SUNNYSIDE, Wash. – Driving down the country roads of Sunnyside, Evaristo Salas Jr., 45, passed by cows and grass that stretched for miles. Faint music played in the back, while Salas stared at the blur of colors passing through his windshield.
Then, a familiar note and guitar riffs started to play. Salas smiled and turned the music up – “Forever After All,” by Luke Combs.
“There were four songs I wanted to drive to when I got out of prison,” Salas said, grinning and pointing to his phone. “This was one of them. It feels like freedom.”
Salas was 16 when he was wrongfully convicted of shooting 24-year-old Jose Arreola twice in the head in November 1995. He spent 27 years in prison before he was released exactly two years ago Sunday.
During those years, Salas said he often paced his cell, quietly repeating to himself, “I didn’t do it.”
Salas never had the opportunity to get a driver’s license, hold a job or even consider going to college. Above all, he said he missed witnessing his siblings grow up and being with his family.
It’s been “bittersweet,” he said.
“You see traces of what you remember them looking like, but they’re older now,” Salas said. “You just wish sometimes that you could go back to those moments when you were kids and everybody looks the same as when you were pulled away from it.”
One fateful night
In May 1996, Salas recalls being called to the Sunnyside Police Department after a gang fight at a party the night before left someone dead. Though he had left when the fight started, the police wanted him to recount the night’s events.
As he was leaving, Jim Rivard, then a detective, stopped him to take photos.
“I’m like, ‘What for?’ And he just stayed quiet. He didn’t answer me. He just ignored me,” Salas said.
Rivard took a picture of Salas facing the camera and then another two – one of each side of his face. Rivard still hadn’t said a word, he recalled.
“So I asked him again. I said, ‘Hey, why are you taking my picture?’” Salas asked. “He didn’t say anything. Then I just left, and that was it. But I went home with a weird feeling in my stomach.”
Weeks later, while at a store with friends, a rival gang showed up. Inside, he learned his friend Robert had been shot.
“I come out of the store and he’s laying on the ground,” Salas said. “He dies right there.”
This moment was traumatic for him, he said. That was his best friend – really, almost like an older brother.
“He always protected me,” Salas said.
That same day, police questioned him about his friend’s shooting. Salas told them he hadn’t seen the shooter or the car. Eventually, they let him go.
After a week of sleepless nights, Robert’s family held a funeral service, which Salas attended. The next morning, police showed up at his home again. His sister, Debbie Salas, opened the door.
They told her they wanted to speak with her brother.
She asked what it was about, but they said they couldn’t tell her much beyond that.
“So I went and I woke him up, and I said, ‘Hey, the police are here because they want to question you,’” Debbie Salas said.
Evaristo Salas got dressed and into a police car. The officers told him they still had questions about Robert and wanted to speak with him at the station. For the next 15 minutes, his grief and anger over losing his friend boiled over into a tense argument with them.
“I was pretty messed up, and I was pretty angry. I was like, ‘Look, I don’t want to go with you guys. They’re like, ‘Oh, it’s only gonna be an hour. You’ll be back in no time. We just need to talk to you about what happened with Robert,’” Evaristo Salas said.
“I was like, “I already told you guys everything. I was inside the store. I didn’t see anything. I can’t tell you more than that,’” he continued.
Feeling like he had nothing else to say, Evaristo Salas got out of the police car. That’s when he noticed there were two cop cars.
He added that Rivard never was the one to pick him up when he’d been brought to the station before . To see him there, he said, was suspicious.
He went back into one of the police cars and was taken to the station, where Rivard and former Sunnyside police officer Jose Trevino sat him down. He expected the usual routine – being asked a series of questions about the incident.
“But they didn’t start that way. They were just like, ‘You know why you’re here,’” Evaristo Salas said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, you guys want to talk about Robert.’”
Evaristo Salas said they shook their heads and told him no.
“Someone said you killed somebody,” they told him.
