The December 1995 Torreon Cabin Murders left New Mexico in horror. Ben Anaya, Jr., and Cassandra Sedillo were executed at close range while they slept in bed. Cassandra’s two little boys were then locked in the cabin to starve to death over the next few weeks. It would not be until April 14, 1996 when all four bodies would be found by Anaya’s father.
The Crime Scene
Imagine that you walk into your vacation cabin. It smells like a deer got in there and died. The whole place is ransacked, with burn marks on the couch and rug.
“What in the world?” you wonder, determined to find whatever animal got in here and died. You turn on the light and open the bedroom door. There the death smell is so strong it almost knocks you over. You look on the bed and see the wrinkled, well-decomposed corpse of what appears to be a young black male.
You throw up and run to find the nearest sheriff.
This is what happened to Ben Anaya, Sr., the day he discovered his murdered son. But he did not notice that his son was joined in death by his girlfriend, Cassandra Sedillo, and her two toddler boys, Johnny Ray Garcia, age 3, and Matthew Gene Garcia, age 4. The horrors of one of the most senseless acts of evil in New Mexico were only beginning to unfold for this poor father.
This is the story of the Torreon Cabin murders.
The Torreon Cabin Murders
Torreon is a tiny (as in, microscopic) town on the western slope of the Manzano mountains. It is actually quite pretty, covered in forest, with aspens and maples changing colors in fall. The slopes are home to many cabins and small properties, mostly second homes and vacation houses with a few primary residences. Residents of the area mostly subsist on hunting, woodcutting, and other such domestic livelihoods.
At night, the skies are expansive and overwhelmingly bright with stars because there is almost no light pollution to wash them out. There is not much in Torreon, beyond a post office, a store, and a Muslim retreat. Most residents go to nearby Mountainair or Estancia, or even farther to Moriarty and Albuquerque, for their shopping.
This remoteness and quietness is why Ben Anaya Jr. chose to hang out there for a weekend with his girlfriend, Cassandra Sedillo, and her two boys, Matthew and Johnny Ray. Some sources claim they were hiding from gang violence but this is not true. They were actually just enjoying a getaway.
The cabin they were staying at for the weekend belonged to Ben’s dad, Ben Anaya Sr., who kept it for occasional use. Anaya Sr. had secured the cabin from the inside to prevent break-ins, putting wire mesh over the windows and a new two-sided deadbolt on the door. Aware his son wanted to use the cabin for a weekend, he lent Anaya Jr. a Jeep to drive and the keys to the brand new deadbolt on the cabin door. He brought the little family some pizza and Cokes on December 10, 1995. Then he drove away, leaving them be for a nice weekend.
He never saw them alive again.
Heavily involved in the crime world of Albuquerque as a member of the 18th Street gang, Anaya liked to party. He invited a friend named Shawn Popeleski to the mountains to drink and smoke weed after his dad left.
What happened after that is unclear. The only thing that is clear is that someone murdered Anaya and his girlfriend, pilfered the cabin, possibly tried to set it on fire, and then locked the toddlers in the cabin with the dead bolt. It would be months before all four bodies were discovered by Ben Anaya Sr.
This crime just turns your stomach, doesn’t it?
The Break-in
Ben Anaya Sr was on vacation in Las Vegas (Nevada or New Mexico is unclear) when the murders occurred, though he had no clue. When he returned to his home in Albuquerque, he discovered that it had been broken into on December 12th or 13th. Many of his things had been stolen, including his guns. Stashed in the pocket of a coat hanging in the hallway, he found the keys to the new cabin deadbolt that he had given his son, taking the place of some cash he had hidden there. Anaya Sr. thus assumed that his son had robbed him. He was aware of his son’s lifestyle and criminal activity, and he was angry but not surprised.
When he didn’t hear from his son or Cassandra for months, he assumed that Ben Jr was hiding from him out of shame and fear. Besides, Anaya Jr. had a habit of disappearing for months at a time. Hence, Ben Sr. never reported his son missing.
