One night almost a month ago, University of New Mexico police picked up a man who they said was “making statements regarding murders from a long time ago.”
It wasn’t long, police say, before 53-year-old Paul Apodaca began confessing.
Posted on 08/20/2021 3:40:41 PM PDT by CedarDave
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In the 1980s, a young woman from Arroyo Hondo was in the running to be the Taos Fiesta Queen. That summer, she visited the house of a renowned El Prado seamstress many times to get fitted for her elaborate, traditional outfit, always making sure to say “hi” to the woman’s 14-year-old son.
She graduated from high school and moved to Albuquerque, where she attended the University of New Mexico.
On June 22, 1988, 21-year-old Althea Oakeley was walking home from a party after getting into a disagreement with her boyfriend. It was around 8:15 when she crossed through the campus and toward the home she shared with her brother. She didn’t make it.
Instead, police say, a man attacked her, stabbing her four times before running off. Oakeley collapsed on a neighbor’s doorstep. She was taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where she died.
On Monday, a little more than 33 years after Oakeley’s death, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina drove to Taos to tell her parents that detectives had solved the case.
It’s not something a police chief typically does. But for Medina, the case is personal — he is the son of the seamstress Oakeley had visited.
And two years after Oakeley’s death, Medina became the first recipient of a scholarship her parents set up in her name.
Although the case had gone cold, Medina said, it had stayed on his mind. When he was promoted to commander in 2012, he asked investigators if there was anything they could do now that technology had advanced. He said he asked again when he was deputy chief in 2018.
Each time, he was told there were no new leads.
“They had some stuff but there was nothing they could ever move forward on,” Medina said.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
One night almost a month ago, University of New Mexico police picked up a man who they said was “making statements regarding murders from a long time ago.”
It wasn’t long, police say, before 53-year-old Paul Apodaca began confessing.
https://www.abqjournal.com/2420779/man-charged-in-1988-slaying-of-unm-student.html
“Detectives looked through the case file and they say Apodaca provided details that were not in the media coverage at the time.”
It makes me happy to think we as a nation have one less person apt to kill for no good reason. Thank you, Mr. Medina, for your persistence and skill in solving this case.
His conscience could no longer hold it in.
Yes. Read the last line of the article linked in the comment above b
One night almost a month ago, University of New Mexico police picked up a man who they said was “making statements regarding murders from a long time ago.”It wasn’t long, police say, before 53-year-old Paul Apodaca began confessing. One of the crimes police say he confessed to? The brutal stabbing death of a University of New Mexico student who was walking home from a party in 1988.
Apodaca, who was being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center on a probation violation, was charged with murder Thursday. It would have been Althea Oakeley’s 55th birthday.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, Apodaca told detectives he was working at the Technical Vocational Institute – now Central New Mexico Community College – as a security guard when he saw Oakeley walking home on the night of June 22, 1988. Then, he said, he decided to hold her at knifepoint and rape her. When she passed by, Apodaca said, she smiled at him and said, “Hi.” So, Apodaca said, he stabbed her in the shoulder blade and left side.
Detectives looked through the case file and they say Apodaca provided details that were not in the media coverage at the time.
According to the complaint, he said he left his watch – one with a sun and a moon on it that his aunt had given him – at the scene, and a watch that matched that description was found near the blood trail.
Several years after Oakeley’s death, in 1995, the brothers made headlines after Mark Apodaca was convicted of murder and Paul Apodaca was convicted of raping a family member. Paul Apodaca told the judge he’d raped the girl in order to be sent to prison with his younger brother. He was sentenced to 20 years but was sent to a different facility.
Medina told the Journal on Wednesday that the man who confessed to killing Oakeley had also confessed to other homicides and sexual assaults and was a “typical poster child” for a lifetime of interactions with the criminal justice system.
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I remember when that poor girl was murdered, so sad.
My son got a lot of his federal police training in Albuquerque. His instructors, all police officers, told him what a shithole that city was. Nothing has changed from what I’ve been able to read about it.
To me, all large cities are shit holes and have been so for decades. That’s why I live in the outskirts (country) of a small city. Had a long commute when I was still working, but it was worth the long drive. 🙂
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