Confused, he started to think they were accusing him of killing Robert.
“What are you talking about? Did I kill Robert?” he asked them.
Evaristo Salas said Trevino and Rivard again told him no, explaining that this was about something that had happened six months earlier.
“I was like, ‘Six months ago?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, someone said you killed somebody,” Evaristo Salas said. “I almost laughed, but they were like, ‘No, we’re serious,‘ with a serious look on their face.”
“That’s when I started getting scared,” he said.
The long road to freedom
After months of hoping that he would return home, Evaristo Salas was sentenced to 33 years in prison for first-degree murder in December 1996, just two days after his 16th birthday.
Court records show the prosecution’s case relied heavily on the testimony of a paid informant who claimed to have overheard Evaristo Salas bragging about the murder. Additionally, Arreola’s girlfriend, Ofelia Cortez, identified Evaristo Salas as the shooter after viewing a photo lineup.
During his time in prison, Debbie Salas and their other sister, Vanessa Alvarado, as well as their dad, Ruben Alvarado, would visit him often, sometimes rotating visits to ensure someone would see him that week.
Ruben Alvarado said it was hard to see him so far from his home, which is why he would visit him often. He didn’t want him to feel like he was going through this on his own.
“I needed to be there with him,” Ruben Alvarado said.
Debbie Salas carried her own burden of guilt. Though she was his sister, she often felt like a mother figure to him. Small moments with her own children would stir painful memories – like when her eldest daughter, then 5, would rub her younger brother’s ear to help him fall asleep.
“When (Evaristo) was little, he had a thing where in order for him to fall asleep, he always had to make sure that I would scratch the middle of his hand so he would know that I was there,” Debbie Salas said. “So when they would do that, it would make me cry, because I would think about when I had to do that for him.”
But after nearly two decades in prison, a glimmer of hope emerged.
Inconsistencies in the case and the lack of physical evidence came to light when filmmaker Joe Berlinger received a letter from Evaristo Salas pleading for another look at his conviction. By then, he had written nearly 70 letters to different organizations, including the Washington Innocence Project, which initially turned him down for lack of new evidence.
Evaristo Salas said he had seen Berlinger’s documentary “Paradise Lost,” which chronicled the case of three teenagers accused of murdering three children in what was alleged to be a satanic ritual. In that case, new evidence uncovered during filming helped reopen the investigation and eventually free the defendants.
Evaristo Salas hoped Berlinger could do the same for him.
In the “Wrong Man” documentary television series on STARZ in 2018 featuring Evaristo Salas, it revealed that the informant, Bill Bruhn, later recanted his trial testimony, claiming that Rivard had provided him with drugs and cash in exchange for following the narrative the lead detective presented – including the story about Evaristo Salas. Rivard consistently denied during the filming and after offering any incentives to Bruhn during the trial and subsequent proceedings.
The documentary also raised serious questions about Cortez, the prosecution’s key witness. Just three days after the crime, she misled a towing company to retrieve her truck from impound, then had it cleaned and sold before it could be processed for evidence, according to police reports obtained by Laura Shaver, the attorney who represented Evaristo Salas . Although Rivard referred her for charges of rendering criminal assistance in Arreola’s murder, she was never charged, and Evaristo Salas’s defense team was never told about the truck or the investigation.
Investigators also discovered that prior to her 14th time trying to identify a suspect, Cortez had undergone hypnosis. According to court documents, there were handwritten notes from Rivard indicating that Cortez had agreed to the hypnosis if it would help. Despite this, both Cortez and Rivard continued to deny that the controversial practice had been used.
With enough evidence to proceed to reopening his trial, Shaver alongside the Washington Innocence Project filed for a new trial in January 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, slowed the process, keeping Evaristo Salas isolated from in-person visits for more than a year. Debbie Salas said he began to lose hope, again.
“But I was like, ‘Nope, we’ve been fighting this too long for us to just give up,’” Debbie Salas said.
