose romantic
anniversary in the Rocky Mountains ended with one of them
falling off a cliff. To Angelica and Vincent, to recently
engaged lovebirds whose huts and valley kayaking adventure ended underwater.
(01:04):
Each episode of Slaycation will have you asking.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Accident or murder.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
But it's not just the stories that'll intrigue you. It's
the discussion between a long time married couple of business
partners who happen to be Emmy nominated TV producers. Each
episode of Slacation also includes humor takeaway and travel tips
that will keep your next vacation from being your last.
(01:31):
If you're ready to pack your body bags. Slacation is
available on all major podcast platforms. Search for Slacation on
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
This is a series investigating some of the difficult things
that happen to the people who live and work inside
California's prisons. So we wanted to give you a heads
up that this episode touches on intense topics including substance use,
state violence, and self harm. If you need support, we've
got links to resources in the episode description. The story
(02:08):
begins with a death that is intense and upsetting.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
I park my car and I walk in the house
and he's not on the couch.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
On October twenty first, twenty twenty, Mimi Rodriguez came home
from having dinner with her friends and called out to
her husband, Valentino Rodriguez.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Soy Cale, val val where are you?
Speaker 6 (02:36):
And all the lights are hun in the house.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
And I go into the kitchen. He's not in the kitchen.
Speaker 6 (02:42):
So I'm going into our bedroom and he's not in
our bedroom, and I knew something was wrong, and I go, valvow,
where are you? And I run into the bathroom and
he's just he's on his knees, you know, on his knees,
with his head up against the wall, hunched over, and
(03:07):
I just scream and I had my ear pods in,
so I go Siri nine one one. So Sirian Media
calls nine one.
Speaker 7 (03:14):
One forty five thick back in October twenty one, medical.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Again on the co's like hello, and I go come please, like,
please help me.
Speaker 8 (03:44):
I'm scared.
Speaker 6 (03:44):
I don't know what to do. This has happened.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
He's dead.
Speaker 8 (03:48):
Please what happened?
Speaker 6 (03:51):
And I'm screaming and I go and I grab him
and I pull him back and I put his head
back and he has vomit coming out of his mouth.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
The nine one one operator tells me me to perform
CPR on him.
Speaker 8 (04:03):
Well, art of fat twice per second.
Speaker 9 (04:05):
Okay, we want to make sure of a chest comes
up all the way in between pumps getting ready to
fix on their times or he help and take over.
Speaker 8 (04:12):
They're we're going to count together.
Speaker 9 (04:14):
Okay, there's one two three four one three four.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Valentino's hands were purple and he wasn't breathing.
Speaker 8 (04:24):
Is that when door open? Are they going to be
able to get it to you? Is open? Okay? Keep going, man?
There a chess compression? Is anybody else in the house
with you?
Speaker 6 (04:35):
There?
Speaker 8 (04:36):
Going one?
Speaker 6 (04:37):
Eventually the police came. I don't know how fast. I
think like two minutes or two. But she kept telling me.
She's like, are they they're outside waiting there?
Speaker 9 (04:45):
One two three four one two three four, they're parking
right now. They're almost to one.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
And I was like, just open the door, just come inside, please.
Like seven officers ran in and I was always like,
I'm in the bathroom. Help me, and as it save them,
please save them.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
The police pulled her out of the house and had
her sit in the back of a squad car. They
told her they needed to ask her some questions.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
The officer was trying to talk to you, as this
lady and she and she's just like what happened?
Speaker 4 (05:22):
And she goes, what do you how did this happen?
Speaker 6 (05:24):
I was like, I don't know, but it's his job.
And I just kept saying it's his job. This is
all because of his job. She goes, where does he work?
Speaker 4 (05:29):
And I'm like, he works at.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
CDCR, CDCR the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Speaker 8 (05:38):
It's this stupid job.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
I just it just it just overtook his life, his thoughts,
everything that like he stood for.
Speaker 10 (05:52):
Test test comes to be clear.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
Correctional Officer Valentino Rodriguez was thirty years old when he died.
He'd worked for the department for about five years. Like
a lot of officers, that time changed him, especially the
time he spent inside the walls of this one prison.
New Folsome this is a story about that place, about
(06:23):
broken promises and unwritten rules, and who gets hurt when
the system that promises to keep us safe is bent
on protecting itself. I'm Suki Lewis. This is on our
Watch Season two, New Folsom's.
Speaker 8 (06:58):
Go past these lights, then at the next ten left,
stay in the second.
Speaker 5 (07:03):
A little more than two years after Officer Valentino Rodriguez
died in December twenty twenty two, our reporting team went
to go see his family. In ten right, we're driving
from the Bay Area through rice patties and apple orchards
to West Sacramento, a city on the outskirts of the
state capitol.
Speaker 11 (07:23):
Is just everything about this case just raises questions.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
That's my co reporter, Julie Small. The official cause of
Valentino's death was fentanyl intoxication, but his family and especially
his father, val Senior, still aren't satisfied with how it
was investigated.
Speaker 11 (07:41):
Now, maybe the answers are in nine but because they're unanswered,
I think, you know, yeah, makes you think the worst
or it. Certainly val keeps going over and over it
in his head, trying to tie up the loose ends.
Speaker 7 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
We also think be more to the story of Valentino's
death because he was a whistleblower. He'd reported corruption and
abuse by his fellow officers just days before he died, but.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
They said no signs of no signs of foul play.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Julie's been talking to Valcior for the past few months.
It's taken a while to gain his trust. Today, Stephen Rascone,
our producer, is a long term record.
Speaker 8 (08:25):
So today is like an icebreaker, I think.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
So it's my first chance to meet Valentino's parents, Valentino
Rodriguez Senor and his wife Erma. Inside. The walls are
covered with photos. They've got a good looking family, five
grandchildren at the time, and therefore adult kids.
Speaker 12 (08:51):
And we think about that, all four of them to
sat there and talked, made fun of each other and
laughed and.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Close kids.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
And a couple of weeks the families planning to get together,
but of course one of them will be missing Valentino.
It'll be their third Christmas without him.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
I was in the.
Speaker 13 (09:11):
Fog for a good year. It's a different fog now
for his dad.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Valentino's death started him on this search to find answers
from the police, the FBI, the prison. He wants to
understand what happened to his son and why and who's responsible.
But instead of finding answers, Valcgior just keeps finding more questions.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
This thing is just all tangled. I'm just trying to
undangle it.
Speaker 14 (09:42):
Now.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
Val Senior says he feels like a stereotype out of
a true crime series on TV, the grieving parent on
a quest for justice.
Speaker 10 (09:51):
And here I am in the driver's seat and I.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Couldn't do it any other way.
Speaker 13 (09:57):
But I never wanted to be that person on TV right,
just consumed with it.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
Yeah, would you be able to tell us, like your
favorite story of your son.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Him?
Speaker 13 (10:13):
With him?
Speaker 8 (10:13):
There's a lot.
Speaker 13 (10:15):
We have four kids and they're all completely different.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Valentino was their second child and the oldest boy. As
we sit around the dining room table, Irma pulls out
some of the stuff she saved over the years. His
first Communion prayer book, a newspaper clipping from when he
made student of the week.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I remember his third grade teacher said he was a
very good writer.
Speaker 8 (10:39):
She told him one day he was going to be
a writer, and she could wait to hear.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
His stories, because you should like to write. I still
have all those his little pictures. After Irma points out
Valentino in a little league team photo, he looks about
eleven or twelve, she says, he wasn't any good at baseball. Yeah,
he wasn't very good at soccer either, And I went
to all I had all four kids playing, so it
(11:02):
was like every Saturday, I'm driving around all the tsac
amount of taking them.
Speaker 8 (11:05):
And I tell him one day, why do you run
around with your eyes closed? He's like, you would pretend
I was an airplane flying in the air.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Everyone I used to watch them goal wrestle. He always lose, but.
Speaker 13 (11:21):
After he was done, he'd be talking to the guy
that beat him up.
Speaker 8 (11:24):
Yeah, yeah, senter talking to him.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
They tell us this was typical Valentino, goofy, dreamy, smart,
eager to turn enemies into friends. After college, when he
told them he was going to train to be a
correctional officer, his parents were kind of surprised. They weren't
a law enforcement family. But he'd have job security and
good benefits. Val Senior says he remembers the day his
(11:55):
son graduated from the academy. It was May one, twenty fifteen,
and he looked out over this ocean of young faces.
His son was among the about two hundred cadets sworn
in that day.
Speaker 13 (12:08):
Raise your right hand and repeat after me.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
This is tape from a more recent graduation reciting the
same oath Valentino took.
Speaker 14 (12:17):
I state your name, recognize the badge of my office.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
As a symbol of public faith. And photos from that
day show Valentino in his class a uniform, creas's sharp,
his hair neatly combed. They promised to protect the innocent.
Speaker 13 (12:41):
Dedicating myself before all present.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
To be honest and to hold each other accountable. Congratulations,
Welcome to the family. One of Valano's first assignments was
working on death row at San Quentin State prison, the
(13:05):
oldest prison in California. He'd often carpool to work with
a bunch of other correctional officers, and on the way
back they'd get dropped off at In and Out Burger.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
I was a cashier and he'd come in in his
little green suit. He's so cute in his little boots.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
That's me me again talking to my colleague Julie. She
calls him cute. But Valentino was not a little man.
He was five foot seven and at least two hundred pounds,
clean shaven, with dark hair and big brown eyes.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
So his order was a three y three Ketchupolino salt
the Chiefe frid no sault, and then a large seven up.
