It is said that psychopaths tend to gravitate toward careers that give them power. And one of the most powerful careers out there is law enforcement. That would explain why so many violent, abusive men end up in law enforcement, men who are guilty of police brutality or domestic violence. Some officers are wonderful people, heroes who sacrifice their lives for our society. But some officers abuse their power over people on the streets – and some of them also abuse their own families.
The harrowing tales of wives beaten by their law enforcement husbands are heartbreaking. But even more heartbreaking and maddening are the tales of how these women are ignored, harassed, and disbelieved when they report their abuse. Some of them have ended up dead.
A lovely blog called “Behind the Blue Wall” honors these women and advocates for justice in their murders. The badge seemed to give their husbands license to get away with murder in several of the cases.
Here are a few stories of New Mexico women who were married to law enforcement officers…and paid for their love with their lives. These women trusted their husbands. In the end, they didn’t get anything but bruises, broken hearts, and horrible deaths.
Melanie McCracken
Found dead facedown in bed on August 5, 1995, Melanie McCracken supposedly succumbed to her cancer within hours of arguing with her state police officer husband, Mark McCracken. Sgt McCracken scooped Melanie up, stuck her in the back of his Chevy truck, and then…drove into a tree.
This is the bizarre story of a fallen officer’s wife, Melanie McCracken.
Sgt. McCracken served in the New Mexico State Police for seventeen years and was assigned to the remote and largely rural Valencia County. He and Melanie had been married about eighteen months when something happened that killed Melanie – homicidal suffocation, per a forensic review.
McCracken claimed he had found his wife dead in bed, and that she had probably died from her leukemia. He didn’t bother calling 911 or using his cruiser with its lights and siren. Instead, he drove her in his truck to the Ysleta Indian Reservation, where he ran off the road and slammed into a tree and flipped over. He then pretended to be unconscious from the accident, not even flinching as a paramedic inserted an air tube into his nostril. However, while being carried from the accident scene on a backboard, the paramedics lost their balance and almost dropped McCracken, and he started awake and grabbed the paramedic’s wrist. Unconscious people don’t do that, period. The Lifeguard medical director, Mark Hauswold, said that McCracken showed signs of feigning unconsciousness on a responsiveness test.
Meanwhile, Melanie was very much dead. The paramedics were surprised at how blue she was. She had clearly been gone for a while. One of the paramedics stated that “something didn’t seem right” and even asked “Why was she so dead?” This was not someone who had just freshly died in a car accident.
But McCracken insisted that the accident had taken her life. Later on, he backtracked and claimed that she had died from her ongoing battle with leukemia at home, and he had merely been taking her to the hospital in Albuquerque. If that was the case, why didn’t he call the Living Cross Ambulance, which was located a mere minute from his house? Why was he driving her himself to the hospital, a good eighteen miles away?
Even more strangely, the autopsy did not find any signs of cancer or leukemia in Melanie’s body. She hadn’t been sick at all. But Sgt. McCracken had been telling people she had leukemia for months. That’s when McCracken changed his story and claimed that Melanie was suicidal. She had apparently once told him that she would do something to herself in such a way that no one would know it was suicide. Now doesn’t that seem convenient?
There was no proper investigation. Photos taken at the home went missing from evidence, and the scene at the home was not searched for evidence like body fluids that could prove useful in establishing the true nature of Melanie’s death. No neighbors were interviewed. No inquiries were made into the suspicious circumstances of Melanie’s death; rather, McCracken’s story was accepted without question, even when the autopsy shed lots of doubts. The case was assigned to the state police for investigation, and the state police claimed there was no conflict of interest, despite the fact McCracken was a state police officer and had camaraderie with the men investigating his wife’s death.
Thus, Melanie’s mother filed a federal lawsuit for how the case was mishandled. Without an attorney, she did all of the paperwork herself until an attorney volunteered to take on her case. She endured threats and other forms of legal manipulation from McCracken and his legal team, as well as other members of law enforcement. She writes about her trials and tribulations here.
Dateline became interested in Melanie’s case and began digging. On the day the producer was scheduled to meet with a judge to go over getting indictments, state police cars blocked her from getting to the courthouse. The producer got spooked and fled. She then filed a report with Dateline’s legal department, which she had never done in her history with the show before.