A year later, the motion for a new trial was denied – but Shaver appealed. The Court of Appeals ruled that testimony from Cortez, Bruhn and Rivard was essential to determine whether the new evidence warranted reopening the case, setting a deadline of Sept. 1 .
The hearing took place the week of Aug. 14, 2023, in Yakima, with John Marlow, litigation director for the Washington Innocence Project, and Shaver representing Salas. Testimony proceeded with Rivard taking the stand last on Aug. 16.
Shaver said while Rivard repeatedly denied he had paid the informant in Evaristo Salas’ case, it wasn’t until at the very end of cross-examination that he finally admitted, after 27 years, that he had.
Rivard’s confession led to Evaristo Salas being released from prison the next day, a surprise to him and his family.
“I didn’t think he would get out so fast because I understand the system can take time, but when they said immediately, and he said he would be getting out in an hour… I was just so happy,” Alvarado said.
Reconnecting with the past – and embracing the future
On Aug. 17, 2023, the gates of Airway Heights Corrections Center opened, and Salas walked out a free man. His family and attorney were there, waiting with open arms.
The moment was full of hugs, tears and relieved laughter – emotions born of years spent holding on to hope and fighting for the truth.
“It all happened so fast,” Debbie Salas said. “It was amazing. I will never forget that day.”
Her brother’s first request was simple: McDonald’s. His second, Shaver said with a smile, was to get his driver’s license that very same day.
“I was like, ‘Let’s just chill for a minute,’” she said, laughing.
In the days that followed, Evaristo Salas began adjusting to a world that had changed completely since he was a teenager. He bought a multitude of books, including “iPhone for Dummies” and “Laptop for Dummies” in order to feel caught up with all the technological changes.
“That right there was a learning curve, but now I’m alright. I’m pretty good at it,” Evaristo Salas said.
Coming out of prison, he also took home his TV that he had in his cell so he could set it up in his room, since he would be moving back to his dad’s place.
He remembers trying to set up all the cables, to no avail.
“And then my nephew comes in with this massive TV like this,” Salas said, stretching out his arms. “I was like, ‘what is that?’ Bro, it’s the size of the wall.‘”
As his nephew started setting it up, Evaristo Salas asked him how he was going to get cable on the TV.
“He goes, ‘Oh, no, I got that. Don’t worry about it.’ So he sits down, it’s got all these apps,” Evaristo Salas said. “I said, ‘Look, just find this old school movie, put it on. I’ll be good.’”
Between learning new technology and settling in, Evaristo Salas revisited some of the places that held childhood memories, including Harrison Middle School.
“I always thought about coming back, because I had so many memories of here, you know? So when I first got out, I used to walk here all the time just to feel it again,” Evaristo Salas said.
Evaristo Salas said he and his friends would climb up some trees near the roof of the school and run around there.
“All the kids that lived in the neighborhood, we’d come over, four or five of us, during summertime,” he said. “This was also trespassing, so they’d be chasing us all the time out of here.”
Months later, Evaristo Salas visited the juvenile detention center in Yakima where he’d been held after first being accused of shooting Arreola. The visit came after a guard who knew him from back then reached out by email.
Though anxious to return to a place tied to dark memories, Evaristo Salas said it was an important step in finding peace.
“They let me go in there, speak to the kids. I even went to the same cell that I was housed in and everything. And so that, to me, as traumatic as that was, it was very therapeutic for me,” he said.
‘So proud of him’
The sun was relentless in Sunnyside, but Evaristo Salas didn’t slow his pace. Door to door, street by street, he knocked, introduced himself, and asked for support in his run for a seat on the Sunnyside School Board.
When the primary election results came out on Aug. 5, he scanned the numbers once. Then again. When he realized he had the majority, he knew he was officially heading to the general election.
