Man kills former nanny, then kills himself

KVOA TV Tucson/January 10, 2005
By Lupita Murillo

Ricky Rodriguez committed suicide Saturday in Blythe California.

Minutes before he killed himself he called his wife in Washington State.

She says "He told me he was sad...he told me...he wanted to see me if only one more time."

He also told her he had done something terrible.

It turns out....Rodriguez murdered a woman in Tucson.

This is the apt. complex where Rodriguez lived and where police found the body of 51-year-old Angela Smith. A crew was cleaning up the apt. Where police say Smith was murdered.....stabbed to death....sources say it was a crime of passion....

Sgt. Carlos Valdez says "we're working with his family members friends may have been in town trying to figure out what kind of state he was in."

The management at the complex says Rodriguez moved here in Oct. Nice man... Never imagined he would brutally murder someone.

Both Rodriguez and Smith belonged to a religious group...once called Children of God now called "the family."

There is a website put together by people who have left what they call a cult.

Rodriguez wife says they too had left the religious group. She says Smith had sexually abused her husband as a child.

"She was one of his nannies and she sexaully abused him. And he tried to move on with his life he tried to get over the pain."

But apparently the pain was too much to bear...and his past came to haunt him. Rodriguez and Smith reportedly went to dinner Saturday night.

"Something happened that night she said something to trigger him..because he was not an angry person not the kind of person...I'm trying to understand this."

His widow says Rodriguez's mother knew of the abuse and chose not to do anything about it.

She also says sexual abuse was not uncommon in that religious sect.