Vacaville police officers testified that Raymond Michael Weber was a human trafficker who used romance to recruit a victim and keep them in line with violence, likening the relationship to “modern-day slavery.”
The Solano County District Attorney’s Office will seek the death penalty in the felony case against a 34-year-old Sacramento man charged with January 2021 killing of two women, one of them a minor, in Vacaville.
The Reporter learned of the DA’s decision Tuesday morning, when Chief Deputy Public Defender Tamani Taylor, who represents Raymond Michael Weber, referred to the decision during a trial-setting in Department 1.
Taylor also informed Superior Court Judge Jeffrey C. Kauffman that her client would represent himself during the penalty phase of the trial. If the jury finds Weber guilty as charged, the trial will proceed to the penalty phase, during which jurors review aggravating and mitigating evidence. Afterward, jurors must then return a verdict of either death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The judge, upon Taylor’s recommendation, appointed Fairfield attorney Robert Boyle as a “standby counsel” during the penalty phase. If needed, Boyle would act as an adviser available to step in and provide legal assistance, if needed, should Weber face a legal issue he cannot navigate on his own, without interfering with his right to self-representation.
RELATED: Graphic details emerge in hearing for man charged with killing woman and 15-year-old girl
A tall man at 6 feet 1 inch, Weber, shackled at the waist, clad in a striped jail jumpsuit, his black hair braided in several strands to the small of his back, listened quietly as the attorneys conferred with the judge and did not appear to register his emotions outwardly.
Kauffman then rescheduled the trial-setting, plus an order to show cause to AT&T Wireless, for 9 a.m. March 11 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
The Weber case is notable not only because it’s charged as a double homicide but also because, investigators reported, he livestreamed some of crimes and their aftermath in a Vacaville apartment.
Court records show that, at one point, criminal proceedings against Weber were suspended for a time when his competency was questioned; however, Kauffman reinstated proceedings and determined there was enough evidence to hold him for further arraignment and trial.
A previously convicted felon, Weber is accused of shooting and killing Savannah Theberge, 27, who had ties to Utah and Georgia, and a 15-year-old girl from Elk Grove during the early hours of Jan. 30 in an apartment in the 500 block of Rocky Hill Road.
As previously reported, during a July 2023 preliminary hearing, Vacaville police officers testified that Weber was a human trafficker who used romance to recruit a victim and keep them in line with violence, likening the relationship to “modern-day slavery.”
Detective Steven Gunderson testified that he spoke with the mother of the slain teenager before she was killed, saying that she had earlier tried to stop the driver of a black sedan, whom she described as a “light-skinned African-American male with dreadlocks” of black and brown hair, from driving away with her daughter.
He said the girl’s cellphone was tracked to the Oxford Suites, a Rohnert Park hotel. Another investigator obtained a receipt from the hotel show that Theberge had registered using her credit card. Additionally, investigators obtained hotel surveillance video footage from Jan. 23, 2021, showing Weber standing outside the elevator, video from the early morning hours of Jan. 24 showing Weber and the girl, and more footage showing Theberge outside the hotel room.
Gunderson also said there was evidence that Theberge had checked into a Super 8 motel in Hayward on Jan. 24 and through Jan. 26. Deputy District Attorney Eric Charm, who is leading the prosecution, showed Gunderson still images from surveillance cameras showing Theberge at the Foothill Boulevard motel.
Earlier testimony included that of Makayla McCalebb, 19, a cousin of Weber, who told her mother that Weber was raping a young girl hours before he shot and killed her and Theberge.
McCalebb’s relationship with Weber changed suddenly when he accused her of giving a cell phone to the teenage girl on Jan. 29, angering him so much he began choking McCalebb, then 17, frightening her. She told Charm, “I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.”
Vacaville Police Sgt. Erik Watts, Charm’s lead investigator during the hearing, testified that he was called to the Rocky Hill Veterans Apartments shortly after a 12:40 a.m. 911 call on Jan. 30.
Watts said his investigation revealed Weber had accused the two females of “turning on him,” and that he had paced around the apartment with a gun in his hand.
The sergeant confirmed that police responded to the apartment complex shortly after 12:40 a.m., when a woman reported that a man armed with a handgun was livestreaming from an apartment where two women, not moving, were lying on the floor.
Upon their arrival, police said the man, later identified as Weber, had barricaded himself inside. SWAT and Critical Incident Negotiation teams were deployed.
Negotiations were unsuccessful, neighbors were evacuated and flash bangs and CS gas — a powder that when mixed with a solvent becomes an aerosol in tear gas — were then discharged into the apartment. Officers found Weber hiding there and, following a brief struggle, shot him with a Taser to bring him under control. He was arrested at 8:32 a.m.
Besides two counts of first-degree murder, with enhancements, Weber is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, human trafficking, and human trafficking depriving personal liberty, also felonies with enhancements.
Judge Kauffman has noted that Weber was convicted in 2006 of assault with a firearm and in 2016 of unlawful possession of a controlled substance while armed, both in Sacramento and both felonies.
In the latest case, Weber also faces charges of domestic violence and making terrorist threats, and assault on a person with a semi-automatic firearm, cited in an out-of-county warrant.
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