Rebecca Cleland Case: Murder, Retrial, and Life Sentence

The Rebecca Cleland case is a Los Angeles murder-for-hire prosecution in which Rebecca Cleland, born Rebecca Quezada Salcedo, arranged the 1997 killing of her husband, Bruce Cleland, to collect roughly $986,688 in life insurance, retirement accounts, and other assets. A jury first convicted her in 2000, an appellate court reversed that verdict in 2003 over Fifth Amendment violations, and a second jury convicted her again in December 2006. She was sentenced in January 2007 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Who Bruce and Rebecca Cleland Were

Bruce Cleland was a 43-year-old software designer at TRW’s aerospace division. Friends and family described him as shy, frugal, and socially awkward. He met Rebecca Salcedo at the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet in late 1995, where she was selling spices.¹ Within a week, according to Bruce’s mother Theda Cleland, Rebecca was pushing for marriage, and Bruce began lavishing her with cars, trips, cosmetic surgery, a boat, furniture, and a diamond ring.²

They married in a secret civil ceremony in October 1996 and held a church wedding in January 1997. Bruce bought a house in Whittier, but Rebecca moved in alone while he continued living with his parents. Roughly three months after the church wedding, he moved back home. By June 1997 he told his parents he had given up on the marriage and asked for help finding a divorce lawyer.²

Prosecutors later showed that Rebecca had told friends she married Bruce for his money and planned to divorce him quickly, that she ran a credit report on him shortly after they met, and that she carried on extramarital relationships throughout the marriage. When Bruce’s attorney told him California law entitled Rebecca to very little from such a short marriage, her efforts to negotiate a favorable separation collapsed.³

The Night of the Murder

On the evening of July 25, 1997, Bruce met Rebecca for what he believed was a reconciliation dinner at La Parrilla in Boyle Heights. His mother later recalled that Rebecca had “begged him for one more chance” and that Bruce was “kind of thrilled, but somehow, something was wrong. He had a worried look on his face.”²

After dinner, Rebecca was driving Bruce’s new Toyota 4Runner toward their Whittier home. She pulled over near the intersection of Beswick and Concord streets, at a freeway onramp near Interstate 5 that was closed for construction, claiming a rear hatch warning light had come on. Prosecutors said her cousin Jose Quezada then approached the passenger side and shot Bruce in the face. As Bruce tried to flee, he was shot in the back and twice more in the back of the head.³ Cell phone records showed eleven calls between Rebecca and her cousins in the hours before the killing.⁴

Rebecca told police the couple had been carjacked and that she had been knocked unconscious. Investigators found the story implausible. She had no visible injuries, and her purse, keys, and cell phone were still in the vehicle. Nothing had been taken. When she was brought to view her husband’s body, officers described her demeanor as “relaxed, lackadaisical, and uninterested.”¹

The Money at Stake

Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum told the jury that “it was all about the money.”³ Prosecutors calculated that Rebecca stood to gain approximately $986,688 from Bruce’s death:

A TRW basic life insurance policy equal to half his annual salary, plus a $517,000 optional accidental death policy.
A $200,000 mortgage insurance policy that would have paid off the Whittier house.
Roughly $196,000 in TRW stock savings and 401(k) retirement assets.
A $25,000 JC Penney life insurance policy Rebecca had taken out on Bruce, forging his signature on the application.

In the month before the murder, she added $225,000 in accidental death coverage to the existing policies.⁵ Prosecutors also introduced evidence that she had threatened to falsely accuse Bruce of molesting her son to gain leverage in a divorce, and that after the killing she retained an attorney to help her collect on the policies and paid $500 to her cousin Alvaro Quezada.¹

Investigation and Arrests

Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective Rick Peterson led a seven-month investigation. On February 17, 1998, Peterson arrested Rebecca at her home. Her cousins Jose and Alvaro Quezada were arrested separately the same day.⁶

After the arrests, detectives placed Rebecca and Jose together in the back of a patrol car equipped with a hidden recording device for fifteen minutes, hoping to capture an incriminating conversation. The two barely spoke beyond an initial greeting. When detectives later asked Jose whether he knew the woman who had been in the car with him, he replied, “I’ve never seen her before.” Rebecca, asked the same question, identified him as “my cousin, Joe.”⁷ Those two moments would drive the appeal that followed.

