Something Happy for a Change!

I’m going to deviate (yet again) from T&T traditional bread and butter article to share a happy story with you all.

Longtime T&T readers will remember our coverage of the brutal and utterly senseless murder of Cindy Ramos, a vivacious 58-year old mom and grandma, who was killed in her Tracy, California home in August 2009. You’ll also remember Cindy’s brave and stubborn daughter Christina Barnes, a good friend of T&T, who has grown into a formidable victims’ rights advocate.

Christina is also the founder of Children of Murdered parents and she and her siblings are working to get SB 906 passed, which would require that accused and convicted co-conspirators of violent felonies be jailed and prisoned apart from one another.

Today’s happy story: Christina and her husband Steve, already parents of three daughters (eldest daughter Stefiana serving in Afghanistan, Janessa and Briana) announced they have a baby boy on the way! He was most cooperative during a recent ultrasound, as you can plainly see in the photo. Congratulations Christina!

Cindy Ramos’ Family Needs Your Help

Christina Barnes at her mother's grave. From Christina's Facebook page.
If you are using Facebook, please visit Children of Murdered Parents.


I’ve written about the heinous murder of Cindy Ramos, a vivacious 58-year old mom and grandmother. Cindy was assaulted, fought like a lioness, and was murdered in her bedroom by a “married” couple, Robert Plunkett-Morgan and Jorge Morgan.

This pair of gutless pukes decided to plead guilty to Cindy’s murder, not because they were remorseful and wanted to spare Cindy’s family any pain, but because the case against them was iron-clad. The death penalty was never on the table.

Here is why Cindy’s family needs your help:

After they pled guilty, Robert Plunkett-Morgan told Cindy’s daughter Kimberly that in return for their plea, the couple would be imprisoned and co-habitate in the same corrections facility. Together forever. In love.

It’s bad enough these two were allowed to share a cell shortly after their arrest (because both were parolees, they were incarcerated at DVI), but after their plea, the pair were returned to DVI for a short period of time until they were transferred to a permanent facility. Yes, they were at the same prison, together again! At this moment, they are not together; Plunkett-Morgan is at Salinas Valley, I do not know where Morgan is.

You’d think that there would be common sense in that co-conspirators don’t end up in the same place. Look at the Menendez brothers, or Charles Manson and Tex Watson. But there is no law prohibiting inmate co-habitation… in other words, there was nothing preventing this same-sex married couple from ending up at the same prison. And Plunkett-Morgan spends much of his time as a notorious jailhouse lawyer. He’s got nothing better to do than pour over law books and find something to bitch about.

If Plunkett-Morgan had been the “brilliant” jailhouse lawyer he thinks he is, he would have asked for the death penalty for he and his spouse—death row is San Quentin and the two would have been housed on the same tier, newfound buddies of Richard Allen Davis, Richard Ramirez and Scott Peterson, among other great guys. The couple could have gummed up their appeals for years, and would more likely die on death row versus being executed.

For anyone who has ever worked in a prison, you learn that inmates have nothing better to do than cook up ways to do what they want. Because Plunkett-Morgan and Morgan are openly homosexual, they will be in protective housing. For the most part, “like” inmates tend to be housed in the same tier. When I worked at Soledad, there was an entire wing dedicated to homosexuals and transgendered inmates, and they had their own outdoor facility. They did not mingle with the mainline.

Cindy’s family had a new mission: keep this couple apart forever. This is a mission they should not have had to take on, but they have—with zeal.

On March 11, 2011, Senator Mark DeSaulnier (representing California’s 7th District/Contra Costa County), introduced SB 906, which will require accused and convicted co-conspirators of violent crime to be jailed (county level) and prisoned (state level) apart. He took up Cindy’s family’s cause after they’d been announced the winners of the Senator’s annual “There Ought to Be a Law” contest.

On May 3, 2011, Cindy’s daughter Christina Barnes and son Daniel Martinez testified at a committee hearing in Sacramento. Joining Cindy’s children in support of SB 906 were the Crime Victims United, the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association), and the Sheriffs Association. Thus far there is no opposition to the bill becoming law at this time.