Then the same producer arranged to meet with Robert Mireles, an ambulance head at Living Cross Ambulance Services near the McCracken home, who was in possession of 911 call transcripts and reports at the McCracken home detailing how Melanie had bruises on her shoulders and wore turtlenecks in summer to hide marks on her neck. Mark McCracken had told the EMTs that her bruises were from her leukemia, which of course was a lie. Normally EMTs are supposed to interview women separately from their partners when abuse is suspected – but in this case, the EMTs thought they knew McCracken, so they didn’t bother following their protocol. Hence, Melanie did not get the help that may have saved her life. Once Melanie died, however, Mireles realized he might have some key evidence and he agreed to help however he could.
But the day before Mireles was supposed to be interviewed by Dateline, Mireles hanged himself in his garage. Luis Brown, the OMI investigator in the area, was overheard saying “That’s one report down” at breakfast when discussing the McCracken case. Almost as if he had a list of reports to take care of and witnesses to subdue.
Fortunately, Melanie’s case still did appear on Dateline. This helped open peoples’ eyes to the fact that this was a murder, not an accident. Perhaps this played a role in Sgt. McCracken’s 2003 indictment on murder charges. Dateline won an Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting on this coverage.
In 2003, McCracken was indicted but acquitted on all counts of murder. However, his case did lead to a discussion about corruption in the New Mexico State Police. A Valencia County magistrate judge even filed a civil suit against the state police for harassing him as he probed into the case. In his lawsuit, he described being followed and investigated for bogus things. The Albuquerque Journal wrote a powerful article about how this case proves there needs to be a separate investigative body from the state police in New Mexico.
But as Tera Chavez, Cassy Farrington, and Micaela Torres-Avila prove, change hasn’t really occurred.
http://www.realcrimes.com/McCracken/Melanie_McCracken.htm
https://behindthebluewall.blogspot.com/2011/12/nm-remembering-state-police-sgts-wife.html
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17EVvvpqNhKhC9ik077PkKDVQhd735_Le4qua8-MOFaM/edit
Tera Chavez
Tera Chavez was the subject of a Dateline episode as well as an episode of the Oxygen show called “Accident, Suicide, or Murder?” She was the center of much shock in the relatively peaceful community of Los Lunas when she was found murdered in her bed on October 21, 2007. Then her case became the center of outrage when her officer husband, Levi Chavez, was acquitted for her murder when he was the prime suspect. This is one of many cases in New Mexico where a woman is killed and her law enforcement husband walks free.
Tera and Levi were high school sweethearts. They had two kids and lived next door to Tera’s parents. Tera had had their first baby when she was just fifteen years old. Levi stayed with her the whole time, though, while pursuing a career in criminal justice.
But while they smiled in photos, all was not happy behind the scenes. Levi had affairs with multiple women he worked with – it’s not clear if these affairs were going on at the same time or different times. Tera struggled with some mental health issues and wasn’t happy in her marriage. She told her mom that if anything happened to her, Levi would be the one to look at. After all, not only was he cheating, but he also was involved in some sort of insurance scam. In pictures, he kind of reminds me of Ed Norton’s character in Fight Club.
Levi claimed to walk into their bedroom on October 21, after he had been gone all weekend with his lover, and found Tera in bed with his department-issued handgun beside her. She had apparently shot herself in her mouth, severing her brain stem and killing herself instantly. At least she didn’t suffer I guess. Her journal was on the bedside table and she had scrawled “I’m sorry Levi” on the open page.
Levi claimed she had been calling him all weekend and her mental health was getting progressively worse so he wasn’t surprised she had taken her own life. He had left the gun with her for self-defense due to a recent break-in of their house.
However, Tera’s parents didn’t believe she had killed herself for a minute. And as the medical examiner and the police looked more into her death, they started to have doubts, too.
For one thing, Tera was right-handed, but the trajectory of the bullet was from a left-handed person. For another, someone had discharged the magazine from the gun after the shot, which Tera couldn’t have done because she had died pretty much instantly. Finally, Tera’s journal revealed that she had been feeling better lately and wasn’t in a suicidal state of mind. Oh, and Levi did not have an airtight alibi – his lover wasn’t sure when he was with her and when he wasn’t.
