SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - The break in a Northern California murder and kidnapping case began simply enough. Agents with the State Division of Motor Vehicles were making a routine check of license plates in a Motel 6 parking lot on North Temple. They were looking for stolen cars. What they found instead was a 2003 blue-green Hyundai Tiburon wanted in connection with an endangered person’s advisory out of El Dorado County, California.
Salt Lake City Police were called in. Along with the car, officers also found and detained a man and woman. The man had three gunshot or knife wounds. The woman had several cuts. Both were taken to the hospital for treatment and then held for El Dorado County Sheriff’s investigators.
Now here’s what all this has to do with murder and kidnapping:
On June 25, a burned Suburban belonging to Ronald Presba was found down a ravine off Highway 193, about 50 miles east of Sacramento. It was treated as traffic accident until officers discovered a bloody trail down the highway leading to the wreckage and a body inside the Suburban that was so badly burned they’ll have to await the results of DNA tests before confirming the body was Ronald Presba. Whoever was in the vehicle, the accident had become murder.
Then, on July 24, deputies found the door to Presba’s house ajar. Inside the house, doors were kicked in and there was another trail of blood from the bedroom to the bathroom and even into the kitchen. Presba’s wife, 47-year-old Patricia, is nowhere to be found. Also missing is Jaime Ramos, who at one time lived with the Presbas. Based on the obvious violence at the home, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s office issued the endangered persons advisory for Patricia Presba. That leads us back to the Motel 6 on North Temple.
Is the man Jaime Ramos? Is the woman Patricia Presba? Was she being held against her will? And what’s become of her husband, Ronald? The answers to these questions just may come as a result of a routine check of license plates in a motel parking lot.
