2 TO STAND TRIAL IN '95 SLAYING NEW WITNESSES REVIVED CASE YEARS AFTER BODY'S DISCOVERY.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Two former Palmdale residents have been ordered to stand trial on charges of murder for the July 1995 slaying of a man who was stabbed to death and buried in the desert.

Samuel Ross and Daniel Shows, both 26, were charged with murder in January, nearly four years after Alex Salcido's skeleton was discovered in a shallow grave in the desert east of Lancaster.

``They were driving with the victim in defendant Ross' truck, stabbed him numerous times and buried him out in the desert,'' Deputy District Attorney Annette Peterson said.

Peterson said that testimony at the preliminary hearing revealed more than one possible motive. The victim was dating a woman Ross had dated, and there was a dispute over money owed for drugs.

The two defendants were bound over for trial following a preliminary hearing Wednesday. They are scheduled to appear in court Nov. 29 for arraignment.

Ross, who had since moved to Vernon, Texas, and Shows, who had moved to Lancaster, have each pleaded not guilty to murder and were being held in lieu of $900,000 bail each.

Authorities said Ross and Shows had been suspects all along in the murder of Salcido, who was reported missing in July 1995 and whose remains were found the following April near 110th Street East and Avenue G.

The two men were the last ones seen with the victim, but investigators said they did not have enough evidence to arrest the pair until earlier this year, when people came forward and said the defendants had bragged to them about the slaying.

These witnesses told detectives that Ross and Shows showed up at their house in 1995 with what appeared to be a wrapped body in a pickup truck and asked for shovels, officials said.

Ross' attorney, Deputy Alternate Public Defender Avrum S. Harris, said there were inconsistencies in the statements given by these witnesses, a woman and her boyfriend, to investigators.

The woman told detectives about statements made to her by Shows in which he allegedly incriminated himself and Ross, Harris said. In a second statement, she said Shows made statements that incriminated only himself, Harris said.

The woman in her second statement also talked about her boyfriend going to help bury the body but initially made no mention of it, Harris said.

The boyfriend told detectives that Shows' incriminating statements were made to him, and he told his girlfriend about them later. The boyfriend did not say anything about helping to bury the body, Harris said.

A third witness told investigators that Ross and Shows showed up at her house at the same time that the couple said the defendants were at their house, Harris said.

At a preliminary hearing, ``The question is, Could they be guilty? With that being the standard of proof, that's a lot different than being at trial,'' Harris said.

Salcido, who lived in Palmdale, was reported missing by his father, officials said. Two men walking in the desert found his partially buried body April 29, 1996, about a mile from the nearest house and two miles from the nearest paved road.

People who lived near the grave told investigators that about a year earlier they had helped two men dig out a truck that had gotten stuck in the desert, officials said.

The witnesses identified photographs of Ross and Shows as the men they had helped, officials said.