Let’s make sure that our elected representatives know we want this bill to become law. Don’t know who your elected representative is? Click here for an interactive map to learn the name of your senator or your assemblyperson.

DeSaulnier Joins Family of Cindy Ramos to Separate Co-Conspirators

Text of the bill

Defendants: incarceration

A Plea for the California Department of Corrections to do the Right Thing

Cindy Ramos’ family might be needing your help. 

The confessed and convicted murders of their mother are still asking for special treatment by the California Department of Corrections. The duo, Jorge Morgan and Robert Plunkett-Morgan, who have a domestic partnership which was filed in San Joaquin County, are asking for something heterosexual couples don’t even have the right to ask for. They have verbalized their desire to be assigned to the same prison and to be housed together.

By California law, and for security reasons, county jails and the Department of Corrections do not announce when an inmate is being transferred from a county facility to the state facility, or from state facility to state facility. As of this writing, it is assumed the two remain somewhere near Stockton. 

The Ramos family does have a little something called Marsy’s law on their side. But will it be enough?

Marsy’s law is named after a 21-year old UC Santa Barbara senior who was murdered by a former boyfriend on November 30, 1983. He lured her from her parent’s home by threatening to kill himself. Marsy went to his aid, and was met by the man and a loader shotgun, which he discharged into the young woman. Marsy’s killer was arrested, but sometime after his arrest, Marsy’s mother ran into him at a local supermarket—he’d been released on bail without notice to Marsy’s family.

Several years following a trial, conviction and sentence to “life in prison,” Marsy’s killer began his efforts at parole. Marsy’s mother suffered a heart attack during that first parole hearing. While it is his right to ask for parole, one must remember he is a convicted murderer, and if one thinks about it, this could have been a special circumstances case for “lying in wait” for Marsy to respond to his cries for help. Today this would have been a life without the possibility of parole or a death penalty case. 

Section 3 of Marsy’s Law, California Proposition 9, which was passed by voters in November 2008, reads:

It is the purpose of the People of the State of California in enacting this initiative measure to:

1. Provide victims with rights to justice and due process.

2. Invoke the rights of families of homicide victims to be spared the ordeal of prolonged and unnecessary suffering, and to stop the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars, by eliminating parole hearings in which there is no likelihood a murderer will be paroled, and to provide that a convicted murderer can receive a parole hearing no more frequently than every three years, and can be denied a follow-up parole hearing for as long as 15 years.

The law also includes a victims’ Bill of Rights. The full text can be read here.

While the murder of Cindy Ramos was like so many other murders, cold, calculating, cruel and carried out for no good reason, the bigger picture is this—and we, the people and voters of not only California but of other states, must ensure that convicted felons like the Morgans are afforded their rights and no more! There is no question that heterosexual perpetrators are ever housed together. It does not happen, period! The accused kidnappers of Jaycee Duggard, Phillip and Nancy Garrido, a married couple, are not sharing a cell. 

The Department of Corrections does have a rule requiring inmates who are likely to be having sex be separated. The rule was designed to protect inmates from rape. Even though the Morgans claim that sex is the last thing on their minds, what other trouble do you think those two could cook up? Jorge has exhibited disruptive behaviors throughout the court proceedings in Stockton, yelling, spitting and taunting Cindy’s family in common areas. Robert could well be considered a “lawyer inmate,” well versed in reaching out to media and filing petty paperwork in the court system. I would hate to have to be a corrections officer or a counselor having to deal with the pair together! 

What can you do? Talk about this case to your friends and family. Write to your elected representatives—first, to prevent this pair from ending up in the same prison in the first place. There are plenty of options for housing gay, bisexual or transgendered inmates in the California corrections system. Twenty years ago, choices were limited, but today most maximum-custody institutions have protective housing units. 

Next, push your legislators to write laws prohibiting requests such as the Morgans from being possible in the first place. Logically they should not be housed together, but as we are learning in today’s complex times, expecting logic from laws frequently leaves things open to interpretation.

Please don't think this can only happen in California. Yep, crazy things do seem to happen here first, but craziness does have a way of spreading to other, perhaps more "sensible" states. 