So I knew his order from the moment, because of course,
you know, the cute guy comes in, I'm good to
memorise his order.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Mimi recognized Valentino from a party she'd gone to at
his house, thrown by his brother Greg, and.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
I was like, oh, how are you? And he's like
and I think in his mind he's like, who is
this girl?
Speaker 5 (14:03):
I know your brother?
Speaker 6 (14:03):
And he's like what And he was just hecka weirded out,
and in my head it's going great, right. But he
started coming to it in and out more often, and
I would give him free burgers or shakes when my
manager wasn't looking.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
And they started messaging on Facebook.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
And he's like, hey, I haven't seen you. Did you
switch jobs? And I'm like, oh, this void texted me
or this void messaging and I was like, hello, yes, Hi.
It was just me being all excited. He was a
kid at heart, very playful.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
They play video games together and watch movies, and they
liked introducing each other to new things food, music, or art.
This one time they went out to a sip and
paint night at a local spot.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
He was kind of nervous. I think it was a
new thing for him. But we had gone to a
paint night with one of my coworkers and we went
on a double date and he painted this really nice picture.
It was supposed to be of a pelican at the
end of a bridge, but he changed it and it's
a painting of him and his dad.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
The scene is of the two of them from behind,
a boy and his father sitting side by side with
their fishing poles in the water, wispy white clouds over
the horizon.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
And he gave it to his dad after a week
got fack.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
Mimi says they fell hard for each other, and just
two months after they started dating, her roommate moved out
and she needed to find a new place to live.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
I was going to move into my brother's house, but
he was like no, like you should move in with me,
and I'm like no, this is kind of soon, and
he's like, come on, think about it.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Valentino's mom had helped him find a cute little house
just about five miles away from their place in West Sacramento.
Mimi moved in, and it was right around this time
that Valentino got what he saw as a big break,
an opportunity to work in a different prison.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
He specifically chose Fulsome.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
The official name of New Fulsome is California State Prison
Sacramento or CSP SAC. It's called New Fulsome because it
was built back in the eighties next to the old
Fulsome prison that was made famous by country singer Johnny Cash. Okay, Hello,
I'm Johnny Kay. He wrote a song called Fulsome Prison
(16:27):
Blues and then later recorded this performance live at the prison.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
I hear the three it coming.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
That night, giants, I don't know where you can actually
see the guard towers of old Fulsome from New Folsom Prison,
they've got a medieval castle kind of look to them.
New Folsom, on the other hand, where Valentino was transferring to,
has a more industrial utilitarian look, a lot of razor
wire and gray concrete. It's a high security prison that
(16:59):
the set up to accommodate people with risky medical conditions
and mental health needs. It also houses active gang members
and people who've been convicted of some of the most
serious crimes.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
He said he wanted to go there because it was
the most He said it was the most dangerous prison
in California. But he described it as there was just
a lot of activity there with officers with inmates, and
he just wanted to be in there.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
There are a lot of infamous prisons in this country,
and a fair number here in California. They're San Quentin
with its death Row, the state's first supermax, Pelican Bay, Corkoran,
where in the nineties officers allegedly set up gladiator style
fights between rival gangs and then shot incarcerated people to
stop the fights. But as we dug through a bunch
(17:59):
of day and public records, we realized in the past decade,
New Folsom has been the most violent prison in the state,
and that violence is committed by people who are locked
up and officers. We found that in the six years
after twenty fourteen, New Folsom officers used serious force, meaning
they either badly injured someone or used deadly force, at
(18:22):
a rate three times higher than any other prison in
the state. This was stunning to us. CDCR declined our
multiple requests to comment on this finding. I've done quite
a bit of reporting on prisons, and Julie's been reporting
on prisons for even longer. New Folsom just wasn't on
our radar in the same way. We'll dig into those
(18:43):
numbers more later, but for now, it's important to know
that with just a year of experience as a correctional officer,
this is the environment Valentino was walking into. Mimi says
he was looking forward to it.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
He was excited to go into this prison. He was
excited for the work. He was excited for what he
was going to learn.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
He wanted to be an investigator in this elite squad
called the ISU, or the Investigative Services Unit. A prison
is like its own city, and the ISU squad are
like the police force of the prison. They've got a
canine unit, a gain investigation unit, a prosecution division, and
(19:25):
one for internal affairs to look into complaints of excessive
force or allegations of officer corruption. Walking through new folsom
the squad stood out. They had special black and green
patches on their uniforms, and unlike regular officers, they could
bring their cell phones into work. They could also go
(19:45):
anywhere in the prison they wanted total access. Valentino's goal
was to earn his patch and get into that squad,
but first he had to pay his dues. Officer Valentino
(20:07):
Rodriguez's first assignment was working in the prison's psychiatric unit,
guarding one of the most vulnerable and difficult parts of
the population, people with severe mental illnesses. I've talked to
a number of people incarcerated in this unit, and it
sounds like a really tough place to be. It can
be very loud and chaotic. Sometimes the people in this
(20:30):
unit are angry and confrontational, while others are simply terrified
or heavily medicated. And officers like Valentino are required to
get training in how to prevent incarcerated people from hurting
each other and themselves. Valentino had been working at New
FOLSOM and in this unit for just a few months
when he got caught up in a really bad incident
(20:53):
that Valcgior says was a turning point for him. An
incarcerated man ended up in the hospital with broken bones
and injuries to his face and head. So investigators started
looking into how the man got those injuries. We were
able to get the tapes and paperwork for that incident.
Just a note, we noticed a lot of inconsistencies and
(21:15):
what people say happened. The incarcerated man's story changes a bit.
One officer contradicts himself, and other officers have slightly different
versions of the incident. You'll also hear some places where
the department has redacted the audio.
Speaker 9 (21:31):
So what we're going to talk about is on the
twelfth of August Friday, you were involved in an incident
which occurred.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Is that yourself where you're at before, Yes.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
Sir, they're looking into this incarcerated man's allegations that officers
caused his injuries and then lied about it.
Speaker 15 (21:51):
You made the allegation while trying to hang myself. The
CEOs came in and smashed my face into the wall.
Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 2 (22:00):
What you mean?
Speaker 14 (22:02):
Well, the whole story.
Speaker 5 (22:04):
Because of some sensitive details about his mental health, we
decided not to use this man's name. I'm just going
to call him by the initial of his last name, C.
So C tells the investigators that it all started because
of the meds he was taking.
Speaker 14 (22:20):
I was having a hard time on medication when I
have a hard time medication side office of a committed suicide.
Speaker 5 (22:29):
First, he says, he put his head in the toilet
in his cell to try and drown himself, and then
he told a passing officer that he was feeling suicidal.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
He put a.
Speaker 14 (22:43):
Sheet like a suicide sheet.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
He says. The officer handed him a sheet with a
noose already tied in it.
Speaker 14 (22:53):
You two to mysell, He said, hang yourself, So I
turned to hang my selling for now.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Officers have to follow really strict rules to prevent suicides.
They have to check on people in their cells every
thirty minutes. When someone says they're suicidal, officers are supposed
to call mental health services right away, and that person
might even get moved to a different unit or checked
into a hospital. To be clear, handing someone a noose
(23:22):
would totally violate what officers are meant to do. In
the situation, No officers admitted giving him a noose. A
responding officer tells investigators he was doing his rounds and
saw C with the sheet already tied around his neck.
Speaker 12 (23:37):
Had that time, I opened the food port gave him
multiple orders to stop.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
When C doesn't respond, the officer says, he sprays him
with pepper spray.
Speaker 15 (23:46):
My intent was to have to save his life from
stocking him from actually choking himself and killing himself.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
An officer gets C to come to the door to
put hand cuffs on him, and he shackled by his
feet and behind his back, and then they escort him
to what's called a decontamination cell. It's basically a cage
the size of a phone booth that they can spray
a hose into to wash the pepper spray off him.
Speaker 14 (24:16):
And boom. He pushed me in there, and my face
is the back of the sound. I wanted like that
boom here my.
Speaker 15 (24:25):
Face this injury that's right there across your nose, clothing.
Speaker 14 (24:30):
My wife in my head and the face like that boom,
and then my eye and then my face and then
my neck.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
But the officers who are escorting him tell it differently.
Speaker 16 (24:40):
He just kept trying to pull away, so I tight
and migrated and canseled him to knock, not pull away
from myself.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
The officer says, Ce broke away from them and lunged
towards the shower.
Speaker 16 (24:54):
Hey, and then he ended up tripping over the there's
a lip on the shower, Yeah, tripping over the bottom
lip fashion in the back of the shower, and I
immediately closed a shower blocked in again.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
Se denies this.
Speaker 12 (25:08):
Were you resistant at all?
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Ill him resisting?
Speaker 15 (25:10):
I don't know. You were just walking calmly, unlocking, calmly.
Speaker 14 (25:15):
I mean I get the injuries from trying to hide myself.
I got the injuries from him pushing me.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
So to recap. According to c he was suicidal. An
officer gave him a noose, pepper sprayed him, and he
was forcibly thrown into a cage and injured really badly.
The version officers tell is that Sea already had the noose.
They pepper sprayed him to save his life, and he
(25:41):
got hurt first when he fell from his bunk and
then again when he pulled away from them and tripped
face first into the shower cage. The last account of
events I'm going to walk you through is Valentinos because
he was one of the offer officers who responded that day.
(26:02):
Here he is introducing himself on tape to an investigator
with the Internal Affairs Department.
Speaker 15 (26:08):
Valentino rodri Juez, Correctional officer, California Department of Corrections, sacrament
Estate Prison.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
The agent tells Valentino, he's here as a witness.
Speaker 11 (26:19):
Can you give me your account of that incident?
