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 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.
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.