The murder of Ovida Coogler, better known as Cricket Coogler, is one of Las Cruces’s oldest cold cases. She disappeared on March 30 or 31, 1949, and was found in the desert 17 days later. While her murder has never been solved, the aftermath has made history.
Coogler left work at the Deluxe Cafe, now the Downtown Blues Cafe, on late at night on March 30. Several witnesses said she got into a car, but the make and model and color of the car changed from witness to witness. She was never seen again.
One witness thought he may have seen her running along the highway between Las Cruces and El Paso on April 1, wearing a gray suit. Two men in a highway patrol vehicle caught up with her, beat her, and forced her into the vehicle. That witness’s statement was never confirmed. No other witnesses appear to have seen her after that fateful night.
Some rabbit hunters found Cricket Coogler’s body in the desert near Mesilla over two weeks later. She was clothed but her underpants were missing. Dona Ana County Sheriff Alfonso Luchini “Happy” Apodaca allegedly lifted her skirt and said, “Yep, that’s her, all right.”
Coogler had some pretty important friends. Sheriff Apodaca was one of them. She also had friends who were prominent members of the Democratic Party in New Mexico. It is not entirely clear how she had these influential friends, when she was a spirited waitress and a loner, often hated for her tomboyish and opinionated ways. People don’t like women who speak their minds, and they especially didn’t back then. It is thought that Coogler’s mouth may have been why she was killed.
But it is thought she had sexual relations with some of these people, Sheriff Apodaca in particular, and some even thought she was a prostitute. There were even rumors she was pregnant with Sheriff Apodaca’s baby at the time of her death. While none of these rumors have been confirmed, it is well-known that Cricket Coogler often drank alcohol, went to parties, and rode around in cars with many of the men later believed to be involved in her murder. She had many romantic liaisons, sometimes with married men in high places of government. She would sometimes show up home or at work, bruised and beaten, saying it was because she had gone out with a married man or she knew too much about a robbery. After her death, her friends told sobering tales of how she was treated by her influential “friends.”
Immediately after she disappeared, several politicians and Sheriff Apodaca left for Albuquerque and Santa Fe. This delayed the search for her by five days. When Sheriff Apodaca returned, he inserted himself into the investigation. There is even some evidence of him tampering with the investigation. The theory is that either he killed Coogler, or he knew who did and he had to protect them.
How Coogler was killed is unclear. In her initial autopsy, the coroner reported her face and collarbone had been crushed by a large object and she had much bruising. Later, he stated that decomposition and wild animals may have caused the damage to her body. There was the suggestion she had been run over by a car many times, but again that was impossible to determine due to decomposition.
A second autopsy was not possible, either, because she had been interred in lime to kill the odor emanating from her body, which subsequently ate away the remains of her tissues. Nevertheless, the manner of death is believed to be homicide. Eighteen-year-old women don’t usually just wander into the desert and die.
Wesley Byrd
Apodaca immediately went after Coogler’s friend, Wesley Byrd. He beat Byrd with a leather strap and then held him in jail for two weeks, as he attempted to coerce a confession. Part of this coercion involved Apodaca taking Byrd out to the desert where Coogler’s body had been found and attaching a padlock and bicycle lock to Byrd’s genitals, then making him walk while demanding a confession.
Byrd’s friends appealed to the FBI to free him, since he was being held without charge. The police thus charged him with selling a car without a dealer’s license but lost the paperwork. He was finally released, and saved up money for a month before returning to North Carolina, where he was from. He only came back to Las Cruces for a torture trial against Sheriff Apodaca in 1950.
Wesley Byrd actually was a suspicious individual in this case. He had Coogler’s hair in his place and some lipstick on his shirt that matched hers. Later tests were inconclusive about whether or not this hair was human. Coogler’s shoe had a smear of blue that matched the dash of his car.
Byrd and Coogler were connected. He flirted with her often at a cafe where they had worked together. Byrd was also known to drink and beat women, especially his wife Emma. Emma even gave a statement to police that he had come home covered in blood between Coogler’s disappearance and when she was found dead; however, in court, she recanted this statement. He still has not been cleared for this crime.
Two other men also reported that Sheriff Apodaca beat and tortured them in relation to the case.
Sheriff Apodaca
Some theorize that Apodaca was the real killer and Byrd was a convenient scapegoat simply because he was African American. That may be true, but the tragic lynchings of black men blamed for the murders of white women have been prevalent throughout US history.
Nevertheless, Sheriff Apodaca may have been the most suspicious person out of all the suspects. For one thing, he fled to Albuquerque the day Coogler disappeared, and thus delayed the search for Cricket Coogler five days. He also had a history of violence against women and was prone to drinking too much. He often took Cricket Coogler home with him. When he visited her body, he appeared nervous and identified her by looking under her skirt. Some said Cricket Coogler was pregnant with his baby when she was killed.
But why would he want to kill her? The belief is that she may have had pertinent information about a gambling scheme. Sheriff Apodaca and others in law enforcement and government accepted hush money from illegal gambling operations around Las Cruces. Coogler may have been a threat to that. She did talk a lot and people think this is what got her killed.
There was also the robbery of New Mexico A&M (now New Mexico State University) on March 23, 1949. While the person who did the robbery has never been convicted, it appeared to be an inside job. Sheriff Apodaca was suspiciously unwilling to investigate it. Allegedly the night of the robbery, Coogler came home covered in bruises and told her mother that she had been beaten due to what she knew about the robbery. She had also been talking about the robbery the night she disappeared. This led to the belief that she may have been murdered over this robbery, and Sheriff Apodaca may have known who did both the robbery and Coogler’s murder, but he wasn’t talking.
