Mystery In Room 813

One night six years ago, at a Sheraton Hotel just east of Los Angeles, a woman went over the balcony of Room 813. There were no witnesses – except for one man.

The woman's death would be Detective Ray Rodriguez's last case in a 33-year career. At just after 8 a.m. on Nov. 13, 1996, he got the call, an apparent suicide. Or was it murder? Bill Lagattuta reports.

She was 27–year-old Sandra Orellana, a single woman from Houston. She lay 104 feet down from the balcony of her hotel room.

Rodriguez was immediately suspicious: "The body appeared like, a lot of trauma," Rodriguez says. "The only thing that I've ever seen close to that is like when someone has been hit by a train. The body was naked, except for a little camisole top that was on the body. That was concerning to me right then and there at the initial time that I first saw the body."

Rodriguez explains: "It's only been like once or twice that I've encountered a naked suicide."

While they were investigating, Robert Lee Salazar came out of Room 815. He was 33, an executive also from Houston, a married man with two children. He told police that Orellana worked for him and that they were traveling together.

"Salazar asks the officer, 'What's going on,' and the officer says, 'Well, were investigating some sort of accident.'" Rodriguez says.

"Salazar collapses, crying," Rodriguez says. "He starts crying. And he leans back against the wall. And he just slides down the wall of the hallway."

Salazar told the deputy he and Orellana had been out the night before to dinner, and had been drinking. He said she'd been very drunk, and he had put her in her room about midnight, and closed the door, and left.

But police were suspicious. They had found a pair of men's underwear in her room, and a shoe. In Salazar's room Rodriguez found the other shoe and similar underwear. Salazar soon admitted that he had sex with Orellano the night before. Then he said she had accidentally fallen while they were engaged in foreplay on the balcony.

"(I was) rubbing on her, she was rubbing on me. She, she turned around. And then all of the sudden she, she grabbed the balcony and pushed herself up to, to turn over. And when she did that she just went over," he told Rodriguez.

But Rodriguez had immediate doubts, suspecting foul play on Salazar's part. "I believe that there was, that they were both intoxicated. I believe that Robert Salazar made sexual advances onto Sandra. I think that she was on the bed, and then that she pretty much passed out on the bed. I think that he started to make sexual advance on her and I think that she woke up. She was startled by it. And I think that she fought him."

The first policeman to talk to Salazar that morning noted his marked face. At some point, Rodriguez thinks, Salazar hit her and knocked her out. Then, he thinks, Salazar took her on the balcony and threw her over the railing.

Salazar never called anyone to report that Orellana had gone off the balcony. He did however make two other phone calls, that according to Rodriguez made him look even more guilty.

Before the police arrived, Salazar twice called Sandra's room, leaving messages on the hotel voice mail to a woman he knew was dead.

"When I hear those two tapes that afternoon, I'm thinking to myself how does anyone call a dead woman, and tells her to wake up? And not once. Twice," says Rodriguez.

Rodriguez arrested Salazar the next day. But two days after he was taken into custody, Salazar was released without being charged. Two months later, the Los Angeles county coroner ruled Orellana's death was a homicide but the district attorney chose not to indict. Sandra's family couldn't understand why Salazar wasn't charged.

The Los Angeles District attorney's office said there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute Salazar for murder. But something else was influencing the Los Angeles District Attorney's office at that time. The DA had just lost one high-profile murder case, O. J. Simpson, and didn't want to risk losing another. Assistant District Attorney Bob Foltz says the prosecutor's office became very cautious.

Six years after her death, Sandra Orellana's family still grieves. "I don't like to see the tombstone. I don't like to see her name. It's just too much," says her older sister, Katherine Orellana. The Orellana family thinks Sandra was murdered.

At that time of the death, Sandra Orellana's boyfriend was working and living in Hong Kong. She was thinking of moving there.

Katherine says she was especially upset because her sister had been complaining about Salazar's unwanted sexual advances. Sandra's Aunt Olga, who was very close to Sandra, said Sandra told her that Salazar often made suggestive comments to her at work. Olga says Sandra was ready to move on, trying to get away from Robert Salazar. Katherine says her sister told her that Salazar had made passes at her.

When the arrangements for the trip to California were made, Sandra wasn't happy. "She felt that it was just another instance when he's trying to make a situation happen, or looking for an opportunity to be alone with her," says Katherine, who doesn't believe that Sandra and Salazar went onto the balcony to have sex. "She was afraid of heights. She didn't like balconies," she says.