Killer cops a plea
Repo...@home.com
Killer cops a plea
07/26/99
Reuters
(CANONCITO) - A man accused of killing four family members is expected
to cut a
deal. Stanely Secatero was charged with shooting five members of his
family,
killing four of them, last year. Secartero is expected to agree to a
guilty
plea this week in exchange for a 45-year sentence.
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The following appears courtesy of the 10/30/98 online edition of The
Albuquergue Tribune newspaper:
Cañoncito suspect gets new charges
By Jessie Milligan
TRIBUNE REPORTER
10/30/98
The U.S. Attorney's Office has added new charges against Stanley
Secatero, 25,
accused of killing four family members on the Cañoncito Navajo Indian
Reservation in July.
Secatero is charged with the first-degree murders of his aunt and uncle,
Agnes
Secatero and Eddie Secatero Sr.; aunt Rose Nelson; and his grandmother,
Lena
Secatero. He is also accused of shooting a cousin, Karen Sandoval, who
survived.
Relatives of Secatero's said the shootings may have been sparked by
Secatero's
anger at family members he believed wanted to turn in his brother,
Wesley
Secatero, to collect a $1,000 reward. Wesley Secatero had been wanted on
a
probation violation.
The U.S. Attorney's Office on Thursday tacked on additional charges
against
Stanley Secatero in connection with that alleged motive. Secatero
pleaded not
guilty Thursday to the new charges, including two counts of tampering
with a
witness. The new charges also include deleting a charge of assault on
Sandoval
and adding the more serious charge of intent to commit murder.
A trial date has not been set.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The following appears courtesy of the 7/18/98 online edition of The
Albuquerque Tribune newspaper:
Cañoncito reels from killings
Tragedy invades quiet reservation and confronts tribe with horrific
reality
By J. Gutierrez Krueger
TRIBUNE REPORTER
07/18/98
CAÑONCITO -- It had been easy to imagine that the horrors of multiple
homicide
might never find their way over the craggy canyons and the red mesas to
this
remote and quiet community on the Cañoncito Navajo Indian Reservation.
But residents in this town some 30 miles west of Albuquerque awoke
Friday to
the sounds of sirens, helicopters swirling overhead, military-garbed
law-enforcement agents swarming their village, and the eerie silence
from one
home where four people lay dead.
Crime of the bloodiest kind had come to Cañoncito.
Stanley Secatero, 25, is accused of shooting and killing four family
members
and wounding another late Thursday in what relatives say was the final
escalation of a family dispute.
Secatero surrendered Friday afternoon after a 16-hour manhunt from door
to door
and canyon to canyon by some 80 law-enforcement agents from the FBI,
Bernalillo
County Sheriff's Department, Navajo Nation Police, Albuquerque Police,
Laguna
Police, Cañoncito Police, McKinley County Sheriff's Office and the U.S.
Customs
Service.
Secatero was arraigned Friday evening in Albuquerque before U.S.
Magistrate
Don Svet on an outstanding assault warrant from 1994, said Ron Lopez, a
spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Secatero remained in the Sandoval County Detention Center in Bernalillo
this
morning pending a detention hearing at 9 a.m. Monday, the FBI said. He
has not
yet been charged with Thursday's homicides.
And Cañoncito remained in shock.
"We have seen this sort of thing on the TV and have heard about it on
the
radio -- sorrow happening all over our nation," said Cañoncito Chapter
President Tony Secatero, a distant relative of the suspect and the
victims. "We
never ever imagined that this kind of horror would happen here."
Shortly after 10:30 p.m. Thursday as a thunderstorm raged, authorities
say
Stanley Secatero began shooting members of his family.
The lone surviving victim, identified as Karen Sandoval, a cousin, was
shot
seven times, said Ron Dick, FBI acting special agent in charge.
Sandoval, who drove herself to a friend's house after being riddled
with
bullets, was airlifted to University Hospital and was listed in
satisfactory
condition this morning, a hospital spokesman said.
The others died at the scene, Dick said. Two of them had apparently
tried to
flee the shower of bullets but were shot and killed after their pickup
became
stuck in the storm-soaked earth, Cañoncito resident Lynn Largo said.
Their
bodies were found in the mud next to the pickup.
The FBI identified the dead as Secatero's grandmother, Lena Secatero;
aunts
Rose Nelson and Agnes Secatero; and Agnes' husband, Eddie Secatero.
Residents spent much of Friday waiting for word of Secatero's capture
and
talking about what had happened in their community of about 2,800, the
main
village of the Cañoncito Navajo Indian Reservation.