Speaker 15 (26:23):
Her on the radio announcement that there was a inmate
hanging inmate compan hanging in two block in B session.
Speaker 5 (26:31):
Valentino says, he put on his gloves and rushed to
the cell.
Speaker 15 (26:34):
It's apparent that he was sprayed with OC because OC
pepper sprayed because he had he was spitting up mucus
and a little bit of blood on his face from
being sprayed.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
As the two officers took C to hose off, they
walked him past Valentino, who says he saw a little
bump on C's forehead.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Could you see what his clothing?
Speaker 15 (26:54):
I don't remember. I don't remember if I could at
the time.
Speaker 16 (26:57):
Can you now.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
So he goes to the shower cage with really no
major injuries that Valentino could see.
Speaker 15 (27:07):
At what point did you observe an injury on him?
When the water was turned off and I walked into
the cage to open it up, I observe some injuries
onto the top of his head and across his face.
I think believe it was across the faces. Can you
tell me about to describe those injuries? They were gashes,
(27:29):
like large, large gashes.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Valentino was asked to photograph seize injuries and then take
him to get medical attention. We got those pictures that
he took. The man's face is partially blacked out, but
you can see a five inch gash across his forehead
and his cheek is split open from his nose to
below his cheekbone.
Speaker 15 (27:50):
Is there anything else you'd like to tell me that
you have not already discussed during this interview.
Speaker 8 (27:57):
Before I turn off the recorder.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
I want to remind you it's a big deal any
time an officer gets pulled into an investigation, even just
as a witness, because lying is a fireable offense. We
know Valentino told the people closest to him about this incident.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I remember that when it happened, he was so scared
for weeks.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
When we got this recording through a public records request
to CDCR, it was one of the things we really
wanted to share with val Senior. Want to hear it? Yeah,
My co reporter Julie Small sat down with him and
pressed play on the recording.
Speaker 15 (28:35):
To the theater is December nine, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
Val Senior had never heard this interview with his son before.
Speaker 15 (28:42):
Again, A bump, a little bout a danger about his ire. Okay,
I think I wish I can't call Okay.
Speaker 7 (28:52):
I think that.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
Do you think that he's telling the truth there?
Speaker 17 (28:57):
I think because I know my son, he has a
really good memories, really detail orientated, and for him not
to remember which side the cut was on and certain things,
it's just to me, he's sounds like he's worried right there, scared.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
Valentino told him that what happened during the incident was
different than what those officers wrote in their reports and
told investigators, But he said he felt like he had
to go along with their story.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
You should see his face and he come over. That
broke my heart. Man, Because he had a job and
he told me, Dad, you have to you have to
tell the same story because you're on a team. Yeah,
and if you don't, then you're the odd man out.
Speaker 5 (29:47):
Mimi told us something similar.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
He was told like, hey, you know, this is this
is what we're writing, and it's important that all of
us have the same story, and it's important for all
of us to be on the same page. And he
told me how They never really specifically said you must
do it this way, you must write it this, you
must do it that. It was more of like, this
is what we are doing, and this is how we're
(30:11):
going to do it, and this is what's important for
our team, so we can all be on the same page.
He felt a lot of pressure because he didn't want
to lose his job.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
CDCR did not respond to specific questions about this incident.
A spokesperson did write in an email that the agency
takes all allegations of employee misconduct seriously and there is
a new process for making sure complaints are quote properly,
fairly and thoroughly reviewed. The spokesperson also pointed out that
there is a new system of fixed and body cameras
(30:54):
at New folsome so we don't know exactly what the
truth is about this incident. What we do know is
that C was severely injured. Medical reports show he received
twenty seven stitches, his nose was broken, and his spine
was fractured in three places. Ultimately, those in charge believed
(31:16):
the officer's story that C fractured his back when he
slipped and fell off his bunk and injured his face
and head when he lunged away from officers and landed
on the metal rails of the decontamination shower. And that's
the story that Valentino chose to go along with, even
though he told his father it wasn't true. This wouldn't
(31:39):
be the last time Valentino felt compromised by his job.
(32:00):
Rodriguez told my colleague Julie and me that working in
the psychiatric unit really took a toll on Valentino.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
He would talk about how draining it was, and he
would have come home drained and did not look like
to you. I mean he would just drag his feet.
He would drag his feet, come in and he didn't
want to eat. He would shower and just go to sleep.
I mean he was just quiet.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
He worked double shifts so we could get more days
off in a row to recharge.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
That's when he would talk more about work and be like, yeah,
like you you know, it was a little stressful and
I'm dealing with this or I'm talking about this, but
you know, I'm happy to go in, and he was
always very enthusiastic.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
About two and a half years after he'd gotten to
New folsom late twenty eighteen, Valentino's hard work looked like
it was paying off. Remember the squad that detective unit
Valentino was aiming for. An officer there went on leave
for PTSD and there was a vacancy on the team.
One of the supervisors who knew Valentino thought he'd be
(33:03):
good at the job and gave him the chance to
fill in.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
He was really excited for that, but he didn't think
he was going to get that opportunity.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
He'd made the squad working in the security and the
investigations unit, but on a temporary basis. To get the
position permanently, he'd have to impress the right people.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
He's like, yes, of course, i I'll do it. I
mean he was ready.
Speaker 5 (33:28):
Valentino called to let his parents know he got promoted.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
He called his mom first, and she told me Bell
got a promotion.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
He told them it was a really good position, one
that a lot of other people wanted, and that he
was the youngest on the team.
Speaker 13 (33:44):
I asked him, how's your first day?
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, he goes, there's a bunch of older guys. Dad
had been there. He called him ojeez.
Speaker 13 (33:50):
I said, well, how do you go? He goes to
ask who the fuck are you?
Speaker 5 (33:54):
So from the very beginning, there was tension on the team.
Some of the people he worked with felt like he'd
skipped the line, that he hadn't done enough to prove himself.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
There was one time where he had asked me to
make little cheesecakes. There's your little mini pie cheesecakes that
I would make, and I made a bunch for the team,
and like nobody had them, nobody ate them, and they
would just tell him like, no, we don't want this
or we don't want that.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
At first, he tried to earn their acceptance by just
working really hard, trying to prove that he was up
to the job.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
He just continued to just put his head down in work.
I think that's what really bothered him, that he would
just try to do the right thing and it just
didn't seem like it was enough.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Valentino was making busts and working cases, but to some
of his co workers this might have made him seem
like even more of a threat. Because higher ups were
noticing his work. Valentino was getting a reputation for being
a diligent investigator, thorough and for writing really good reports.
(34:55):
This was a big deal because paperwork reports are hugely
important to prison With one hundred and fifteen thousand people
incarcerated in the state's prisons at the time, these reports
are how the agency kept track of everybody. Officers need
to document everything gang affiliations, medical needs, disability status, history
(35:17):
of suicide, fights with staff, and so on, and these
reports are also the basis for disciplinary action like sending
someone to solitary confinement or charging them with a new crime.
These reports hold a lot of power, and it is
a crime for an officer to falsify an official report.
(35:38):
Valentino wanted to keep moving up in this system and
expanding his skills as an investigator. On the weekends when
he wasn't working, he'd pay out a pocket to go
to these training events and seminars, and during these trips
he became friends with a guy named Sergeant Kevin Steele.
Steele passed away in twenty twenty one, so we couldn't
(36:00):
interview him, but val Senior came to know him well.
Speaker 10 (36:03):
He was about five to seven my age, maybe a
little bit older, using good shape, you know.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
He shaved his head and.
Speaker 5 (36:11):
Stood straight up picture of Bruce Willis type in his fifties,
with intense, bright blue eyes. He was a military veteran
and a straight shooter. Sergeant Steele also worked in the ISU.
He was senior to Valentino, but he was in a
different division. He was in the prosecution division. It was
his job to prepare cases for the district attorney to
(36:32):
bring criminal charges.
Speaker 18 (36:34):
He was very good speaking and writing, very passionate about
his job, and loyal. He was very very important to
that prison for a good reason.
Speaker 5 (36:46):
The two officers really respected each other. Both of them
were kind of law enforcement nerds, committed to going the
extra mile. Valentino would testify in court for Steele's cases.
All that extra training meant he was a great expert witness,
and Steele became one of the few people Valentino trusted,
a mentor and someone he called regularly for advice about
(37:09):
criminal case protocol or how to handle evidence. Things with
the other guys in his division, however, were getting worse.
Speaker 10 (37:17):
Sometimes he would text the guys for help and they'd
have their own group texts, and they would like they
wouldn't they didn't want.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
To help them.
Speaker 5 (37:23):
Some of these group texts are pretty awful. They mock
his weight and call him half patch to remind him
he's still just a temporary member of the squad.
Speaker 15 (37:34):
Do these things that you saw after he died? Mm
hmm only yah.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
He never He never said look deadly what they're saying.
He is never.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
But these messages would escalate even further before they stopped.
The brotherhood. The family that Valentino had been promised at
his academy graduation was nowhere to be found.
Speaker 13 (37:54):
And he used to go in on weekends to work
because some of the team wasn't there to harass him.
Speaker 10 (38:04):
Nobody was calling him names or anything or intending him anyway,
so he liked going there on saturdays. I know that
he told me he used to go to work in
the mornings, and then he told me he would go
into the restroom to vomit because he felt so much anxiety.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
An attorney for these officers declined our request to interview
her clients, but she said that any allegations that any
of them bullied, Haze, or harassed Valentino are false. Val
Senior says he wouldn't understand until much later the full
scope of what his son was going through or of
the things he was being asked to do in the
(38:46):
name of this team. But he did notice a change
come over his son. He wasn't sleeping, and he gained
sixty pounds over the course of the year he was
in the ISU squad. Sometimes when they were hanging out well,
he'd get this blank look on his face.
