Presumed Guilty. Cases. Timeline. Ranjel

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March 5, 1997, 5:20 PM - CARMEL SANGER MURDERED:
"911 call from the Pink Tarantula beauty salon, scene of the Carmel Sanger murder."

March 1997 - THE POLICE INVESTIGATION:
"Local television report from the scene of the murder. The reporter questions homicide detectives at the scene."

March-December 1997 - MARCOS RANJEL/AMBER TYLER QUESTIONED:
"Homicide detective Joe Toomey questions Marcos Ranjel in the police interrogation room."

This story is culled from the defendant's own words, information given to the public defender, and the court records of the case.




	MURDER FOR HIRE This timeline detail the specifics of The "Pink Turantula" murder and trial, and Will Maas's defense of defendant Marcos Ranjel.

	3/5/1997, 5:20 pm - CARMEL SANGER MURDERED A man wearing a bandanna walks into trendy San Francisco hair salon The Pink Tarantula and asks to speak to owner Carmel Sanger. When she comes to the front desk, the man shoots her point blank through the left eye. She dies an hour later.

	3/1997 - THE POLICE INVESTIGATE Sanger's friends tell the police to focus on her ex-husband, Robert Sanger, from whom she had had an acrimonious divorce. There are many eyewitnesses to the shooting--people on the street, co-workers in the salon--who describe the shooter as a roughly 5-foot-7-inch Hispanic man with shaved eyebrows. This physical description does not fit Sanger's ex-husband. An eyewitness who saw the getaway car says it was a black Chevy Malibu with a license plate beginning with either AUJ or 1AUJ. The police recover the murder weapon, which had been tossed in an alley a few blocks from the murder scene.

	3-4/1997 - MARCOS RANJEL AND AMBER TYLER QUESTIONED On March 20, 1997, the search for the Chevy Malibu leads homicide detectives Joseph Toomey and Michael Johnson to the home of Amber Tyler and her boyfriend, Marcos Ranjel. When asked if they know Robert Sanger, Ranjel says, "No, we don't know him," but Tyler says, "Yes we do, we know Robert," as if to correct Ranjel. Toomey and Johnson see immediately that Ranjel matches the eyewitnesses' description of the shooter and that Tyler matches the description of the driver of the getaway car. They take Ranjel to the station and try to get him to confess to the murder, but he does not and is released. A few weeks later, the detectives have gathered enough evidence to get a warrant for the arrest of Ranjel and Tyler. Eyewitnesses have made positive identification of Ranjel based on his police photo, but the suspects have disappeared. The television program America's Most Wanted broadcasts a show on the Carmel Sanger murder and the prime suspects: Marcos Ranjel and Amber Tyler.

	12/10/1997 - RANJEL AND TYLER ARRESTED IN SEATTLE On a tip from an informer, San Francisco homicide detectives learn that Marcos Ranjel and Amber Tyler are in a hotel in downtown Seattle. San Francisco police call the Seattle FBI Fugitive Task Force, which arrests them. Inspectors Toomey and Johnson fly to Seattle to pick up the suspects and return them to San Francisco. Marcos Ranjel, on the run for nine months and apparently, according to the police, withdrawing from heroin, breaks down and makes a written, audio and videotaped confession to the murder of Carmel Sanger, after he has been read his Miranda rights. Ranjel says that Robert Sanger asked him to kill Carmel in exchange for $100,000 and claims he never got his money.

	What Happened Next? Note: Carmel Sanger had actually divorced Robert Sanger at the time of her death and called herself by her maiden name, Carmel Strelein. The District Attorney called her Carmel Sanger throughout the trial, according to Strelein's friends, in order to link her murder to her ex-husband Robert Sanger. The name Sanger is used in this timeline only for purposes of consistency with the trial.