Jailed Tomato King Lashes Out At Wife; County

I thought this was the most emotionally-satisfying article I've read all year:

Hours after release on bail slipped through his grasp two weeks ago, indicted tomato executive Frederick Scott Salyer started making prepaid phone calls from the Sacramento County jail.

...He told his daughter Caroline Salyer that he was "done" and that if he killed himself "it'll make everybody smile."

"I have no reason to live, honey, and I cannot live in a (expletive) box," he said. "It's easier to live underground than it is to live above the ground in this (expletive) piece of concrete and eat (expletive) dog food."

Each of these "panicked, despondent" calls, as the government referred to them, was recorded March 30 – the day U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton withdrew an earlier order to release the 54-year-old erstwhile agribusiness titan awaiting trial on racketeering, conspiracy and bribery charges that could keep him behind bars the rest of his life.

...However, his release is snagged on a legal claim on that home by his ex-wife, Lynne H. Salyer, and proceedings to lift it are stalled in Superior Court in Monterey.

..."She has my life in her hands, and she's just walking around … bragging about how she's got me in jail," he told his daughter Caroline. "That was witnessed by several people at Nancy Albertini's cocktail party who found it … disgusting."

He told his daughter he had offered to come up with $1.3 million in cash for her mother, "which I shouldn't even mention over the phone."

"It'll be a cold day in hell before she ever gets the house," he said. "I'll give everything to the government, remember I mean I'll do anything, I'll destroy everything."

...Salyer told his daughter Stefanie Ann Gallegly that her mother has "my life underneath her, one of her crocodile high-heel shoes and her diamonds and she's stepping on it."

"She really doesn't get it," he added. "She's letting greed take the place of humanity and … she'll burn in hell for it."

Prosecutors say Salyer will flee if he is released and wrote that he has more access to his defense team than any other inmate in the history of the Sacramento County Main Jail, including the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski.

But Segal wrote, "The defendant is not Theodore Kaczynski. He didn't maim or try to kill people.