Today’s Unclaimed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Victoriano Corrales was a miserable excuse for a human being. For over a decade, he mistreated and abused his wife, Angelina, and their six children. In February 1946, he nearly choked Angelina to death in their home in Bryte, in what is now West Sacramento, California. Had it not been for his oldest daughter who stepped in to stop him, he would have murdered her. Shortly after that incident, a terrified Angelina took her children and left Victoriano without telling him where she was going.
Corrales moved to Brighton, which is now the area around the California State University, Sacramento. At the time, the area consisted of light industrial businesses and run down housing with some scattered vegetable gardens. The Southern Pacific Railroad crossed tracks nearby. It was a busy place, with lots of soot from the constantly passing steam engines. Corrales lived in a shack, described in newspapers as a garage, a few blocks from the American River and a block from Folsom Blvd.
Corrales, who worked as a farm laborer, dishwasher, and a cement pipe worker, missed having a woman in his life to slap around, so he traveled to his hometown, Irapuato, Mexico where he sweet talked a local woman, 28-year-old Alberta Gomez into coming to Sacramento to live with him. In June 1948, he smuggled her over the border near Calexico CA. After living a few days with Corrales in his ramshackle garage, she realized she had made a terrible mistake. When she threatened to leave him on June 12, 1948, Corrales beat her brains out with a hammer. He chopped off her head, arms and legs, and then made two trips to the American River to dump her body parts. He wrapped the dead woman’s torso in an electric blanket, using the cord as a rope. The American and Sacramento Rivers were flowing high at the time and a week later, her torso washed up 25 miles downriver in Steamboat Slough. The other parts of her body were never found.
After a few month, Corrales grew tired of living alone and returned to Irapuato to find another female to smuggle back over the border. He met twenty-something Maria Pulldo and lied to her about being a successful man, and asked her to come with him to Sacramento. He again crossed the border near Calexico. When they first arrived in Sacramento the pair stayed a few days at a West End hotel where he pretended to be a man of means.
He hired a cab to drive them to his shack in Brighton. When Pulldo saw the neighborhood, she recoiled. According to the cab driver, she became very angry at being misled. When she saw the shack, she allegedly said, “This is as dirty and ugly and old as you are. I will not stay here. I am going to find another man.” The two fought in the driveway, with Corrales eventually dragging the terrified woman into the dank hovel. Once inside, Corrales used his hammer and hit Pulldo several times on the head. Grabbing his trusty double-edged axe he hacked off her head, arms, and legs. Like before, it took him two trips to carry what was left o Maria Pulldo, and after tossing her body parts into the American River, he went to sleep. The next day he cleaned the gore-soaked floor and burned all the bloody clothing. A few days later he burned the mattress.
Pulldo’s body was discovered a few days later on December 21, 1948, floating near the H Street Bridge. The autopsy revealed that Pulldo was alive when decapitated. Police speculated a connection or correlation between the Steamboat Slough torso and the H Street Bridge torso.
Mrs. Ira Anderson, a neighbor of Corrales, called police on January 17, 1949 after hearing about the body found in the nearby American River. On December 14, the Andersons and several local witnesses Saw Corrales arguing in the cab with a Hispanic woman and watched as Corrales dragged the struggling woman into his shack. Mrs. Anderson described seeing Corrales burning his mattress a few days later and even recalled Corrales saying to them back in December that his female friend would not be with him for long.
Mrs. Anderson told the police, “I told my friends how I never had seen those women come out of the cabin, but we did not think too seriously about it at first because he was always quiet.” Anderson also feared that if the police did not find evidence, it would be very uncomfortable living next door to Corrales.
Upon investigation, police did in fact find evidence, lots of bloody evidence. They discovered a double-blade axes leaning against the refrigerator, a six-inch knife on the table, a hammer, and blood residue on the floor of the shack. They took Corrales downtown for questioning.
This was during pre-Miranda Rights era and it was likely Corrales was slapped around until he confessed. He took the police to the American River and showed them where he had tossed Pulldo’s body parts.
Victoriano Corrales at the river.
Police dragged the river and found her head and right leg. A brown ribbon was still tied in her black hair and a silk stocking was on her leg. On March 20th, Pulldo’s other leg turned up floating underneath the bridge at Rio Vista.
Corrales pleaded not guilty and was assigned Public Defender Elvin Sheehy. Since Corrales had admitted his crimes, the best Sheehy could hope for this client was Second Degree Murder or an insanity plea. The District Attorney was John Quincy Brown and the Honorable Judge Coughlin presided. Examining psychiatrists deemed Corrales sane. Jury selection took longer than the actual trial.
Brown told the jury in his closing statement, “Corrales is a savage type of individual with stone age moral concepts. He has no conception of the enormity of his offense. He is a stolid kind of savage who killed these women and cut up their bodies with as little concern or less as you and I would have in killing a chicken and cutting its head off.” (Personally, I’d find killing a chicken harder than a person… oh, did I say that out loud??? – DeSpair]
The jury agreed and on March 17, 1949, found Corrales guilty of the two murders and was sentenced to death on March 21, 1949. On February 24, 1950, Corrales calmly walked into San Quentin’s gas chamber. Nobody claimed his body.
Culled from: Forgotten Sacramento Murders: 1940-1976 by my friend, David Kulczyk
Civil War Injury Du Jour!
Charles Fox, Pvt. Co. 1 111 N.Y. Vols. “Aged 18, admitted April 5th, 1865 to Harewood Hospital, suffering from GSW right foot fracturing metatarsal bone of big toe and severely injuring OS Calcis. Wounded March 31st, at the Battle of Petersburgh, VA. On admission, the condition of injured parts, however was tolerable good. Parts became subsequently gangrenous, with disorganization of the ankle joint, bones necrosed and sloughing of soft parts,. Sinuses had formed, extended upwards the leg. The limb was amputated at the lower third by circular method. Patient did well after the operation under simple dressing… Parts nearly healed when transferred to Lincoln USA Hospital, July 20th, 1865.”
Photograph from Bontecou’s 5 1/2 by 7 1/2 inch two volume set of body wounds.
Culled from: Shooting Soldiers