On April 9, 1989 the body of 62-year-old Hispanic male Anthony Garcia was found near the rail yards in West Sacramento, California. Garcia, a transient who rode the rails for day labor, had been bludgeoned with a heavy blunt object—consistent with a goon stick or pipe—sustaining massive cranial trauma that proved fatal. His few personal belongings, including identification and his bedroll, were missing, suggesting robbery as a secondary motive.

Detectives noted that the killing matched a pattern of rail-side attacks on older male drifters: sudden blunt-force assaults followed by theft of belongings. No eyewitnesses or useful forensic evidence were found at the remote scene, and the case produced few leads until March 2, 1996, when drifter Robert Joseph Silveria Jr. was arrested in Roseville. Silveria later confessed to multiple killings while hopping freight trains and admitted to Garcia’s 1989 bludgeoning; prosecutors ultimately closed the West Sacramento file based on his confession.

Does anyone have memories of transient communities around the West Sacramento rail yards in 1989 or information that was not previously shared with investigators?