Speaker 13 (39:02):
I could tell that he was starting to build this
mental mechanism where he knew that I turned things off,
you know, because I used to see him stare into
space and then he'd snap.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Out of it.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
And this distance was coming between Valentino and Mimi too.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
What really bothered me about his job was that he
was never home.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
They were planning to get married and have kids, but
more and more she felt like Valentino was always gone.
There were the overtime shifts he had to work, and
the milestones and their life together were passing by without him.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
I understood that it was his job and it was
a requirement.
Speaker 6 (39:43):
But what would frustrate me is that when I would
ask him, like why couldn't you make it or why
couldn't do this? He would say, well, I asked for
help and no one came to help me. And I
would tell him, Valentino, where your family, Like, we love you,
you know, if something happens to you, that job is
just going to place you.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
But how we can't replace you.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
She remembers one holiday, maybe Thanksgiving, where she went to
his family's house for dinner.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
I remember just sitting there waiting for him at his
grandma's house, just waiting.
Speaker 6 (40:18):
He couldn't show up.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
Once again, Valentino had to stay late working at the prison, and.
Speaker 6 (40:25):
It just broke my heart because I just felt alone.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
I felt really lonely. His family very nice, I mean,
don't get me wrong, very kind people, but I don't
want to sit next to his grandma per se when
I can just sit next to him.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
It was in the midst of these pressures. Valentino was overworked,
the holidays were happening, and he felt ostracized by his team.
That something major happened at the prison. Val Senior says
he was the family Christmas party. Everyone was having a
good time eating and drinking. They had a game of
White Elephant going and they were all laughing a lot.
(41:07):
Valentino showed up late straight from work around ten o'clock
at night, and as soon as he walked in the door,
Valcignior knew something was wrong.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Yeah, I could just see his face just slept. Something
really bothering him. I've seen that look on his face before,
but it was really intense.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
Val Senior asked him what was going on.
Speaker 12 (41:29):
And that's when he took his phone out and he
showed me the video.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
The scene that Valcignior saw on his son's cell phone
was incredibly violent. A video taken by surveillance cameras and
one of the most high security housing units in New Folsome.
The camera angle is from inside the control booth, which
looks out on two tiers of cells. Right in front
of the booth, there's an open area on the ground
(41:53):
floor called a day room. In this day room, there
are these metal desks in a semicircle with clear de
between them. In the video, Valcignior saw a man shackled
to one of these chairs with two other guys standing
over him.
Speaker 12 (42:10):
This guy, this kid's being stabbed over and over and over,
and he literally would shrug his shoulders and cover his
neck while they're trying to stab him the neck, and
then they would go back down the chest, and then
he would try to cover his chest by concaving his
chest inward, and then he'd go back to his neck,
and it was just back and forth. So finally the
kid threw himself on the floor and they proceeded to
(42:32):
just stab him to the point to where the knights
were literally hitting the ground because every time they pulled.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Up, his body would go up with it.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
The man on the floor was now lifeless. Valcenior watched
as two attackers painted his blood across their faces. But
Valentino wanted his dad to notice something else.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
He had said, look at that the guy in the
towers not even amy using rubber bullets.
Speaker 5 (43:02):
Valentino was pointing out to his dad that the officer
in the control booth didn't use his rifle to immediately
stop the deadly threat. He fired his less lethal weapon
that shoots rounds made out of hard foam, and he
fired it way too late.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
You're supposed to use like rounds.
Speaker 10 (43:20):
I tried not to emphasize or talk about or look
at it. I just wanted to go on to my
little Christmas party, so I told him, you know, to
put that thing away go and he just liked what
he does stepped out of it.
Speaker 5 (43:34):
But that wasn't all. Valentino was also instructed to write
up a particular type of confidential report for statewide gang investigators.
The report was supposed to lay out how the killing
was tied to a dispute between rival gangs. A lot
of questions would later be raised about that report and
(43:55):
who was really behind the murder. CDCR said it cannot
comment on the case because it's part of an active investigation.
Valcior wonders about this murder too. His son was found
dead by fentanyl intoxication less than a year after this
Christmas party, and he was one of the people who
(44:16):
suspected there was something really wrong about what happened in
that day room at New folsom.
Speaker 7 (44:29):
You have the laptop or to follow along, I guess.
Speaker 5 (44:35):
So how are we doing this in Valor's office and
his swimming pool construction company and Sacramento hanging on the wall.
He's got that picture that Valentino painted of the two
of them sitting side by side on the edge of
the dock fishing. Sometimes, he says he can still feel
his son close to him by his side, and he's
(44:57):
holding my hand.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
He just wants me to find find peace. And I
find parts of peace, but not completely.
Speaker 5 (45:07):
When Valentino was a kid and val Senior would come
home from work, he says, his son would run up
and pull on the sleeve of his shirt.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Dead dead dead, But I just feel him tugging still,
you know.
Speaker 13 (45:18):
And I owe that to him.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
And I'm gonna go as far as I can.
Speaker 10 (45:25):
And and in the end, if nothing is nothing I
tried right, I'll find my answers where my time comes.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Since his son's death, valcor has been pulled into a
new role. Now he's become the investigator.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Shows where they got moved to?
Speaker 5 (45:47):
Where is it a different as our little reporting team. Julie,
Stephen and I crowd around the computer in his office.
Valcior shows us the evidence he's collected about the killing
of that guy in the day room, a twenty nine
year old man named Luis Giovanni Aguilar. He's still trying
to understand how and if that murder connects to his
(46:10):
son's death. Where did this come from?
Speaker 13 (46:14):
Just people were saying, we still look at the secret source.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
See all these different sources.
Speaker 5 (46:19):
It's stuff from his confidential sources who work inside New
Folsome Valor drags and drops the folders on his computer
one by one onto the hard drive that we've brought
for just this purpose. All do our best to just
try and keep you informed about our process.
Speaker 13 (46:37):
Is this one of the bigger stories you've done with
podcast or computer?
Speaker 5 (46:42):
Yeult, I mean, it's a very it's a very complex story.
But at the same time, I think it's really like
a really important story. Yeah, I tell him we're looking
into this because his son's story is part of something
even larger. Since twenty nineteen, when a new transparency law
(47:02):
went into effect here in California, Julie and I have
been trying to get a clear picture of what the
consequences are for correctional officers who use excessive force in prison,
lie on their reports, or discriminate against their colleagues. That's
been a black box for decades, hidden by laws that
were lobbied for by correctional officer and police unions. Now
(47:27):
we've gotten hundreds and hundreds of documents. Some of them
are related to troubling use of force incidents, like the
tapes you heard earlier, and as we went through them,
we discovered that a really high number of these incidents
had taken place at New Folsom. When we heard there
was an officer who was blowing the whistle on misconduct
(47:47):
there and then died, we knew we had to see
if there was a connection, and the answer to that
question could be among the evidence Valcior was loading onto
our hard drive.
Speaker 19 (47:59):
What you're offering by what you have and the content
that you have, the text messages, combined with all the
records that we've requested, we'll be able to see into
the prisons and how they function in a way that
really hasn't been done much.
Speaker 5 (48:17):
These records were completely secret, and we are the first
people to analyze them. As we walk out of his office,
lets you be fal Senior hands us back the hard drives,
(48:39):
really appreci.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
What else.
Speaker 5 (48:44):
Coming up next time Valentino reaches a breaking point at
work that.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Was a flat out threat and when he got to
work they laughed at it.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
I remember this very clearly. He said, this is my identity,
So I feel like I've given up on everything.
Speaker 5 (49:02):
And someone else starts looking into the murder in the
day room and finding clues, clues that point the finger
not just at the two men with knives, but also
at New Folsome itself.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
When's the data on that one that's he died?
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Oh he texted steal the day he died.
Speaker 5 (49:23):
It's friend Steel. You're listening to on our Watch, season
two New Fulsome from KQED. If you have any tips
(49:45):
or feedback about the series, you can email us at
on our Watch at KQED dot org. You can also
leave us a review in Apple Podcasts. This series is
reported by me Sukie Lewis and Julie Small. It's edited
by Victoria Malone. It's produced and scored by Stephen Rascone
and Chris Agusa. Sound design and mixing by Tarak Fuda.
(50:09):
Jen Chien is kqd's director of Podcasts, and she executive
produced the series. Meticulous fact checking by Mark Bettencourt. Additional
research by Kayla Mahalovich and Kathleen Quinn, students in the
Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
Special thanks to Rassan Thomas of ear Hustle Sandia Dirk's
(50:29):
of NPR, KQED Health correspondent April Demboski, and to our
in house council Rebecca Hopkins. Original music by romptin arab Luis,
including our theme song. Additional music from Cameron Fraser, APM
Music and Audio Network. We got tremendous support from David Barstow,
chair of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate
(50:52):
School of Journalism, and graduate students Julieta Bisharion, William Jenkins,
armand Olia, Arrell Watt, and June Yao Yong. Thanks also
to UC Berkeley's Jeremy Rue and Amanda Glazer for their
data analysis. The internal records highlighted in this podcast were
obtained as part of the California Reporting Project. Funding for
(51:13):
On Our Watch is provided in part by Arnold Ventures
and the California Endowment. Thank you to our Managing editor
of News and Enterprise, Otis R. Taylor Junior Ethan Toven
lindsay Are, Vice president of News and KQED Chief Content Officer,
Holly Kernan. Thanks for listening.
