Police ruled in 2015 that Brenda Joyce Leon shot herself to death after finding a suicide note on a laptop at the foot of her bed.
On Monday, her former husband Michael Anthony Leon appeared in court charged with her murder a decade after her death, and the attorney representing their daughters revealed for the first time what caused law enforcement to pursue a criminal case.
Digital forensic evidence collected from Brenda’s husband indicated that the suicide note was “not authored on that laptop,” attorney Matt Guichard said Monday afternoon outside the Contra Costa County Superior Court in Martinez.
The revelation came after a judge postponed the arraignment for Michael Leon until next month, as more than a dozen family members of Brenda Leon crowded into a packed courtroom to see Brenda’s husband of 33 years in the fluorescent yellow jumpsuit of a county jail inmate. Monica Tagas, one of their daughters, spoke briefly outside court following the short hearing.
Monica Tagas hugs a family member following a court hearing in the case against her father, Michael Anthony Leon, who is accused of killing his wife and allegedly staging the murder to look like a suicide. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle)
“My mother didn’t deserve what happened to her,” Tagas said. “We’re not going to stop until this person I’m ashamed to call my father is behind bars.”
Michael Leon, 66, was arrested Thursday at the Antioch home the couple shared for decades and charged Friday with murder and a firearm enhancement. Leon, who remains in custody in lieu of $1 million bail, could face up to 50 years to life if convicted.
Barely visible through the mirrored glass of a holding cell, Leon wore glasses and spoke only briefly when Judge David Goldstein asked if he agreed with postponing his arraignment until Feb. 10. “Yes,” he replied softly.
Contra Costa County prosecutor Satish Jallepalli requested the judge prevent him from using any financial gains from the death of his wife to post bail, a move to block Leon from selling the house to make bail. The judge agreed.
Brenda Leon, 52, was found dead in her home on the 3900 block of Bedrock Court on Sept. 28, 2015 and investigators quickly concluded she died by suicide. But her daughters, Michelle Wonders and Tagas, immediately had doubts. In late 2017, the family reached out to Guichard and insisted their mother would never kill herself.
Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney Satish Jallepalli speaks to reporters at the A.F. Bray Courthouse on Monday afternoon following a hearing in the murder case against Michael Anthony Leon. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle)
Guichard, a former prosecutor, knows that loved ones are often blinded by their emotions when it comes to suicide. But Brenda had a trip planned and had started a new job, so signs did point to someone happy with her life, he said.
“They always felt in their heart of hearts that this is what happened,” he said. “It took 10 years.”
He looked over the coroner’s and autopsy report and “it didn’t add up to me,” Guichard said. The coroner’s investigation mentioned electronic devices had been collected. When Guichard inquired about the data, it was unclear where it was being stored.
In August 2021, Wonders and Tagas filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Contra Costa County, alleging a John Doe “intentionally shot” their mother and “forged a suicide note and otherwise falsified evidence at the scene of the killing to give the impression that (their mother) had killed herself.” It was a strategic move allowing them to subpoena the electronic data law enforcement had collected.
Eventually, Guichard received a disk with all the digital forensics downloaded from the crime lab and he sent them to experts for analysis. That is when they discovered the suicide note had first been written on a device other than Brenda’s laptop, putting its authorship into question.
Monica Tagas, center, speaks to reporters with her husband, Nick Tagas, right, following a hearing in the prosecution of her father, Michael Anthony Leon. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle)
He brought the new information to Contra Costa County prosecutors and they opened an investigation.
“The delay in this case was the need for improvements in technology,” Jallepalli said. “What was not found in 2015 was able to be found today.”
The deputy district attorney would not get into specifics about motive, but said: “They were husband and wife and there were some issues in the family at that time.”
On Thursday, Guichard got word from the District Attorney’s Office that Leon had been arrested. He called Brenda’s elderly father, who’d long worried he would die before anything happened with the case. Then he delivered the news to both of Leon’s daughters.
“I was in tears,” he said Monday recalling the conversations, his eyes again welling with tears.
This article originally published at Attorney reveals key evidence that flipped Antioch death from suicide to murder.