Finding the Bodies in the Torreon Cabin
It wasn’t until April 14, 1992, when Anaya Sr. visited the cabin in Torreon and discovered that it was ransacked and reeked of death. He timidly opened the bedroom door and saw what appeared to be a dead African American male in the bed of the first bedroom. He assumed that some African American had broken into his cabin and died there somehow. He fled the cabin and reported the dead body to the Estancia Sheriff’s Office.
Responding officers discovered that the African American male was actually Ben Anaya, Jr., who had been dead so long that his skin had darkened and his toes and fingers had shriveled. He had been killed by a gunshot to the back of the head.
Cassandra Sedillo lay next to him, shot through the arm and the chest, and then again behind the ear. It appeared that she had woken up to her boyfriend being shot and then curled over and covered her head with her arm, knowing what was coming.
In the second bedroom were the bodies of the two toddlers, who had both covered themselves with sleeping bags and clothes in their final moments. They had succumbed to starvation and dehydration. The two had been alive in the cabin for 3 days to a week, according to doctors, suffering and stumbling around the reeking bodies of the people they needed and trusted most. They didn’t even have running water – the only water in the cabin was in a tank outside that needed to be manually filled. I can’t imagine their terror and pain as they slowly died.
The Jeep that Ben Anaya Sr. lent Ben Jr. was missing. Police put out a license plate number and vehicle description in the paper on April 16. This car would later be found abandoned in Pecos, NM.
The crime scene photos give me such a sinking, sick sensation in my gut. I can almost sense the suffering. People at the crime scene described how the cabin looked like a tornado had gone through it. If you have ever raised or babysat a toddler boy, you would know they tend to have that effect on a house in a matter of minutes. Now imagine two toddler boys, without any adult supervision, terrified and going out of their minds with hunger and thirst. They probably ransacked the cabin in search of food, water, and something to pass the torturous hours. However, some of this ransacking may have been done by the killers as they robbed the cabin of guns, drugs, and other items.
There were signs of a fire on the couch and in four other areas of the cabin. The arson expert called to the scene was from the ATF, not the state police or FBI, and he couldn’t handle the stench of four well-decomposed bodies. So he just glanced at one burn spot on the living room couch and decided a heater must have tipped over and caught the rug on fire. The fact other places were burned throughout the cabin suggests to me that someone tried to start multiple fires.
It appears that the killers did this to try to hide evidence – which is especially sickening, considering they knew the toddler boys were inside. But since the state police did not conduct a proper crime scene assessment, it is unknown if an accelerant was used. That leaves the possibility open that the young boys, suffering in the December cold and out of their minds with boredom, started playing around with lighters or matches or heaters, thus setting the fires.
The fact that the fires were relatively small and did not destroy much of the cabin or its furniture makes me think that an accelerant wasn’t used. It was simply somebody setting things on fire for heat. But I’m no arson expert and no proper arson expert was called to the scene, so that critical information is lost. That’s a shame because it would be a good clue in this case.
The Victims
Cassandra Sedillo was 22 and gorgeous. She had two little boys from a previous relationship, whom she loved very much. Despite her age, she started dating 17-year-old gang member, Ben Anaya, Jr. She had no idea this would result in her death.
She is buried in the Mount Calvary Cemetery in Albuquerque with both of her sons.
Ben Anaya, Jr., grew up with a strict ex-Marine father. His family was disappointed when he began acting out and dropped out of school. He ended up in a boy’s home. When he got out, he became involved in the 18th Street gang in Albuquerque and participated in a lot of illegal activity and drug use. He also frequently cheated on Cassandra Sedillo and spent the night with a girl named “Bonita” the night before leaving to Torreon. Despite these details, we must remember that he was only 17 and some teens are just dumb. He may have grown up, had he been given that chance.
Why he was targeted that night is unclear. Gang unit detectives assigned to the quadruple homicide claim the quadruple homicide was a gang-related killing. But Anaya was in good standing with the gang, besides the fact he associated with Shawn Popeleski, who had recently been ranked out.
Since Popeleski was not killed, this makes it seem unlikely to me that Anaya, Jr. was killed just for associating with him. It seems more likely that he was the victim of some really no-good people (or a single person) who wanted the guns and drugs he had in his dad’s cabin, as well as his dad’s Jeep. It is so tragic that he never got the change to grow up and possibly make something of his life.