Hey, everybody, I'd like to introduce you to a new
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It's called Slaycation, and it's a darkly humorous look at
(00:21):
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his TV producing partner, Slaycation brings a unique perspective to chilling, thrilling,
and WTF stories stories of vacations that go horribly wrong.
(00:44):
There's the twisted tale of Harold and Tony, whose romantic
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(01:04):
Each episode of Slaycation will have you asking.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Accident or murder.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
But it's not just the stories that'll intrigue you. It's
the discussion between a long time married couple of business
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(01:31):
If you're ready to pack your body bags. Slacation is
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Speaker 3 (01:48):
This is a series investigating some of the difficult things
that happen to the people who live and work inside
California's prisons. So we wanted to give you a heads
up that this episode touches on intense topics including substance use,
state violence, and self harm. If you need support, we've
got links to resources in the episode description. The story
(02:08):
begins with a death that is intense and upsetting.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
I park my car and I walk in the house
and he's not on the couch.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
On October twenty first, twenty twenty, Mimi Rodriguez came home
from having dinner with her friends and called out to
her husband, Valentino Rodriguez.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Soy Cale, val val where are you?
Speaker 6 (02:36):
And all the lights are hun in the house.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
And I go into the kitchen. He's not in the kitchen.
Speaker 6 (02:42):
So I'm going into our bedroom and he's not in
our bedroom, and I knew something was wrong, and I go, valvow,
where are you? And I run into the bathroom and
he's just he's on his knees, you know, on his knees,
with his head up against the wall, hunched over, and
(03:07):
I just scream and I had my ear pods in,
so I go Siri nine one one. So Sirian Media
calls nine one.
Speaker 7 (03:14):
One forty five thick back in October twenty one, medical.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Again on the co's like hello, and I go come please, like,
please help me.
Speaker 8 (03:44):
I'm scared.
Speaker 6 (03:44):
I don't know what to do. This has happened.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
He's dead.
Speaker 8 (03:48):
Please what happened?
Speaker 6 (03:51):
And I'm screaming and I go and I grab him
and I pull him back and I put his head
back and he has vomit coming out of his mouth.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
The nine one one operator tells me me to perform
CPR on him.
Speaker 8 (04:03):
Well, art of fat twice per second.
Speaker 9 (04:05):
Okay, we want to make sure of a chest comes
up all the way in between pumps getting ready to
fix on their times or he help and take over.
Speaker 8 (04:12):
They're we're going to count together.
Speaker 9 (04:14):
Okay, there's one two three four one three four.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Valentino's hands were purple and he wasn't breathing.
Speaker 8 (04:24):
Is that when door open? Are they going to be
able to get it to you? Is open? Okay? Keep going, man?
There a chess compression? Is anybody else in the house
with you?
Speaker 6 (04:35):
There?
Speaker 8 (04:36):
Going one?
Speaker 6 (04:37):
Eventually the police came. I don't know how fast. I
think like two minutes or two. But she kept telling me.
She's like, are they they're outside waiting there?
Speaker 9 (04:45):
One two three four one two three four, they're parking
right now. They're almost to one.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
And I was like, just open the door, just come inside, please.
Like seven officers ran in and I was always like,
I'm in the bathroom. Help me, and as it save them,
please save them.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
The police pulled her out of the house and had
her sit in the back of a squad car. They
told her they needed to ask her some questions.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
The officer was trying to talk to you, as this
lady and she and she's just like what happened?
Speaker 4 (05:22):
And she goes, what do you how did this happen?
Speaker 6 (05:24):
I was like, I don't know, but it's his job.
And I just kept saying it's his job. This is
all because of his job. She goes, where does he work?
Speaker 4 (05:29):
And I'm like, he works at.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
CDCR, CDCR the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Speaker 8 (05:38):
It's this stupid job.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
I just it just it just overtook his life, his thoughts,
everything that like he stood for.
Speaker 10 (05:52):
Test test comes to be clear.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
Correctional Officer Valentino Rodriguez was thirty years old when he died.
He'd worked for the department for about five years. Like
a lot of officers, that time changed him, especially the
time he spent inside the walls of this one prison.
New Folsome this is a story about that place, about
(06:23):
broken promises and unwritten rules, and who gets hurt when
the system that promises to keep us safe is bent
on protecting itself. I'm Suki Lewis. This is on our
Watch Season two, New Folsom's.
Speaker 8 (06:58):
Go past these lights, then at the next ten left,
stay in the second.
Speaker 5 (07:03):
A little more than two years after Officer Valentino Rodriguez
died in December twenty twenty two, our reporting team went
to go see his family. In ten right, we're driving
from the Bay Area through rice patties and apple orchards
to West Sacramento, a city on the outskirts of the
state capitol.
Speaker 11 (07:23):
Is just everything about this case just raises questions.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
That's my co reporter, Julie Small. The official cause of
Valentino's death was fentanyl intoxication, but his family and especially
his father, val Senior, still aren't satisfied with how it
was investigated.
Speaker 11 (07:41):
Now, maybe the answers are in nine but because they're unanswered,
I think, you know, yeah, makes you think the worst
or it. Certainly val keeps going over and over it
in his head, trying to tie up the loose ends.
Speaker 7 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
We also think be more to the story of Valentino's
death because he was a whistleblower. He'd reported corruption and
abuse by his fellow officers just days before he died, but.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
They said no signs of no signs of foul play.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Julie's been talking to Valcior for the past few months.
It's taken a while to gain his trust. Today, Stephen Rascone,
our producer, is a long term record.
Speaker 8 (08:25):
So today is like an icebreaker, I think.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
So it's my first chance to meet Valentino's parents, Valentino
Rodriguez Senor and his wife Erma. Inside. The walls are
covered with photos. They've got a good looking family, five
grandchildren at the time, and therefore adult kids.
Speaker 12 (08:51):
And we think about that, all four of them to
sat there and talked, made fun of each other and
laughed and.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Close kids.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
And a couple of weeks the families planning to get together,
but of course one of them will be missing Valentino.
It'll be their third Christmas without him.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
I was in the.
Speaker 13 (09:11):
Fog for a good year. It's a different fog now
for his dad.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Valentino's death started him on this search to find answers
from the police, the FBI, the prison. He wants to
understand what happened to his son and why and who's responsible.
But instead of finding answers, Valcgior just keeps finding more questions.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
This thing is just all tangled. I'm just trying to
undangle it.
Speaker 14 (09:42):
Now.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
Val Senior says he feels like a stereotype out of
a true crime series on TV, the grieving parent on
a quest for justice.
Speaker 10 (09:51):
And here I am in the driver's seat and I.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Couldn't do it any other way.
Speaker 13 (09:57):
But I never wanted to be that person on TV right,
just consumed with it.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
Yeah, would you be able to tell us, like your
favorite story of your son.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Him?
Speaker 13 (10:13):
With him?
Speaker 8 (10:13):
There's a lot.
Speaker 13 (10:15):
We have four kids and they're all completely different.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Valentino was their second child and the oldest boy. As
we sit around the dining room table, Irma pulls out
some of the stuff she saved over the years. His
first Communion prayer book, a newspaper clipping from when he
made student of the week.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I remember his third grade teacher said he was a
very good writer.
Speaker 8 (10:39):
She told him one day he was going to be
a writer, and she could wait to hear.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
His stories, because you should like to write. I still
have all those his little pictures. After Irma points out
Valentino in a little league team photo, he looks about
eleven or twelve, she says, he wasn't any good at baseball. Yeah,
he wasn't very good at soccer either, And I went
to all I had all four kids playing, so it
(11:02):
was like every Saturday, I'm driving around all the tsac
amount of taking them.
Speaker 8 (11:05):
And I tell him one day, why do you run
around with your eyes closed? He's like, you would pretend
I was an airplane flying in the air.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Everyone I used to watch them goal wrestle. He always lose, but.
Speaker 13 (11:21):
After he was done, he'd be talking to the guy
that beat him up.
Speaker 8 (11:24):
Yeah, yeah, senter talking to him.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
They tell us this was typical Valentino, goofy, dreamy, smart,
eager to turn enemies into friends. After college, when he
told them he was going to train to be a
correctional officer, his parents were kind of surprised. They weren't
a law enforcement family. But he'd have job security and
good benefits. Val Senior says he remembers the day his
(11:55):
son graduated from the academy. It was May one, twenty fifteen,
and he looked out over this ocean of young faces.
His son was among the about two hundred cadets sworn
in that day.
Speaker 13 (12:08):
Raise your right hand and repeat after me.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
This is tape from a more recent graduation reciting the
same oath Valentino took.
Speaker 14 (12:17):
I state your name, recognize the badge of my office.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
As a symbol of public faith. And photos from that
day show Valentino in his class a uniform, creas's sharp,
his hair neatly combed. They promised to protect the innocent.
Speaker 13 (12:41):
Dedicating myself before all present.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
To be honest and to hold each other accountable. Congratulations,
Welcome to the family. One of Valano's first assignments was
working on death row at San Quentin State prison, the
(13:05):
oldest prison in California. He'd often carpool to work with
a bunch of other correctional officers, and on the way
back they'd get dropped off at In and Out Burger.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
I was a cashier and he'd come in in his
little green suit. He's so cute in his little boots.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
That's me me again talking to my colleague Julie. She
calls him cute. But Valentino was not a little man.
He was five foot seven and at least two hundred pounds,
clean shaven, with dark hair and big brown eyes.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
So his order was a three y three Ketchupolino salt
the Chiefe frid no sault, and then a large seven up.
