The SUN’s recent discovery of a fourth witness to a fatal 2007
shooting forced State Police to reopen a case that still raises questions in the minds of the victim’s family.
Sixteen-year-old Melinda Maestas of El Rito told the SUN last week she avoided telling police she was present at the Nov. 3, 2007, shooting of Alfonso Archuleta because she was under house arrest at the time. Maestas said she had cut off her ankle bracelet and was concerned about going to jail for violating probation if she was interviewed by police, so she left Española Hospital before police arrived.
Archuleta died from a gunshot wound to the back of his head while riding in a car in Ohkay Owingeh with Maestas, Joey Garcia, 20, of Chimayó, Felicia Jaillet, 15, of El Rito, and Anjanette Trujillo, 14, of Medanales. State Police’s investigation determined Archuleta’s injury was self-inflicted but accidental, based on collaborating statements from the three witnesses they knew of at the time. But questions raised by the late discovery of Maestas and information in the autopsy report has Archuleta’s family questioning whether the evidence gathered conclusively shows he shot himself.
“They lied good enough to hide a girl that was in the car,” Donald Archuleta said of the witnesses to his son’s death. “Can they not hide a murder?”
Maestas was interviewed by State Police criminal agents Oct. 21 and corroborated the statements made by the three other witnesses, according to the case agent Joey Gallegos. Although State Police have closed the case again, the District Attorney’s office is still interested in the matter.
District Attorney Henry Valdez said he expects law enforcement to refer Archuleta’s case to his office for review because of the new evidence that has come forward about a fourth witness.
“When there’s been a death and there’s new evidence they go out and investigate and they refer it to our office for our review,” Valdez said.
Valdez did not say what course of action could be taken if the case was not referred to his office, saying he could not speculate about what might happen. Chief Deputy District Attorney A.J. Salazar, in the Rio Arriba District Attorney’s office, said he never received an original report about Archuleta’s death last year, nor any subsequent reports.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve had people question whether their loved one committed suicide,” Valdez said. “We have met with families and explained to them what the investigation showed and what our own conclusions have brought us to.”
Office of the Medical Investigator Dr. Ross Zumwalt, who performed Archuleta’s autopsy, said the positioning of the gunshot wound at the back of Archuleta’s head caused the doctors to question whether it was self-inflicted, and they delayed their opinion “for quite a while” to conduct further investigation.
Archuleta was shot with a .357 magnum about five inches below the top of his head, one half-inch to the right of the middle of the back of his head, the autopsy report states.
“We went into a great deal of detail on this case,” Zumwalt said. “We were concerned about it and did a pretty thorough investigation and asked the police for their investigation and withheld our decision for some time until we were pretty certain of our opinion.”
Zumwalt said witness statements gathered by State Police provided the evidence that Archuleta shot himself, but based on examination of the body alone, “it could have been a homicide.”
Archuleta’s mother Tina said the first call she received the night her son was shot was from Jaillet, Archuleta’s girlfriend, who told her he “was shot.” Later, Jaillet altered the story at the hospital to say that he shot himself, Tina Archuleta said.
When police interviewed the three known witnesses at the time, all described Archuleta clicking the gun twice without it going off, then putting it in the glove compartment. Later he took it out, placed it to his head and fired it, according to the report. When Jaillet, Maestas, and Trujillo spoke to the SUN for this story, all described the three trigger pulls occurring in succession and omitted the part about Archuleta placing the gun in the glove compartment.
“It happened so fast, it happened in seconds,” Jaillet said. “I barely could tell him to stop.”
Jaillet was sitting behind Archuleta, who was in the front passenger seat of his mother’s 1996 Honda Civic. Maestas was sitting behind Garcia, the driver, and Trujillo was in the center back seat, the girls said. After the shooting occurred, on State Road 74 between the San Juan bridge and San Juan Elementary School, Garcia pulled the car over at the school and Jaillet jumped in the front seat with Archuleta, where she tried to administer CPR, according to Jaillet and Maestas.
Archuleta’s family questions whether Jaillet could have administered CPR to Archuleta, because her pants and shoes, but not her shirt, were covered in blood. Jaillet said most of the blood ended up on her shoes when it poured out of the back of Archuleta’s head, an assertion Maestas and Trujillo confirmed.
All three female witnesses said they don’t know who loaded Archuleta’s gun. Jaillet and Trujillo saw the bullets outside the gun at a friend’s house where they left minutes before the shooting. Garcia, they said, was sitting on a bed playing with the unloaded weapon, putting it to his head and pulling the trigger.
“Alfonso told him, ‘Don’t dry click it,’” Trujillo said. “He goes, ‘Don’t be pointing that nowhere.’”
The girls said Garcia — the only witness who refused to discuss Archuleta’s death with the SUN — is the only person who could have known the gun was loaded. All three of them are sure Archuleta didn’t know the gun was loaded — Maestas said Archuleta even laughed at the girls for being scared when he clicked the trigger in the car, telling them it wasn’t loaded.