Rebecca was charged with first-degree murder with the special circumstances of murder for financial gain and lying in wait. Her attorney at the time, Raul Ayala, called the investigation “supposition and flimsy evidence” and cited a personal physician who examined Rebecca three days after the killing and found evidence of a “severe blow to the head.”⁶

The First Conviction and Why It Was Reversed

Rebecca Cleland, Jose Quezada, and Alvaro Quezada were tried together before Judge Jacqueline A. Connor in Los Angeles Superior Court. On June 29, 2000, the jury convicted all three of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and found the special-circumstance allegations true, making each defendant ineligible for parole.⁴

On May 27, 2003, the California Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 7, overturned the convictions of Rebecca and Jose and ordered new trials. Alvaro Quezada’s conviction was affirmed.¹ The reversal rested on two Fifth Amendment problems. First, Jose’s statement that he did not know Rebecca had been obtained through police questioning after his arrest but before he was read his Miranda rights; the appellate court found the questioning “had no legitimate purpose” and “was simply a technique intended to elicit an incriminating statement.”⁷

Second, the prosecution had used the fifteen minutes of silence in the patrol car as affirmative evidence of guilt. In closing, Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum told jurors that the defendants “are looking at each other but they are not saying a word” and that the silence “speaks volumes,” and that there was “no innocent explanation” for it. Presiding Justice Dennis Perluss held that this was impermissible commentary on the defendants’ right to remain silent. Because Rebecca and Jose were the only people who could have offered an “innocent explanation,” the argument penalized them for exercising a constitutional right. The panel called the case against Rebecca “entirely circumstantial” and concluded the guilty verdicts were “surely attributable” to the constitutional violations.¹

The Retrial, Second Conviction, and Sentence

Rebecca’s retrial was held before Judge Robert J. Perry. Without the patrol-car evidence, the case turned on the financial motive and the implausibility of the carjacking story. The defense also shifted. Her attorney conceded that her cousins had killed Bruce but argued she expected them only to confront him and that she was “totally shocked” when Jose opened fire, then panicked and invented the carjacking.⁸

Hum countered by pointing to the insurance policies, the forged signatures, the absence of “any noticeable injuries,” and the fact that Rebecca had cancelled Bruce’s cell phone subscription shortly after his death. “No way is this the behavior of someone who’s seen her husband unexpectedly murdered,” he told the jury.⁵

In December 2006, the jury again found Rebecca guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, with the special circumstances of financial gain and lying in wait found true.⁵ On January 26, 2007, Judge Perry sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Asked if she had anything to say, she replied, “No, your honor.”⁹

Rebecca appealed the second conviction on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel, arguing that the concession strategy was fatally flawed. On July 21, 2008, a panel of the Second District Court of Appeal rejected the claim. Presiding Justice Dennis M. Perluss, the same justice who had reversed her first conviction, wrote that the strategy, “while undeniably risky, resulted from a reasonable tactical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the prosecution’s evidence.”⁸

What Happened to the Cousins

Alvaro Quezada, the getaway driver, never had his original conviction overturned and has been serving life without parole since the 2000 verdict.⁹ Jose Quezada, identified by prosecutors as the shooter, was retried alongside Rebecca in 2006, but Judge Perry declared a mistrial for him after Rebecca’s attorney identified him as the gunman in a way that raised due process concerns; her lawyer had told the jury she would testify but she never took the stand.¹⁰ He was convicted after a third trial and is also serving life.

Ed Brown, Bruce Cleland’s brother-in-law and the best man at the couple’s wedding, spoke briefly outside the courtroom after Rebecca’s sentencing: “Having been through this for some time and for so long, I’m just worn out. I’m glad it happened, but my feelings are just kind of exhausted. What she did to Bruce while he was alive was worthy of imprisonment.”¹¹ Rebecca Cleland has been in custody since her arrest on February 17, 1998.

1
FindLaw. People v. Cleland
2
Los Angeles Times. Police Arrest Widow in Murder-for-Hire Plot
3
Daily Breeze. A Tale of One Woman’s Greed
4
Los Angeles Times. Three Convicted in Murder-for-Hire Plot
5
Daily Breeze. Cleland Found Guilty of Murder
6
Los Angeles Times. Widow Arrested in Slaying of Husband
7
MetNews. Court Overturns Murder Convictions
8
San Bernardino Sun. Appeals Court Upholds Cleland’s Conviction
9
Daily News. Woman Sent to Prison for Life
10
San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Mistrial Declared for Man Accused of Slaying Relative
11
Pasadena Star-News. Woman Sent to Prison for Life