So I knew his order from the moment, because of course,
you know, the cute guy comes in, I'm good to
memorise his order.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Mimi recognized Valentino from a party she'd gone to at
his house, thrown by his brother Greg, and.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
I was like, oh, how are you? And he's like
and I think in his mind he's like, who is
this girl?
Speaker 5 (14:03):
I know your brother?
Speaker 6 (14:03):
And he's like what And he was just hecka weirded out,
and in my head it's going great, right. But he
started coming to it in and out more often, and
I would give him free burgers or shakes when my
manager wasn't looking.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
And they started messaging on Facebook.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
And he's like, hey, I haven't seen you. Did you
switch jobs? And I'm like, oh, this void texted me
or this void messaging and I was like, hello, yes, Hi.
It was just me being all excited. He was a
kid at heart, very playful.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
They play video games together and watch movies, and they
liked introducing each other to new things food, music, or art.
This one time they went out to a sip and
paint night at a local spot.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
He was kind of nervous. I think it was a
new thing for him. But we had gone to a
paint night with one of my coworkers and we went
on a double date and he painted this really nice picture.
It was supposed to be of a pelican at the
end of a bridge, but he changed it and it's
a painting of him and his dad.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
The scene is of the two of them from behind,
a boy and his father sitting side by side with
their fishing poles in the water, wispy white clouds over
the horizon.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
And he gave it to his dad after a week
got fack.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
Mimi says they fell hard for each other, and just
two months after they started dating, her roommate moved out
and she needed to find a new place to live.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
I was going to move into my brother's house, but
he was like no, like you should move in with me,
and I'm like no, this is kind of soon, and
he's like, come on, think about it.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Valentino's mom had helped him find a cute little house
just about five miles away from their place in West Sacramento.
Mimi moved in, and it was right around this time
that Valentino got what he saw as a big break,
an opportunity to work in a different prison.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
He specifically chose Fulsome.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
The official name of New Fulsome is California State Prison
Sacramento or CSP SAC. It's called New Fulsome because it
was built back in the eighties next to the old
Fulsome prison that was made famous by country singer Johnny Cash. Okay, Hello,
I'm Johnny Kay. He wrote a song called Fulsome Prison
(16:27):
Blues and then later recorded this performance live at the prison.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
I hear the three it coming.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
That night, giants, I don't know where you can actually
see the guard towers of old Fulsome from New Folsom Prison,
they've got a medieval castle kind of look to them.
New Folsom, on the other hand, where Valentino was transferring to,
has a more industrial utilitarian look, a lot of razor
wire and gray concrete. It's a high security prison that
(16:59):
the set up to accommodate people with risky medical conditions
and mental health needs. It also houses active gang members
and people who've been convicted of some of the most
serious crimes.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
He said he wanted to go there because it was
the most He said it was the most dangerous prison
in California. But he described it as there was just
a lot of activity there with officers with inmates, and
he just wanted to be in there.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
There are a lot of infamous prisons in this country,
and a fair number here in California. They're San Quentin
with its death Row, the state's first supermax, Pelican Bay, Corkoran,
where in the nineties officers allegedly set up gladiator style
fights between rival gangs and then shot incarcerated people to
stop the fights. But as we dug through a bunch
(17:59):
of day and public records, we realized in the past decade,
New Folsom has been the most violent prison in the state,
and that violence is committed by people who are locked
up and officers. We found that in the six years
after twenty fourteen, New Folsom officers used serious force, meaning
they either badly injured someone or used deadly force, at
(18:22):
a rate three times higher than any other prison in
the state. This was stunning to us. CDCR declined our
multiple requests to comment on this finding. I've done quite
a bit of reporting on prisons, and Julie's been reporting
on prisons for even longer. New Folsom just wasn't on
our radar in the same way. We'll dig into those
(18:43):
numbers more later, but for now, it's important to know
that with just a year of experience as a correctional officer,
this is the environment Valentino was walking into. Mimi says
he was looking forward to it.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
He was excited to go into this prison. He was
excited for the work. He was excited for what he
was going to learn.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
He wanted to be an investigator in this elite squad
called the ISU, or the Investigative Services Unit. A prison
is like its own city, and the ISU squad are
like the police force of the prison. They've got a
canine unit, a gain investigation unit, a prosecution division, and
(19:25):
one for internal affairs to look into complaints of excessive
force or allegations of officer corruption. Walking through new folsom
the squad stood out. They had special black and green
patches on their uniforms, and unlike regular officers, they could
bring their cell phones into work. They could also go
(19:45):
anywhere in the prison they wanted total access. Valentino's goal
was to earn his patch and get into that squad,
but first he had to pay his dues. Officer Valentino
(20:07):
Rodriguez's first assignment was working in the prison's psychiatric unit,
guarding one of the most vulnerable and difficult parts of
the population, people with severe mental illnesses. I've talked to
a number of people incarcerated in this unit, and it
sounds like a really tough place to be. It can
be very loud and chaotic. Sometimes the people in this
(20:30):
unit are angry and confrontational, while others are simply terrified
or heavily medicated. And officers like Valentino are required to
get training in how to prevent incarcerated people from hurting
each other and themselves. Valentino had been working at New
FOLSOM and in this unit for just a few months
when he got caught up in a really bad incident
(20:53):
that Valcgior says was a turning point for him. An
incarcerated man ended up in the hospital with broken bones
and injuries to his face and head. So investigators started
looking into how the man got those injuries. We were
able to get the tapes and paperwork for that incident.
Just a note, we noticed a lot of inconsistencies and
(21:15):
what people say happened. The incarcerated man's story changes a bit.
One officer contradicts himself, and other officers have slightly different
versions of the incident. You'll also hear some places where
the department has redacted the audio.
Speaker 9 (21:31):
So what we're going to talk about is on the
twelfth of August Friday, you were involved in an incident
which occurred.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Is that yourself where you're at before, Yes.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
Sir, they're looking into this incarcerated man's allegations that officers
caused his injuries and then lied about it.
Speaker 15 (21:51):
You made the allegation while trying to hang myself. The
CEOs came in and smashed my face into the wall.
Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 2 (22:00):
What you mean?
Speaker 14 (22:02):
Well, the whole story.
Speaker 5 (22:04):
Because of some sensitive details about his mental health, we
decided not to use this man's name. I'm just going
to call him by the initial of his last name, C.
So C tells the investigators that it all started because
of the meds he was taking.
Speaker 14 (22:20):
I was having a hard time on medication when I
have a hard time medication side office of a committed suicide.
Speaker 5 (22:29):
First, he says, he put his head in the toilet
in his cell to try and drown himself, and then
he told a passing officer that he was feeling suicidal.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
He put a.
Speaker 14 (22:43):
Sheet like a suicide sheet.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
He says. The officer handed him a sheet with a
noose already tied in it.
Speaker 14 (22:53):
You two to mysell, He said, hang yourself, So I
turned to hang my selling for now.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Officers have to follow really strict rules to prevent suicides.
They have to check on people in their cells every
thirty minutes. When someone says they're suicidal, officers are supposed
to call mental health services right away, and that person
might even get moved to a different unit or checked
into a hospital. To be clear, handing someone a noose
(23:22):
would totally violate what officers are meant to do. In
the situation, No officers admitted giving him a noose. A
responding officer tells investigators he was doing his rounds and
saw C with the sheet already tied around his neck.
Speaker 12 (23:37):
Had that time, I opened the food port gave him
multiple orders to stop.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
When C doesn't respond, the officer says, he sprays him
with pepper spray.
Speaker 15 (23:46):
My intent was to have to save his life from
stocking him from actually choking himself and killing himself.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
An officer gets C to come to the door to
put hand cuffs on him, and he shackled by his
feet and behind his back, and then they escort him
to what's called a decontamination cell. It's basically a cage
the size of a phone booth that they can spray
a hose into to wash the pepper spray off him.
Speaker 14 (24:16):
And boom. He pushed me in there, and my face
is the back of the sound. I wanted like that
boom here my.
Speaker 15 (24:25):
Face this injury that's right there across your nose, clothing.
Speaker 14 (24:30):
My wife in my head and the face like that boom,
and then my eye and then my face and then
my neck.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
But the officers who are escorting him tell it differently.
Speaker 16 (24:40):
He just kept trying to pull away, so I tight
and migrated and canseled him to knock, not pull away
from myself.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
The officer says, Ce broke away from them and lunged
towards the shower.
Speaker 16 (24:54):
Hey, and then he ended up tripping over the there's
a lip on the shower, Yeah, tripping over the bottom
lip fashion in the back of the shower, and I
immediately closed a shower blocked in again.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
Se denies this.
Speaker 12 (25:08):
Were you resistant at all?
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Ill him resisting?
Speaker 15 (25:10):
I don't know. You were just walking calmly, unlocking, calmly.
Speaker 14 (25:15):
I mean I get the injuries from trying to hide myself.
I got the injuries from him pushing me.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
So to recap. According to c he was suicidal. An
officer gave him a noose, pepper sprayed him, and he
was forcibly thrown into a cage and injured really badly.
The version officers tell is that Sea already had the noose.
They pepper sprayed him to save his life, and he
(25:41):
got hurt first when he fell from his bunk and
then again when he pulled away from them and tripped
face first into the shower cage. The last account of
events I'm going to walk you through is Valentinos because
he was one of the offer officers who responded that day.
(26:02):
Here he is introducing himself on tape to an investigator
with the Internal Affairs Department.
Speaker 15 (26:08):
Valentino rodri Juez, Correctional officer, California Department of Corrections, sacrament
Estate Prison.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
The agent tells Valentino, he's here as a witness.
Speaker 11 (26:19):
Can you give me your account of that incident?