Other Suspects
There were actually many other male suspects. But the evidence against all of them is circumstantial.
One important suspect was Dan Sedillo, a Dona Ana County Corporate Commissioner. Sedillo denied being in Las Cruces the night of March 30 and offered signed documents from Santa Fe as his flimsy alibi, but many witnesses reported he was in Las Cruces that night drinking heavily. Sedillo liked to party and reportedly had asked Sheriff Apodaca fetch him girls for a party March 30. It is thought that Cricket Coogler may have been one of these procured girls.
Another big suspect was Jerry Nuzum. A witness placed Cricket Coogler in Nuzum’s car the night of March 30. Nuzum was a football player for NMSU who went on to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He told his wife Mary that he was preparing for a move, when really he was bar hopping and flirting with Cricket Coogler all night. Around 3 am March 30, he was seen wrestling Coogler into his car. Blood was found in the springs of his car but he claimed it was from a chicken he ran over. There was also a dent on his front bumper. He left town abruptly on March 31.
State Police Officer Carlos Salas was also possibly connected to the case. He made every effort to protect Sheriff Apodaca, who happened to be his cousin. He took part in the illegal gambling schemes and also covered for Sheriff Apodaca in the torture of Wesley Byrd.
The Conspiracy
Coogler’s murder sparked a massive political upheaval in Las Cruces. Corruption became revealed as key players in Las Cruces politics turned out not to be so innocent. Most of these “key players” were trying to turn Santa Fe into another gambling capital, like Las Vegas, Nevada. One of the people at the center of all this was Sheriff Apodaca. Another was State Police Officer, Carlos Salas.
A grand jury was convened when progress was not made in solving Coogler’s death. The grand jury uncovered many instances of illegal gambling operations among prominent people in Dona Ana County. Country clubs seemed to be hot pockets of illegal gambling. While Coogler’s death was never solved, the grand jury led to many people getting fined for running illegal gambling.
Coogler’s knowledge in gambling was thought to have contributed to her death. However, the grand jury also uncovered evidence that Sheriff Apodaca had arranged a romantic rendezvous between Dan Sedillo and Cricket Coogler on March 31. This led to a morals charge against Sedillo, but he was eventually acquitted. His friend, Joseph Montoya, future senator of New Mexico, allegedly was with him the night of the 31 and may have been complicit in Coogler’s death as well.
Two men were deeply involved in corruption in the state. They were Sheriff “Happy” Apodaca and Tuffy Tafoya. These men were involved in covering up gambling in exchange for generous payoffs. Sheriff Apodaca even drove top-level New Mexico officials to gambling halls and arranged for them to have female company whenever they visited Las Cruces.
Apodaca and Tafoya also helped buy votes from Hispanic voters for the Democratic Party, keeping certain people in power. Apodaca was related to several politicians in the state and played a role in keeping them in positions of power. Hence, Apodaca and Tafoya were very powerful men, notorious throughout New Mexico.
As a result of this grand jury, Sheriff Apodaca was put before a jury for a removal trial. He was facing ten counts related to gambling or contributing to gambling. As he attempted to maneuver for charges to be dropped, the threat of a second removal trial became imminent for two counts of rape and the corruption of a minor.
However, Apodaca simply resigned from his position as sheriff and all charges disappeared. He never was charged with rape or allowing illegal gambling to go on under his watch. He went about his merry way, as happy as his nickname, and even ran for sheriff of Dona Ana again and also ran for sheriff in Santa Fe in subsequent years. He never did enter a position as sheriff again. Though he was charged once for pulling over a man with the red emergency light on his car and beating and cursing him, he again escaped any real repercussions and was simply ordered to remove the light from his car. I imagine a blithe sociopath when I read about “Happy” Apodaca.
He wasn’t able to escape trouble forever, though. A torture trial for his abuse of Wesley Byrd began in 1950 and Apodaca and his accomplices were found guilty. In June 1951, Sheriff Apodaca, Hubert Beasley, and Roy Sandman went to prison for the torture of Wesley Byrd. They were all released early for good behavior. From there, Apodaca went on to start collecting bills for people. Usually he used his charm. But sometimes he resorted to violence.
After this controversy, the Democratic party lost favor in New Mexico. The first Republican governor, Edwin L. Mechem, was elected in 1950. Politics and law enforcement are still corrupt and dirty, but in a more covert way. Cricket Coogler’s case exposed the good ole boy’s club that was New Mexico politics in the 1940s, giving future generations of that club cause to hide their filth better.
Conclusion
Nearly eighty years after her murder, Cricket has quite a bad reputation online as a “foul-mouthed” girl known for being promiscuous. Apparently, women are still to blame for their own sexual assaults and homicides if they enjoy sex and don’t behave like perfect ladies all the time. I thought that mentality was behind us, but evidently not.
People who really knew Cricket Coogler said she was a spirited tomboy who liked to drink and have fun. One of her former co-workers said that Coogler had a great work ethic, but she often disappeared from jobs, leading to her termination at several cafes. Some think she was a prostitute, but those who actually knew her doubt that. They think Coogler was just a fun-loving party girl who paid the ultimate price for having a lively personality.
Coogler did not have an easy childhood. Her father was not a nice man. Coogler started working very early in life. Her adulthood did not appear much easier than her childhood, as men used her and abused her. She apparently struggled with some personal demons, possibly alcoholism and mental illness. She was only eighteen when she died. While it is wonderful that her death exposed corruption and put some people in prison, she did not deserve this.
You can read a lot more detail about this case in Cricket in the Web, by Paula Moore.