“My whole focus is helping the kids create an environment that’s a little bit better for them, telling my story, so they learn about the struggles that I had,” Evaristo Salas said. “Because I tell these kids, ‘Look, I was you. I grew up in the same neighborhood, gangs everywhere. They’re pulling in different directions, broken homes, all that kind of stuff, but if you value yourself, if you educate yourself, you can break that cycle, and this is how you do it.”
But that mission didn’t start with a campaign. It started in a prison cell, when he made a vow, Debbie Salas said.
“One night, he actually called me to tell me he made a promise to God in prison. He said, ‘Debbie, I made a promise to God that if he lets me go home, that I will fulfill the purpose he has for me, and that purpose will be whatever he has me do. And if he has me helping the youth, he has me helping the community, helping my small town, or whatever he helps me doing, I’m going to do it,’” Debbie Salas said.
Since walking out of prison two years ago, Evaristo Salas has been keeping that promise.
Alongside canvassing for the seat on the school board, he works as a consultant for the Grandview School District, guiding at-risk students.
He said his approach when he talks to the kids at the high school is to walk laps around the school with them to help them put their guard down.
“These kids, they come from these really horrible family situations, and then the community out here is real hostile with the gang stuff, so they have these layers and layers of, like, protection,” Evaristo Salas said. “So when we walk around and talk, they start to break down those barriers.”
He co-founded the Lower Valley Empowerment Youth Project, a nonprofit that supports vulnerable youth in Sunnyside by connecting them to community resources and helping them navigate personal struggles. He also works with another nonprofit, Love in Action, which is affiliated with his church, New Life Church.
As part of this work, Evaristo Salas goes around to schools in Sunnyside to share his story of growing up around gangs with kids who might be facing the same challenges he once did.
He said he has been helping the nonprofit create a safe and welcoming space at the church where youth can hang out and find comfort if they need it.
When he’s not with students or helping with the nonprofits, he’s a student himself. Three months after his release, he enrolled at Columbia Basin College to pursue an associate degree in social work.
“I went to the actual college. I got my little backpack and felt like I was a kid again, surrounded by a bunch of young kids,” Evaristo Salas said.
Attending classes in person meant conquering a new fear – freeway driving.
“Now it’s not too hard, but my dad was with me for almost the first month. He was right behind me the whole time,” he said.
“I’d get to a place, and I’d pull over. I’m like, ‘Yeah, I can’t do this, can you just take over and drive for me?’” Evaristo Salas said, laughing.
Alvarado remembers those early nerves but never doubted that his son would figure it out.
“I was just happy to see him work so hard for everything and to get to where he is and rebuild his life,” Alvarado said, holding back tears. “I felt so proud of him. Always. I still do.”
On his days off, Evaristo Salas said he volunteers at local food banks, like nonprofit “United With You” to distribute free boxes of fruits and vegetables to people in need. If there’s leftover food, he’ll take it to others he knows are struggling .
“It’s funny, because they already know my name and everything. I try to tell them, ‘Look, it’s not coming from me. I just brought it from the bank.’ I can’t get all the credit,” he said.
Even with a packed schedule, he keeps space for the people closest to him. Some afternoons, he and Alvarado sit in their front yard, watching people go by. Other times, he’s on a video call with his fiancée in the Netherlands – who first reached out to him after seeing the documentary about his case.
Evaristo Salas said she visited before the pandemic, and a year after his release, he spent a month with her overseas.
“It felt like peace,” he said.
They’ve talked about the possibility of him moving there one day, but for now, they’re navigating the distance. He said he’s visiting her again in December for three weeks.
As he marks the second anniversary of his release, Evaristo Salas reflects quietly on the journey that brought him here. There’s no big celebration planned, but he will speak at a church event to share his story – a way to give back, honor his milestones, and continue the promise he made to God.
“If I could tell my 16-year-old self something now, I would say, value yourself. You have worth; you have meaning,” Evaristo Salas said. “Those horrors that I went through, as bad as they were, have opened my eyes and have made my heart big, and that’s what gives me the courage and the willingness to help the community.”