I have no problem with gay rights and marriage between two loving consenting adults. I have a problem with gay rights asking for more rights than a heterosexual married couple might have. That is what is happening in this case.

Let’s see if we can prevent another family from having to take up the fight that the Ramos family has had to. It’s bad enough they will be facing the first anniversary of Cindy’s death in August—this family needs and deserves healing time and this will not happen until they are certain that the Morgans are placed as far away from each other as the law allows. 

Cindy Ramos memorial blog

This one takes the cake ...

Cindy Ramos, from her memorial page

She was a lively 58-year old woman with a large loving family and lots to live for.

Robert Plunkett-Morgan, age 39, and his “life partner” Jorge Morgan, age 24, thought otherwise.

Today Tracy, California is unfortunately better known as the city where Sandra Cantu was murdered in the spring of 2009. But there was another horrific murder at the end of last summer, on August 6, that of a vibrant mother of six who was proud of her Cherokee heritage, who wrote poetry and loved spending time with her kids and grandkids.

She knew one of the killers, Plunkett-Morgan, an acquaintance of one of her sons. Plunkett-Morgan actually phoned Cindy asking if he and Morgan could come to her home and leave her an early birthday present.

In thanks for Cindy’s hospitality, they strangled, stabbed 55 times and bludgeoned 13 times with a small safe, leaving her dead on the floor. According to information offered in the preliminary hearing by Detective Knight of the Tracy police department, in Morgan’s confession/statement, Plunkett-Morgan asked Cindy to take a seat and close her eyes—he was going to give her a necklace for her birthday. Instead, he put a rope around her neck and started pulling. She fought like a tiger. They’d also brought a knife—sounds pretty premeditated to me. That bloody knife was later found in the Morgan trailer, hidden under a makeshift toilet, along with some of Cindy’s belongings.

T & T readers, you know there is usually a twist in the cases we cover. This one quite possibly takes the cake.

Morgan and Morgan were no doubt the two most inept murderers/robbers ever. They were spotted by Cindy’s roommate leaving her pink mobile home after the crime with a small safe in hand, one known to contain Cindy’s jewelry. And, the pair, registered as domestic partners in San Joaquin County, also lived in the mobile home park. The pair was arrested later that day.

Jorge Morgan confessed to the crime. He said he and Plunkett-Morgan had been planning it for some time. Nice neighbors

Seriously, you’d think Plunkett-Morgan and Morgan would have been a bit sneakier about the whole thing. After all, the pair had met in prison, at Mule Creek. Each had been out of prison for less than a year; Plunkett-Morgan having been incarcerated for grand theft auto and Morgan for possession of stolen property. Both had served time for other serious felonies. Quite the pair.

They sealed their “marriage” by filing domestic partner paperwork in San Joaquin County in November 2008.

But that’s not the twist.

Here is the twist: for a short time after their arrest, they were housed together, in the same cell while cooling their jets at the Deuel Vocational Institution.

Do heterosexual married couples have the same privileges after they kill someone in broad daylight? Anyone?

If ever a case called for the death penalty, this one is it. There were three special circumstances attached to the crime—robbery, burglary, lying in wait and for two prior felony convictions—and being found of any of the three special circumstances would have kicked in death penalty eligibility. California’s “Three Strikes” law also applied to Plunkett-Morgan and Morgan. But what was one of the things that they asked for in court during preliminary hearings.

Sit down, please.

The pair wanted to be housed together (share a cell), and to have the right to sit next to each other on the bus to and from court, and to be able to sit together in the courtroom.

Because they could not sit next to each other in court, Plunkett-Morgan claimed they could not get a proper defense. San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Valli Israels and Cindy’s family properly argued that letting the two spend time together would encourage more plotting and planning. Recall there was an attack on a judge in her own courtroom in that very same courthouse in Stockton, California earlier that year, and the attacker was killed by a bailiff to protect the judge.

There is a law on the California books requiring inmates who are likely to be having sex to be housed apart. It is intended to prevent consensual sex as well as rape. At the time the couple plead not guilty on August 31, the younger Morgan was housed in solitary confinement (the pair had been moved from the San Joaquin County jail to DVI, where they were housed together for a short time), and the pair were made to sit a couple of chairs apart from each other whenever they made a court appearance. 