Matthew Gene Garcia was only 4. Johnny Ray Garcia was only 3. They were adored by their mother and their grandmothers. They were victims of brutality that they had no part in, making their deaths the most horrific part of this story.
Why Did It Take So Long to Find the Bodies?
Why did it take so long for the bodies to be found? They were murdered in December 1995 and the toddlers died sometime in January 1996. The scene was discovered in April 1996. Didn’t anyone report the victims missing in that time frame?
As a matter of fact, yes. The boys’ grandmother and Cassandra’s mom, Porfie Sedillo, had reported Cassandra and the boys missing some time before they were found. She had not known where the cabin was, so she was not able to alert cops to look there.
She had last seen Cassandra on November 20, when Cassandra told her that she she was going up to the Anaya cabin. Cassandra then promised she would call around Christmas. When she never did, Sedillo knew something was wrong. Her daughter didn’t disappear all the time like Ben Anaya, Jr.
To make things even weirder, someone had dropped a trash bag of her grandsons’ clothes on Porfie Sedillo’s back porch around the same time that Anaya Sr’s house was robbed. Perhaps this was a taunt, or maybe it was a feeble attempt to let her know where the kids were so she could save them. Tragically, that’s not what happened, though.
It is such a tragedy that no one knew to check on the cabin and the killers never bothered to go back for the toddlers. Someone could have rescued the toddlers before they died. Had someone visited the cabin earlier than April, they may also have been able to find more evidence.
The False Confession and the Bungling of the Investigation
First I’m going to tell you the official story. Then I’m going to tell you the real story. Because this case was so bungled from the beginning, we don’t even know if the convicted killers are the true killers.
So who did it, you ask? According to the police, Lawrence “Woody” Nieto, Shaun “Sager” Wilkins, Roy “Eazy” Buchner, and Shaun “Popcorn” Popeleski were charged as the killers.
The story goes, Anaya and his bff Shawn Popeleski were at the cabin on December 11, 1995. Anaya, Sedillo, and the boys went to bed. Popeleski decided to spend the night and went outside to pee.
Three gang members pulled up to the cabin at that moment. They had heard Anaya was up here and they determined to ambush Anaya and rob him. Woody Nieto saw Popeleski outside, peeing, so he subdued him by holding a loaded gun to Popeleski’s temple.
Meanwhile, Roy Buchner and Shaun Wilkins entered the cabin. Popeleski said he then heard several shots ring out. The two men emerged – Buchner carrying the .22 used in the murders and Wilkins carrying drugs. Buchner fired the gun into the air, scaring Popeleski, who bolted in Ben Anaya Sr.’s Jeep. Buchner loaded the gun in the vehicle then went back and locked the cabin deadbolt, knowing the toddlers were inside. The three men then left.
This is the official story. But this “official story” is doubtful at best. It is built on the shaky confessions and testimonies of Woody Nieto and Shawn Popeleski. Later evidence emerged that showed police trying to coerce the confessions and planting names into the defendants’ heads. Their stories also changed about 8 times. Thus, no one really knows what happened.
Wilkins was the first to be charged on May 13, 1996. At his arraignment, he looked directly at the victims’ family members and declared “I didn’t kill no one.” He and Roy Buchner maintained their innocence and both entered not guilty pleas.
Shaun Wilkins’ defense attorney says it was all Shaun Popeleski, seeking revenge for being kicked out of the 18th Street gang, for which he partially blamed Ben Anaya Jr. Many people agree that Popeleski committed the murders, then falsely implicated the other three men. Popeleski undoubtedly benefited from the crime the most, as you’ll see shortly.
Some people doubt that the crime could have been committed by one person, but I don’t see any evidence that a single person couldn’t have done it alone. After all, the two adult victims were in bed and shot with the same gun. Then the individual looted the cabin and left, looking the door behind him. He may have attempted to start fires around the cabin as well. One person could have done all that easily.
