Prosecutors in Northern California have charged a 66-year-old man with murder, alleging he staged the killing of his wife more than 10 years ago as a suicide, officials announced late last week.
Police in Antioch, a city approximately 37 miles from Oakland, responded on Sept. 28, 2015, to a home in a residential neighborhood and discovered 52-year-old Brenda Joyce Leon dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Homicide investigators located a suicide note at the scene, the Bay Area news outlet SFGATE reported.
According to her obituary, Leon and her “loving husband” Michael Anthony Leon were married for 33 years. They had two adult daughters and two grandchildren at the time of her death.
In 2012, her husband, who worked in marketing for a HVAC company, ran for mayor of Antioch, centering his campaign around local crime, not raising taxes and making the city friendlier to small businesses. He came in fourth place in the four-candidate field, receiving 1,740 votes, a little more than a 5% share of the votes, The Antioch Herald reported at the time.
For years, Leon’s daughter, Michelle Wonders and Monica Tagas, harbored doubts about their mother’s death and in 2021 filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a male killer only identified as “John Doe,” SFGATE reported. In the suit, they claimed the killer staged the scene and faked the suicide note before law enforcement made it to the home.
Prosecutors in Northern California charged a 66-year-old Antioch man with murder, alleging he staged the 2015 killing of his wife as a suicide. (Google Maps)
Members of the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office’s cold case unit conducted “a lengthy investigation” after the wrongful death suit and in a Jan. 23 news release said investigators “uncovered previously unknown digital evidence and new factual details that were central to the decision to file charges.”
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While authorities did not elaborate on the newly discovered evidence, they said Michael Anthony Leon was taken into custody at his Antioch residence on Jan. 22 on charges of murder and personal use of a firearm causing death.
He was being held on $1 million bail and is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 26.
The 66-year-old faces 50 years to life in prison, KTLA’s Bay Area sister station KRON reported.
“Brenda Joyce’s family never lost faith that the truth would come to light,” Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton said. “Today’s filing in Contra Costa Superior Court honors that perseverance and demonstrates that cold cases are never forgotten, regardless of how much time has passed.”
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