The result was that Levi was charged with her first-degree murder. But a jury acquitted him. This sparked outrage everywhere, and rightfully so. This man clearly killed her but didn’t pay for his crime. Tera spent her whole life with him and never had a chance at finding real love with someone else.
Levi is no longer a cop and works instead with Heading Home, an organization that fights to end homelessness in Albuquerque. He went to law school at UNM but is not working as an attorney. He also remarried, to an APD detective, though she is not in the department any longer. It’s not stated anywhere if his philandering and violence against women has changed, though I guess it’s nice he helps the homeless now. I wonder how his new wife can sleep next to him at night? It makes me sad and angry that he got to go on and live his life, going to school, remarrying, and more, when Tera never got that chance.
https://thecinemaholic.com/tera-chavezs-death
https://thecinemaholic.com/where-is-levi-chavez-now
Micaela Torres-Avila
Micaela Torres-Avila was dating Alamogordo police officer Christopher Welch. They were attending a potluck luncheon at the Ruidoso Downs Senior Center with Welch’s mom on December 21, 2017, when Micaela disappeared out of the blue.
Seven months later, her body was found in the woods by some tourists who had been renting a cabin in the area. She was decomposing in the Tomahawk Trail area of Ruidoso. Neighbors could smell her for months, but they thought she was a large dead animal. Lots of elk roam in the area and they often get hit by cars and go off into the woods to die. Ruidoso has a relatively low crime rate, so it seems normal for people to not suspect a dead smell in the woods to be a body. The area is also pretty heavily wooded, so a body can go a long time without being found.
Micaela was identified by her ID in her purse, which was by her body. She was a lovely woman in her thirties. She was living in a room in Paradise Canyon in Ruidoso with Christopher Welch.
The day she disappeared, she called her sister in San Antonio, TX, and said she was upset about something Welch had said to her. It’s not stated what he had said that upset her so much. The sister said he made her cry. Strangely, Welch doesn’t remember anything he said that might have upset Micaela.
Like the other officers in this post, Welch has plenty of stories to share about Micaela’s mental instability. He claimed she had anxiety issues and had taken off before in the past, though she returned last time. It seems weird that all these women who end up dead at the hands of their boyfriends are so crazy, right? It also seems weird that they always seem to be fighting with their husbands just before they die.
The KRQE article in 2017 says Micaela was being sent for an autopsy. No updates since. So I have no idea what her cause or manner of death was. In my experience, when a body is that decomposed, the OMI aren’t able to determine a cause of death, which is usually good news for the murderer because it makes it really hard to prove stuff in court.
So I guess Micaela went for a walk from the senior center because of her “anxiety issues” and was just struck down by a lightning or an alien laser beam or something. Happens all the time, you know. I kid, but I suppose there are a number of things that could have happened to her. Maybe Christopher Welch had nothing to do with it at all. Maybe she got upset, left the potluck to cool down, and met someone else, stranger or known to her, who harmed her. Maybe she wandered off into the woods and fell and broke her neck. Maybe she had a drug habit and did something to calm down and accidentally overdosed. Maybe she even killed herself.
But none of these scenarios seem as likely as intimate partner violence. Without knowing what the autopsy said, all I can do is grab at likely scenarios. The thing that really stands out to me is how the Tomahawk Trails area is a good 4.6 miles from the Ruidoso Downs Senior Center. That’s pretty far to walk – it would take at least an hour and a half. Far, but not impossible. She might have walked to that area by herself, but it seems more likely someone drove her there. I don’t see any mention of whether or not she had her car with her in Ruidoso that day, and if it was near where she was found dead or left at the senior center if she did have it.
Another thing I find odd is that this area is pretty remote, a good place to take someone if you want to make sure she isn’t found for a while. This obviously worked, since it took 7 months for her to be found.
Not too far from this area was where another woman was taken by Kenneth Kauley in 2012. Kauley kidnapped her while she was leaving her shift at McDonald’s. He strong-armed her into her own car and forced her to drive to a remote area off Gavilan Canyon Road, where he raped her, stabbed her in the neck and skull with a screwdriver, and then strangled her. Amazingly, she survived this assault, though she is paralyzed on the right side. Kauley was arrested shortly after, and when I looked him up on the New Mexico Corrections Department website, I found that he is currently housed in the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility, near Santa Rosa.