Cindy’s family was outraged to learn that the couple had been housed together for a short time after their arrest. A court order had mandated the two not be allowed any contact; no shacking up, no sitting next to each other in the prison van on the way to court, no sharing a holding cell while at the courthouse. As former gang members, the two were to be kept separate on that basis as well.

The couple continued to fight their separation, and the defense asked for county council to intervene in September. Honestly, you’ve just murdered someone in cold blood, you are a “three strikes” felon and you are facing the death penalty, but the most pressing problem you have is wanting to be with and near your “life partner.”

The suspects also acted out in court. Inmates making appearances in court share hallways with the general public. During a November court appearance, Jorge Morgan, ever the badass, taunted Cindy’s son and wife while in the hallways, holding his shackled hands high and yelling, “This don’t mean shit. I’ll do life. I did it … and I’d do it again.”

During that same court appearance, he was made to wear a facemask as he was spitting, kicking, and hollering obscenities at people.

Finally in October 2009, Judge Bernard Garber ruled the pair could not sit next to each other in court or meet with their attorneys (together) for four hours at a time.

Plunkett-Morgan and Morgan claimed other inmates were hassling them. Plunkett-Morgan also claimed that he’d learned in a criminal justice class that he’d taken while in prison (yeah say it out loud, WTF???) that inmates who were gang drop-outs are allowed to mingle in jail, ride buses together and share cells at the courthouse. He was being housed in AdSeg custody. Plunkett-Morgan also took his “case” to the media, claiming he suffered from grand mal seizures and that there would be a delay in his treatment if he had a seizure while in the courtroom, and how Jorge would know how to take care of him while he was seizing.

I am serious. Read that here

Claiming to have a seizure disorder brings privileges to inmates. There is a disproportionate number of inmates with seizure disorders when compared with the general population, and this is due to the lifestyles they may lead: violence, drug abuse. Self-reporting a seizure disorder moves an inmate to the head of the line for medical care. I should know. My nursing career was ended by an inmate faking seizures … so I have no sympathy for this creep, none whatsoever. The punk who did me in did 90 extra days, I’ve done 20 years and three back surgeries. But I digress …

I encourage you to visit the website set up by Cindy’s family. There are links to stories and so much of what went on in this case is simply beyond belief.

Meanwhile, Cindy Ramos is still dead, while this “couple” fight for their right to be together, ‘cause they are married and all.

Somewhat mercifully, this whole ugly crime has come to a quick resolution. Not a satisfying resolution, but a quick one.

On January 25, the San Joaquin County DA announced the death penalty would be taken off the table if the Morgans were found guilty. And on February 2, Robert Plunkett-Morgan and Jorge Morgan pled guilty to the murder of Cindy Ramos and accepted the penalty of life in prison. At least Cindy’s kids got to face her murderers and tell them what they thought … a small victory.

But of course the biggest issue for this pair of fumble bums is they want to be together. That’s why I’ve chosen to post this story and links.

What I am about to write may piss some of you off.

I believe with all of my heart that these two were given a break because the San Joaquin County DA’s office did not want to risk seeking the death penalty on a pair of openly gay men who have filed a domestic partnership. The gay, lesbian, bisexual and trangendered lobby is small but vocal and well organized, and I believe that county simply didn’t want to deal with it. But there is still an issue at hand: heterosexual couples convicted of a crime are not housed together—what makes this different?

In the links below I have included letters written by Plunkett-Morgan to a local newspaper reporter. Have your emesis basis ready. Your tax dollars are at work giving this lowlife two hot meals a day, free housing, free medical care. I am sure he does not thank you.

Please take the time to write your local elected reps. Even if you are not in California, it’s simply a matter of time that this happens in your state. Criminals like the Morgans already have entirely too many rights, while victims and their families have none.

After all, it isn’t called the “criminal” justice system for no reason… 

In Memory of Cindy Ramos

Letter urges probe of violations of court order

Tracy couple sentenced to life in woman's slaying

Victim apparently stabbed to death

letter from Plunkett-Morgan describing where the “love” began

another letter from Plunkett-Morgan