Speaker 15 (26:23):
Her on the radio announcement that there was a inmate
hanging inmate compan hanging in two block in B session.
Speaker 5 (26:31):
Valentino says, he put on his gloves and rushed to
the cell.
Speaker 15 (26:34):
It's apparent that he was sprayed with OC because OC
pepper sprayed because he had he was spitting up mucus
and a little bit of blood on his face from
being sprayed.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
As the two officers took C to hose off, they
walked him past Valentino, who says he saw a little
bump on C's forehead.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Could you see what his clothing?
Speaker 15 (26:54):
I don't remember. I don't remember if I could at
the time.
Speaker 16 (26:57):
Can you now.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
So he goes to the shower cage with really no
major injuries that Valentino could see.
Speaker 15 (27:07):
At what point did you observe an injury on him?
When the water was turned off and I walked into
the cage to open it up, I observe some injuries
onto the top of his head and across his face.
I think believe it was across the faces. Can you
tell me about to describe those injuries? They were gashes,
(27:29):
like large, large gashes.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Valentino was asked to photograph seize injuries and then take
him to get medical attention. We got those pictures that
he took. The man's face is partially blacked out, but
you can see a five inch gash across his forehead
and his cheek is split open from his nose to
below his cheekbone.
Speaker 15 (27:50):
Is there anything else you'd like to tell me that
you have not already discussed during this interview.
Speaker 8 (27:57):
Before I turn off the recorder.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
I want to remind you it's a big deal any
time an officer gets pulled into an investigation, even just
as a witness, because lying is a fireable offense. We
know Valentino told the people closest to him about this incident.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I remember that when it happened, he was so scared
for weeks.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
When we got this recording through a public records request
to CDCR, it was one of the things we really
wanted to share with val Senior. Want to hear it? Yeah,
My co reporter Julie Small sat down with him and
pressed play on the recording.
Speaker 15 (28:35):
To the theater is December nine, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
Val Senior had never heard this interview with his son before.
Speaker 15 (28:42):
Again, A bump, a little bout a danger about his ire. Okay,
I think I wish I can't call Okay.
Speaker 7 (28:52):
I think that.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
Do you think that he's telling the truth there?
Speaker 17 (28:57):
I think because I know my son, he has a
really good memories, really detail orientated, and for him not
to remember which side the cut was on and certain things,
it's just to me, he's sounds like he's worried right there, scared.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
Valentino told him that what happened during the incident was
different than what those officers wrote in their reports and
told investigators, But he said he felt like he had
to go along with their story.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
You should see his face and he come over. That
broke my heart. Man, Because he had a job and
he told me, Dad, you have to you have to
tell the same story because you're on a team. Yeah,
and if you don't, then you're the odd man out.
Speaker 5 (29:47):
Mimi told us something similar.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
He was told like, hey, you know, this is this
is what we're writing, and it's important that all of
us have the same story, and it's important for all
of us to be on the same page. And he
told me how They never really specifically said you must
do it this way, you must write it this, you
must do it that. It was more of like, this
is what we are doing, and this is how we're
(30:11):
going to do it, and this is what's important for
our team, so we can all be on the same page.
He felt a lot of pressure because he didn't want
to lose his job.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
CDCR did not respond to specific questions about this incident.
A spokesperson did write in an email that the agency
takes all allegations of employee misconduct seriously and there is
a new process for making sure complaints are quote properly,
fairly and thoroughly reviewed. The spokesperson also pointed out that
there is a new system of fixed and body cameras
(30:54):
at New folsome so we don't know exactly what the
truth is about this incident. What we do know is
that C was severely injured. Medical reports show he received
twenty seven stitches, his nose was broken, and his spine
was fractured in three places. Ultimately, those in charge believed
(31:16):
the officer's story that C fractured his back when he
slipped and fell off his bunk and injured his face
and head when he lunged away from officers and landed
on the metal rails of the decontamination shower. And that's
the story that Valentino chose to go along with, even
though he told his father it wasn't true. This wouldn't
(31:39):
be the last time Valentino felt compromised by his job.
(32:00):
Rodriguez told my colleague Julie and me that working in
the psychiatric unit really took a toll on Valentino.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
He would talk about how draining it was, and he
would have come home drained and did not look like
to you. I mean he would just drag his feet.
He would drag his feet, come in and he didn't
want to eat. He would shower and just go to sleep.
I mean he was just quiet.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
He worked double shifts so we could get more days
off in a row to recharge.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
That's when he would talk more about work and be like, yeah,
like you you know, it was a little stressful and
I'm dealing with this or I'm talking about this, but
you know, I'm happy to go in, and he was
always very enthusiastic.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
About two and a half years after he'd gotten to
New folsom late twenty eighteen, Valentino's hard work looked like
it was paying off. Remember the squad that detective unit
Valentino was aiming for. An officer there went on leave
for PTSD and there was a vacancy on the team.
One of the supervisors who knew Valentino thought he'd be
(33:03):
good at the job and gave him the chance to
fill in.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
He was really excited for that, but he didn't think
he was going to get that opportunity.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
He'd made the squad working in the security and the
investigations unit, but on a temporary basis. To get the
position permanently, he'd have to impress the right people.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
He's like, yes, of course, i I'll do it. I
mean he was ready.
Speaker 5 (33:28):
Valentino called to let his parents know he got promoted.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
He called his mom first, and she told me Bell
got a promotion.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
He told them it was a really good position, one
that a lot of other people wanted, and that he
was the youngest on the team.
Speaker 13 (33:44):
I asked him, how's your first day?
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, he goes, there's a bunch of older guys. Dad
had been there. He called him ojeez.
Speaker 13 (33:50):
I said, well, how do you go? He goes to
ask who the fuck are you?
Speaker 5 (33:54):
So from the very beginning, there was tension on the team.
Some of the people he worked with felt like he'd
skipped the line, that he hadn't done enough to prove himself.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
There was one time where he had asked me to
make little cheesecakes. There's your little mini pie cheesecakes that
I would make, and I made a bunch for the team,
and like nobody had them, nobody ate them, and they
would just tell him like, no, we don't want this
or we don't want that.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
At first, he tried to earn their acceptance by just
working really hard, trying to prove that he was up
to the job.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
He just continued to just put his head down in work.
I think that's what really bothered him, that he would
just try to do the right thing and it just
didn't seem like it was enough.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Valentino was making busts and working cases, but to some
of his co workers this might have made him seem
like even more of a threat. Because higher ups were
noticing his work. Valentino was getting a reputation for being
a diligent investigator, thorough and for writing really good reports.
(34:55):
This was a big deal because paperwork reports are hugely
important to prison With one hundred and fifteen thousand people
incarcerated in the state's prisons at the time, these reports
are how the agency kept track of everybody. Officers need
to document everything gang affiliations, medical needs, disability status, history
(35:17):
of suicide, fights with staff, and so on, and these
reports are also the basis for disciplinary action like sending
someone to solitary confinement or charging them with a new crime.
These reports hold a lot of power, and it is
a crime for an officer to falsify an official report.
(35:38):
Valentino wanted to keep moving up in this system and
expanding his skills as an investigator. On the weekends when
he wasn't working, he'd pay out a pocket to go
to these training events and seminars, and during these trips
he became friends with a guy named Sergeant Kevin Steele.
Steele passed away in twenty twenty one, so we couldn't
(36:00):
interview him, but val Senior came to know him well.
Speaker 10 (36:03):
He was about five to seven my age, maybe a
little bit older, using good shape, you know.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
He shaved his head and.
Speaker 5 (36:11):
Stood straight up picture of Bruce Willis type in his fifties,
with intense, bright blue eyes. He was a military veteran
and a straight shooter. Sergeant Steele also worked in the ISU.
He was senior to Valentino, but he was in a
different division. He was in the prosecution division. It was
his job to prepare cases for the district attorney to
(36:32):
bring criminal charges.
Speaker 18 (36:34):
He was very good speaking and writing, very passionate about
his job, and loyal. He was very very important to
that prison for a good reason.
Speaker 5 (36:46):
The two officers really respected each other. Both of them
were kind of law enforcement nerds, committed to going the
extra mile. Valentino would testify in court for Steele's cases.
All that extra training meant he was a great expert witness,
and Steele became one of the few people Valentino trusted,
a mentor and someone he called regularly for advice about
(37:09):
criminal case protocol or how to handle evidence. Things with
the other guys in his division, however, were getting worse.
Speaker 10 (37:17):
Sometimes he would text the guys for help and they'd
have their own group texts, and they would like they
wouldn't they didn't want.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
To help them.
Speaker 5 (37:23):
Some of these group texts are pretty awful. They mock
his weight and call him half patch to remind him
he's still just a temporary member of the squad.
Speaker 15 (37:34):
Do these things that you saw after he died? Mm
hmm only yah.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
He never He never said look deadly what they're saying.
He is never.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
But these messages would escalate even further before they stopped.
The brotherhood. The family that Valentino had been promised at
his academy graduation was nowhere to be found.
Speaker 13 (37:54):
And he used to go in on weekends to work
because some of the team wasn't there to harass him.
Speaker 10 (38:04):
Nobody was calling him names or anything or intending him anyway,
so he liked going there on saturdays. I know that
he told me he used to go to work in
the mornings, and then he told me he would go
into the restroom to vomit because he felt so much anxiety.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
An attorney for these officers declined our request to interview
her clients, but she said that any allegations that any
of them bullied, Haze, or harassed Valentino are false. Val
Senior says he wouldn't understand until much later the full
scope of what his son was going through or of
the things he was being asked to do in the
(38:46):
name of this team. But he did notice a change
come over his son. He wasn't sleeping, and he gained
sixty pounds over the course of the year he was
in the ISU squad. Sometimes when they were hanging out well,
he'd get this blank look on his face.