Most gathered in pickups parked around the small group of spare
buildings of
the Desidero Center, a place normally used as a meeting house, day-care
center
and for a host of community services.
On Friday, it was a command post for law-enforcement agents, a secluded
room
for family members of the victims -- and a morgue.
"It's a pretty weird thing to happen here," said Manuel Chavez, a
cousin in
the victims' family. "It's not right."
He and other members of his family and dozens of neighbors said they
had heard
about the shootings on television and had come down to check on the
well-being
of other loved ones.
He said Rose Nelson was a day-care worker at The Children's Center in
northeast Albuquerque. Nelson is survived by a young child.
Eddie and Agnes Secatero, he said, were silversmiths who often sold
their
jewelry along the portal in Old Town.
Lena Secatero, the grandmother, was a weaver and was known for her
cooking,
Chavez said.
Crowds of people who seemed both fascinated and horrified by the
unfolding
events thickened about 2:30 p.m. Friday when word spread that a neighbor
had
spotted the suspect on a ridge above the village.
The man could be seen pacing along the edge of the precipice as SWAT
team
hostage negotiators and deputies moved in.
Secatero was armed with a .22-caliber rifle and had earlier threatened
to
shoot if anyone got close, said a Navajo Nation police investigator who
declined to give her name.
About 15 minutes later, Secatero emptied the bullets from his rifle,
tossed
the weapon over the cliff and raised his hands in the air as agents
rushed in
and captured him without incident.
The observers, some who carried binoculars and umbrellas, slowly moved
down
the unpaved roads to return to their homes.
Tony Secatero described the victims as members of a very quiet family.
But
Stanley Secatero, he said, was a violent man with a history of arrests,
substance abuse and gang dealings.
"He was always threatening people and I believe a lot of it had to do
with
drugs," he said.
Stanley Secatero's cousin, Jennifer Platero, said problems arose last
week
when family members accused him of taking a crowbar and bashing in the
windshield of a white Oldsmobile Cutlass she had been driving.
"He threatened to kill us because someone had told on him," Platero
said.
Others said he was angry at family members for turning in his brother,
Wesley
Secatero, 33, to collect a $1,000 reward.
Wesley Secatero had been wanted on aggravated battery charges in
connection
with an April 1997 incident in Albuquerque, Metro Court records state.
He was arrested Thursday morning on charges of violating probation in
the
battery case and remains in City-County Jail in Albuquerque, authorities
said.
Stanley Secatero had been wanted on a 1994 warrant filed in U.S.
District
Court for the June 16, 1994, stabbing of two men, including the son of
Agnes
and Eddie Secatero, two of Thursday night's victims.
Stanley Secatero had also been in Cañoncito Tribal Court 14 times in
the past
two or three years "for serious crimes -- stabbing, armed assault and
battery,
and several others," Tony Secatero said.
"But it's a real revolving door," he said of the tribal-court legal
system.
"Criminals are arrested but not maintained in any jail facility for more
than a
few hours."
Sentences for serious crime, he said, can amount to about six hours in
jail
and a fine "and then they're back out again." And the nearest Navajo
Nation
jail facility is in Crownpoint, 129 miles away, he said.
The chapter president said he hoped the tragedy of Cañoncito could
alert the
Navajo Nation, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and the state of New
Mexico
to the growing problems even small communities are experiencing with
domestic,
gang and youth violence, and alcohol and drug abuse.
"I believe it's now time for these entities to address these problems
and to
strengthen the due process of the law and provide more law enforcement
and
counseling assistance," he said. "We have pleaded with these entities in
the
past for greater assistance and support for these problems, but our
pleas have
fallen on deaf ears."
Tony Secatero said that not since a tornado in 1974 killed two people
and
destroyed nine homes has his community been so devastated.
"This is a total shock," he said.
Community members were expected to meet today at the Desidero Center,
he said,
to "explain what has happened and to realign the community."
"We have to start work with family counseling and try to provide some
comfort
in time of need," Tony Secatero said.
And to plan funerals, he said. "We will be busy."
But he said he worries that his community will never be the same.
In recent years, the community has suffered an unemployment rate of 56
percent, he said, and 67 percent of the reservation population is under
age 18.
Gangs, drugs and domestic violence are creeping in. The traditional
American
Indian ways are being lost.
"Urban communities are not the only ones with terror striking their
citizens,"
he said. "It happens in the rural communities also, in small Native
American
communities.
"We, sadly enough, are a stark testimony to this fact."