Let’s look again at Welch’s story. In the first account in the Ruidoso News, Welch claims they were at the potluck luncheon with his mom when he went to get a drink and left the table. When he came back, Micaela was gone. He never saw her again.
In another version, after her body was found, Welch claims Micaela went to the bathroom, saying she would be right back. But she never returned. Both stories seem kind of weird. This woman just vanishes from a crowded event. At the same time, though, Welch had a lot of witnesses there. As a cop, he would be pretty dumb to just take off from an event with his girlfriend, then lie about it and claim he stayed there while his girlfriend left without him. Surely someone saw her leave while he was still there at the luncheon. The fact he is a cop makes me have little faith in how this case may have been handled, though. His brethren in blue may have been working hard to protect him and not his girlfriend.
I want to know what Welch’s mom has to say. Did she corroborate her son’s story? Did she see Micaela leave without Welch? Did Welch immediately go looking for her, or did he stay for a while and finish the luncheon with her? And how about the others at the potluck? If Micaela just randomly left, surely one of them noticed her leaving. Were they questioned?
There is an astonishing lack of details about this case on the Internet. I just don’t know much. I hope that justice is found for Micaela, though.
https://www.krqe.com/news/missing-womans-body-found-in-ruidoso/
Cassy Farrington
Cassy Farrington was a bright and determined straight-A high school student in Silver City with aspirations of becoming a doctor. Then she found out she was pregnant at only 16. She gave birth to a son, graduated high school, moved out of her parents’ house, and married her baby’s father, Bradley Farrington, all within the same month. Talk about change!
Bradley went on to become a police officer in Silver City. Despite having to grow up so abruptly, Cassy was a loving mom and wife. She and Bradley had a second son, and Cassy also became a nurse.
But not everything was peachy. Cassy told her family and friends about how abusive and controlling Bradley was. Their marriage was not a happy one, and it finally ended when Cassy was 23. Cassy started dating David Berry, who was very kind to her boys.
Then, on March 24, 2014, Cassy worked a night shift and then dropped her boys off at school. She told her mom, Darlene Brooks, that she was going to nap and then pick up her kids from school. Her mom later got a call that Cassy never arrived to get them. Her mom had Cassy’s former nursing professor and landlord, Charnelle Lee, check on her.
Charnelle noticed running water on the floor in the kitchen. She found Cassy floating facedown in the bathtub with the water still running. Cassy was still in her nursing scrubs and bruises were obvious on her arms and neck. Charnelle called 911 and said that Cassy was stiff.
Within hours, the police cleared the crime scene and released the home back to Cassy’s family. Her family found lots of evidence that the cops had overlooked. For instance, Cassy was found in the bathroom off her bedroom. But there was another bathroom at the other end of the house, where the water was also running in the tub, and the towel bar had been ripped out of the wall. Cassy’s lunch pack from work was set in front of her bed. There were black scuff marks on the bottom of the tub where Cassy had died, indicating Cassy had struggled with her assailant as he attempted to strangle her. Finally, the cops admitted they had taken no DNA swabs or fingerprints from the crime scene, which blows my mind.
Her family immediately suspected Bradley. Not only did they know how violent he could be, but he and Cassy were fighting bitterly over custody of the boys. Meanwhile, the lead investigator, Jose Sanchez, a co-worker of Bradley Farrington’s, never even questioned Bradley. The family felt he was protecting Farrington. So they advocated for Cassy, and as a result, Jess Watkins took over the investigation and was able to gather enough evidence to convict Bradley Farrington.
Bradley Farrington was sentenced to life. Somehow, his parents got custody of Cassy’s boys. That seems wrong, but maybe there are additional things I don’t know about the case that made a judge award them custody.
Cassy was only 23. She was yet another victim of domestic violence. Not only did her murder end her opportunity for a bright future, but it also deeply hurt her boys, her boyfriend, and her parents, and everyone else who loved her. It is disgusting that Bradley Farrington could have gotten away with this if Cassy’s family had not advocated for her.