Speaker 13 (39:02):
I could tell that he was starting to build this
mental mechanism where he knew that I turned things off,
you know, because I used to see him stare into
space and then he'd snap.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Out of it.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
And this distance was coming between Valentino and Mimi too.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
What really bothered me about his job was that he
was never home.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
They were planning to get married and have kids, but
more and more she felt like Valentino was always gone.
There were the overtime shifts he had to work, and
the milestones and their life together were passing by without him.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
I understood that it was his job and it was
a requirement.
Speaker 6 (39:43):
But what would frustrate me is that when I would
ask him, like why couldn't you make it or why
couldn't do this? He would say, well, I asked for
help and no one came to help me. And I
would tell him, Valentino, where your family, Like, we love you,
you know, if something happens to you, that job is
just going to place you.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
But how we can't replace you.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
She remembers one holiday, maybe Thanksgiving, where she went to
his family's house for dinner.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
I remember just sitting there waiting for him at his
grandma's house, just waiting.
Speaker 6 (40:18):
He couldn't show up.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
Once again, Valentino had to stay late working at the prison, and.
Speaker 6 (40:25):
It just broke my heart because I just felt alone.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
I felt really lonely. His family very nice, I mean,
don't get me wrong, very kind people, but I don't
want to sit next to his grandma per se when
I can just sit next to him.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
It was in the midst of these pressures. Valentino was overworked,
the holidays were happening, and he felt ostracized by his team.
That something major happened at the prison. Val Senior says
he was the family Christmas party. Everyone was having a
good time eating and drinking. They had a game of
White Elephant going and they were all laughing a lot.
(41:07):
Valentino showed up late straight from work around ten o'clock
at night, and as soon as he walked in the door,
Valcignior knew something was wrong.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Yeah, I could just see his face just slept. Something
really bothering him. I've seen that look on his face before,
but it was really intense.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
Val Senior asked him what was going on.
Speaker 12 (41:29):
And that's when he took his phone out and he
showed me the video.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
The scene that Valcignior saw on his son's cell phone
was incredibly violent. A video taken by surveillance cameras and
one of the most high security housing units in New Folsome.
The camera angle is from inside the control booth, which
looks out on two tiers of cells. Right in front
of the booth, there's an open area on the ground
(41:53):
floor called a day room. In this day room, there
are these metal desks in a semicircle with clear de
between them. In the video, Valcignior saw a man shackled
to one of these chairs with two other guys standing
over him.
Speaker 12 (42:10):
This guy, this kid's being stabbed over and over and over,
and he literally would shrug his shoulders and cover his
neck while they're trying to stab him the neck, and
then they would go back down the chest, and then
he would try to cover his chest by concaving his
chest inward, and then he'd go back to his neck,
and it was just back and forth. So finally the
kid threw himself on the floor and they proceeded to
(42:32):
just stab him to the point to where the knights
were literally hitting the ground because every time they pulled.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Up, his body would go up with it.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
The man on the floor was now lifeless. Valcenior watched
as two attackers painted his blood across their faces. But
Valentino wanted his dad to notice something else.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
He had said, look at that the guy in the
towers not even amy using rubber bullets.
Speaker 5 (43:02):
Valentino was pointing out to his dad that the officer
in the control booth didn't use his rifle to immediately
stop the deadly threat. He fired his less lethal weapon
that shoots rounds made out of hard foam, and he
fired it way too late.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
You're supposed to use like rounds.
Speaker 10 (43:20):
I tried not to emphasize or talk about or look
at it. I just wanted to go on to my
little Christmas party, so I told him, you know, to
put that thing away go and he just liked what
he does stepped out of it.
Speaker 5 (43:34):
But that wasn't all. Valentino was also instructed to write
up a particular type of confidential report for statewide gang investigators.
The report was supposed to lay out how the killing
was tied to a dispute between rival gangs. A lot
of questions would later be raised about that report and
(43:55):
who was really behind the murder. CDCR said it cannot
comment on the case because it's part of an active investigation.
Valcior wonders about this murder too. His son was found
dead by fentanyl intoxication less than a year after this
Christmas party, and he was one of the people who
(44:16):
suspected there was something really wrong about what happened in
that day room at New folsom.
Speaker 7 (44:29):
You have the laptop or to follow along, I guess.
Speaker 5 (44:35):
So how are we doing this in Valor's office and
his swimming pool construction company and Sacramento hanging on the wall.
He's got that picture that Valentino painted of the two
of them sitting side by side on the edge of
the dock fishing. Sometimes, he says he can still feel
his son close to him by his side, and he's
(44:57):
holding my hand.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
He just wants me to find find peace. And I
find parts of peace, but not completely.
Speaker 5 (45:07):
When Valentino was a kid and val Senior would come
home from work, he says, his son would run up
and pull on the sleeve of his shirt.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Dead dead dead, But I just feel him tugging still,
you know.
Speaker 13 (45:18):
And I owe that to him.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
And I'm gonna go as far as I can.
Speaker 10 (45:25):
And and in the end, if nothing is nothing I
tried right, I'll find my answers where my time comes.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Since his son's death, valcor has been pulled into a
new role. Now he's become the investigator.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Shows where they got moved to?
Speaker 5 (45:47):
Where is it a different as our little reporting team. Julie,
Stephen and I crowd around the computer in his office.
Valcior shows us the evidence he's collected about the killing
of that guy in the day room, a twenty nine
year old man named Luis Giovanni Aguilar. He's still trying
to understand how and if that murder connects to his
(46:10):
son's death. Where did this come from?
Speaker 13 (46:14):
Just people were saying, we still look at the secret source.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
See all these different sources.
Speaker 5 (46:19):
It's stuff from his confidential sources who work inside New
Folsome Valor drags and drops the folders on his computer
one by one onto the hard drive that we've brought
for just this purpose. All do our best to just
try and keep you informed about our process.
Speaker 13 (46:37):
Is this one of the bigger stories you've done with
podcast or computer?
Speaker 5 (46:42):
Yeult, I mean, it's a very it's a very complex story.
But at the same time, I think it's really like
a really important story. Yeah, I tell him we're looking
into this because his son's story is part of something
even larger. Since twenty nineteen, when a new transparency law
(47:02):
went into effect here in California, Julie and I have
been trying to get a clear picture of what the
consequences are for correctional officers who use excessive force in prison,
lie on their reports, or discriminate against their colleagues. That's
been a black box for decades, hidden by laws that
were lobbied for by correctional officer and police unions. Now
(47:27):
we've gotten hundreds and hundreds of documents. Some of them
are related to troubling use of force incidents, like the
tapes you heard earlier, and as we went through them,
we discovered that a really high number of these incidents
had taken place at New Folsom. When we heard there
was an officer who was blowing the whistle on misconduct
(47:47):
there and then died, we knew we had to see
if there was a connection, and the answer to that
question could be among the evidence Valcior was loading onto
our hard drive.
Speaker 19 (47:59):
What you're offering by what you have and the content
that you have, the text messages, combined with all the
records that we've requested, we'll be able to see into
the prisons and how they function in a way that
really hasn't been done much.
Speaker 5 (48:17):
These records were completely secret, and we are the first
people to analyze them. As we walk out of his office,
lets you be fal Senior hands us back the hard drives,
(48:39):
really appreci.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
What else.
Speaker 5 (48:44):
Coming up next time Valentino reaches a breaking point at
work that.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Was a flat out threat and when he got to
work they laughed at it.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
I remember this very clearly. He said, this is my identity,
So I feel like I've given up on everything.
Speaker 5 (49:02):
And someone else starts looking into the murder in the
day room and finding clues, clues that point the finger
not just at the two men with knives, but also
at New Folsome itself.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
When's the data on that one that's he died?
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Oh he texted steal the day he died.
Speaker 5 (49:23):
It's friend Steel. You're listening to on our Watch, season
two New Fulsome from KQED. If you have any tips
(49:45):
or feedback about the series, you can email us at
on our Watch at KQED dot org. You can also
leave us a review in Apple Podcasts. This series is
reported by me Sukie Lewis and Julie Small. It's edited
by Victoria Malone. It's produced and scored by Stephen Rascone
and Chris Agusa. Sound design and mixing by Tarak Fuda.
(50:09):
Jen Chien is kqd's director of Podcasts, and she executive
produced the series. Meticulous fact checking by Mark Bettencourt. Additional
research by Kayla Mahalovich and Kathleen Quinn, students in the
Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
Special thanks to Rassan Thomas of ear Hustle Sandia Dirk's
(50:29):
of NPR, KQED Health correspondent April Demboski, and to our
in house council Rebecca Hopkins. Original music by romptin arab Luis,
including our theme song. Additional music from Cameron Fraser, APM
Music and Audio Network. We got tremendous support from David Barstow,
chair of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate
(50:52):
School of Journalism, and graduate students Julieta Bisharion, William Jenkins,
armand Olia, Arrell Watt, and June Yao Yong. Thanks also
to UC Berkeley's Jeremy Rue and Amanda Glazer for their
data analysis. The internal records highlighted in this podcast were
obtained as part of the California Reporting Project. Funding for
(51:13):
On Our Watch is provided in part by Arnold Ventures
and the California Endowment. Thank you to our Managing editor
of News and Enterprise, Otis R. Taylor Junior Ethan Toven
lindsay Are, Vice president of News and KQED Chief Content Officer,
Holly Kernan. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Dax-Devlon Ross
Steve Fishman
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