Tracked down recently at his Chimayó home, Garcia would make no statement about his friend’s death. His mother said Garcia is taking antidepressants and still struggling to recover from the incident.
Garcia is also the only witness who refused to be interviewed by State Police Criminal Agents regarding the case — he was interviewed by uniform officers at the scene and wrote out a statement, but did not come to State Police District 7 headquarters to be interviewed, as Jaillet and Trujillo did. The investigation into Archuleta’s death was still open pending his interview at the time the SUN’s first story about the case was written. Nevertheless, Garcia was never interviewed and the case was closed anyway, State Police Sgt. Chris Valdez said, .
“We can’t force somebody to talk to us,” Gallegos said. “There’s no reason in the whole investigation for me to be looking at anything else besides a self-inflicted gun shot wound.”
Christopher Yates was a close friend of Archuleta’s and attended Job Corps in Albuquerque with him and Garcia. Yates said Garcia told him at a rosary service for Archuleta held in the days after his death that the shooting stemmed from a game of Russian roulette and that there were three bullets in the gun.
Initially, police reported Archuleta had killed himself playing Russian roulette. Then one week later police claimed Archuleta was twirling the gun when it went off. The autopsy report does not support the “twirling” theory, however, because it states the barrel of the gun was pressed firmly to the back of Archuleta’s head at the time of discharge.
Yates and Archuleta’s friend Luis Mendes said they never trusted Garcia or approved of Archuleta hanging out with him, noting that he was not a member of the North Side Locos, the gang to which Archuleta belonged. Chacon and Archuleta described Garcia as belonging to the Chimayó gang; others say he is a Sureño.
Archuleta’s devotion to the North Side is well-known among his friends and family; the pallbearers at his funeral were clad in red, the gang’s color. But Jaillet said Archuleta expressed to her that since he was going to be turning 18 (in March 2008), he was thinking about getting out of the gang.
Jaillet said Archuleta’s well-known status as a “gangster” seemed to affect police’s level of concern with the case.
“One officer who was there was like, ‘He was just a little gangster anyways. He was a Northside banger. If it hadn’t happened this way somebody probably would have done it anyways,’” Jaillet said.
She did not remember the name of the State Police uniform division officer who allegedly made that comment. Officer William Terrazas, who took the initial report on Archuleta’s death, did not return calls for comment.
After interviewing Jaillet, Garcia, and Trujillo, uniform officers had the three write statements about what they saw. Each was supposed to be interviewed at State Police headquarters by criminal agents, according to Jaillet, Trujillo and police. Jaillet said criminal agents photographed her hands and clothes and Trujillo’s at the station.
Tina Archuleta said agent Gallegos told her each of the witnesses was tested for gunshot residue. Gallegos said none of the witnesses was tested for gunshot residue, a test that is considered too inaccurate to be admissible as evidence in court anyway. He has no recollection of telling Tina Archuleta otherwise. The car was also photographed, but no forensic testing was done for the case, Gallegos said.
“What kind of police are going to accept the word of the kids involved?” Donald Archuleta said. “It’s amazing to find out there was another girl in the car — just amazing the lies that have come out.”
Donald Archuleta said Garcia told them Archuleta was on cocaine at the time of his death, making him act recklessly. The toxicology test results in the autopsy report show Archuleta was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of his death.
It’s not unusual for Russian roulette to be used a coverup story for a murder, according to Det. Aaron Jones of the Valencia County Sheriff’s Department. Jones investigated a 2007 case in which a friend of the victim pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter after he initially told investigators the victim shot himself.
“When there’s a group of (witnesses) around everybody’s going to get panicked up and they’re all going to get a story together,” Jones said.
Jones noted that too-similar stories can be a tipoff witnesses are lying, because in reality different people perceive things with small variations from one another. Jones also said it seemed strange that Archuleta’s autopsy states both his palms were covered with soot (gun shot residue).
“It would have been awfully hard to shoot yourself with both hands like that,” Jones said.
Zumwalt found nothing peculiar in that detail, however, saying sometimes people put a second hand on a weapon to steady it.
Donald Archuleta doesn’t believe his son shot himself and has his own theory about why the gunshot residue was found on his hands. Archuleta liked to tilt the seat back and interlace his hands behind his head, he said.
One thing that isn’t in dispute is the impact Archuleta’s death has had on his friends and family, who are still reeling from the loss one year later.
Yates got tears in his eyes talking about the loss of his friend.
“I went to Job Corps just because of him,” Chacon said. “He was my down-ass homie.”
Sixteen-year-old Nicole Archuleta, easy-going and “Miss Popular” before she lost her “other half,” has become withdrawn and angry, her parents said. She refuses to believe the police’s version of her brother’s death.
“This whole year has been lost,” Tina Archuleta said. “We’re going to church trying to find some peace, but there’s a lot of anger and questions in your heart.”