Prosecutors rested their case Friday in the murder trial of Mexican restaurant owner Greg Leon, who is accused of fatally shooting his wife’s lover in a jealous rage on Valentine’s Day 2016.
Over four days of testimony from 21 witnesses, the majority from law enforcement, prosecutors have argued the killing was weeks in the making as a suspicious Leon scoured dating sites and monitored a GPS tracking device hidden in his wife’s Mercedes. Although defense attorneys say Leon shot in self defense, a forensic pathologist testified the victim, Arturo Bravo Santos, did not appear to be reaching for a weapon.
“There is an abundance of malice in this case. We have shown that this was not just a Valentine’s Day shooting, where a man just happens to come upon his wife and in sudden heat and passion fires a gun,” 11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard told the judge Walton J. McLeod, IV after the defense motioned for the charges to be dropped.
The restaurateur, who owns more than a dozen San Jose restaurants around the Midlands, is charged with murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime. Prosecutors Friday announced that they had dismissed two other charges Leon was facing, for attempted murder and discharging a firearm into a vehicle.
But while Leon’s wife survived unharmed, Bravo Santos was struck with three bullets, two of which were fatal, said pathologist Dr. Janice Edwards Ross, who testified Friday.
Ross, a forensic pathologist who performed Bravo Santos’ autopsy, testified that Bravo Santos died of “ex-sangiunation” — he bled to death after two of the bullets pierced major blood vessels and organs including his heart, lungs and liver. While Bravo Santos may have remained conscious and been able to talk for a short period after the shooting, his body would have gone into shock and begun to shut down within one minute, Ross said.
One of the fatal bullets entered near Bravo Santos’ right armpit before traveling through his chest, hitting his heart, and lodging in his left shoulder. The other fatal shot entered just above his right buttock, with the bullet traveling through his body before stopping below his sternum, Ross said. The third bullet, which Ross testified would have been nonfatal, entered just below Bravo Santos’ right armpit and exited near his right collarbone, where prosecutors say it then ricocheted off one of the truck’s windows.
The angles were inconsistent with someone leaning forward in the cab of the vehicle, Ross said. The defense has argued that Leon shot Bravo Santos when he believed that the younger man was possibly learning forward and reaching for a gun.
“We either have someone (the shooter) crouched down real low or a short shooter … or we have someone bending over towards the other door,” Hubbard argued. He demonstrated how Bravo Santos could have been leaning across the seats towards the passenger side door and turned away from where Greg Leon fired his gun.
“If he had turned towards the shooter we would have had a whole different array of wounds,” Ross said, saying that in her examination of the body she found no defensive wounds to the hands or arms or shots to the front of his body.
In what appeared to be an unwelcome surprise for the defense, Ross also walked back claims she had made in earlier reports that the angle of Bravo Santos’ nonfatal wound to the right armpit indicated that he was raising his right arm.
On the stand Friday, Ross argued that the presence of a small bruise she had discovered on the inside of Bravo Santos’ right arm, called a “slap wound,” meant that his arm was down when the bullet traveled through the armpit.
In reports and in testimony, Ross ruled the manner of death a homicide.
“There can be lawful or justified homicides, is that correct?” asked defense attorney Alissa Wilson, who cross examined Ross.
“That’s for the court of law to decide,” Ross replied.
The road to a killing
Prosecutors have argued that Leon had been growing suspicious of his wife in the weeks leading up to the murder.
On January 13, 2016, Greg Leon created a Facebook page and began looking to see if his wife had profiles on dating sites including ourtime.com, match.com and localmilfselfies.com, according to records obtained from his phone.
Two weeks later, he had a GPS tracker manufactured by Spireon secretly installed on his wife’s car, testified Dwayne Toole, the former employee of a used car dealership whose brother installed the device.
On the stand, Toole said the dealership normally used the devices to keep track of its own inventory and it was the first time they had ever sold one to a customer. Toole also helped Leon set up an app on his phone called Goldstar, also provided by Spireon. The app would inform him of the tracking device’s location every 24 hours and could also be manually pinged to generate a current location.
Over several weeks, the app tracked Rachel Leon at work, at home and visiting her son, said Sgt. Michael Phipps of the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department, a digital forensics expert who reviewed data from Leon’s phone and Facebook account.
In January and early February 2016, records showed Leon had created the new Facebook account and was looking at the dating sites, Phipps said.
Hubbard said those were attempts by Leon to see if Rachel had profiles on these sites and was engaging in “extramarital activity.”
But on the night of Feb. 14, 2016, following a Valentine’s Day day dinner at Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Leon manually refreshed the Goldstar app and saw that his wife’s Mercedes was stopped at a park-and-ride located at 110 Riverchase Way. Surveillance footage from the lobby of a San Jose restaurant showed Leon rushing out the door seconds after he queried his wife’s location in the app.
Less than fifteen minutes later he discovered his wife and Arturo Bravo Santos, naked except for his socks, in the backseat of a silver pickup truck. Leon repeatedly shot in the truck with a .357 caliber revolver.
The defense has maintained that when Leon opened the door, he didn’t intend to shoot anyone. He only fired when he believed Bravo Santos threatened him and was reaching for a weapon.
“There’s mere speculation and conjecture whether Mr. Leon acted with malice,” said Jack Swerling, one of Leon’s attorneys.
But prosecutors have argued that Leon’s actions as he fled the scene, including tossing the gun on the side of the road, are clear proof of his culpability.
“Disposing of evidence is evidence of guilt,” Hubbard said.