Only two of the four charged murderers did any time for the murders. Woody Nieto served about 20 years. Popcorn Popeleski got 16 years for second-degree murder of the toddlers but served only 10. Roy Buchner and Shaun Wilkins were held for a while but walked free after mistrials. Four people dead for no good reason, two of them innocent toddlers, and yet their killers walked away with no or little jailtime. How does this even happen?
Maurice Moya, the cop who handled this case, wrote a book on the case wherein he details the various ways the cops mishandled the crime scene, evidence collection, forensic interviews, and the trials. Called The Torreon Cabin Murders: A False Confession and False Conviction, the book is a bit boring but offers some interesting insight into police procedures and the justice system, as well as how cops think.
Moya points out various missteps in the case from day one. The first misstep is that no forensic team ever came to collect evidence. Evidence collection was left to rookie state police officers, who were not prepared for such a massive and awful crime scene. There was also no assessment by a forensic arson expert, only someone from the ATF who couldn’t handle the death stench in the cabin and therefore didn’t make a proper assessment of the crime scene. Thus, a lot of evidence was missed and this left tons of holes in the investigation.
According to Moya, the state determined that the quadruple homicide was not worth the expense of a forensic team. The fact that Anaya Jr. was affiliated with the 18th Street gang was why law enforcement didn’t deem these people worthy of proper dignity and justice. I can see evidence of that carelessness in the news reports for the case. In the November 4 1997 Albuquerque Tribune, State Police Officer Mike Davies is quoted as saying that he “wasn’t sure” if the cabin had been dusted for fingerprints. Seriously?
Regardless of Anaya’s affiliations and extracurricular activities, I think that all four victims were worthy of justice.
Moya also points out how interviewing officers tended to put ideas and names into Shaun Popeleski’s and Lawrence Nieto’s heads while interviewing them. They first questioned Popeleski and they kept asking him about known 18th Street gang members until he agreed to certain names. Then they repeated Popeleski’s story to Lawrence Nieto until he agreed. Detective DeReyes had a personal interest in getting Shaun Wilkins put away, since he had a personal grudge against Wilkins for conducting a drive-by on his house and shooting up his police unit. So the officers did everything they could to get names of people that they wanted instead of properly investigating the case and exploring leads and persons of interest.
Furthermore, Moya discusses how a lot of evidence was “lost,” including tapes of interviews with Shaun Popeleski. This meant that there was so little evidence presented in court that it made getting convictions impossible. This is largely why two of the men, Shaun Wilkins and Roy Buchner, ended up walking free. Videotapes of police coercion ultimately freed Nieto early, too. Wilkins and Nieto were both able to lead lawsuits against the State Police for their negligence in the investigation.
Whether Wilkins, Nieto, and Buchner were even there that night is unknown. The only person who was confirmed to be there was Popeleski. We don’t have fingerprints, DNA evidence, eye witnesses, or really anything to establish who had actually been there. We just have a couple coerced confessions. The unreliability of those confessions is evidenced by the fact that Nieto and Popeleski changed their stories up to 8 times. So it is not clear what really happened that December night, but from my perspective, Popeleski seems to be the most suspicious one of the bunch.
Shaun “Popcorn” Popeleski
Shaun Popeleski, or Popcorn, was known for auto theft, armed robbery, burglary, escaping jail, and many other crimes. He was also known for lying brazenly and giving the fake name of Frank Gomez, which was actually the alias of a fellow gang member. His use of that fake name actually contributed to him getting ranked out of the 18th Street gang; he was brutally beaten at a party in Albuquerque not too long before the murders. There was also some suspicion that he was a rat, contributing to his expulsion from the gang as well. Some people think he was bitter about the rank-out and he blamed Ben Anaya, Jr.
Ultimately, Popeleski was charged with second-degree murder for the two boys and acquitted for the adult murders. He was given 16 years. He got out in 2008 and then was extradited to Nevada for an assault with a deadly weapon charge from a different case. He was released in 2012.
Popeleski first came into the picture when he was arrested in Belen for grand theft auto in spring 1996. He told arresting officers that he was Frank Gomez – the name that he had gotten his ass kicked for using before. Cops held him on the vehicle theft charges when they learned about the quadruple homicide. They began to question Popeleski, understanding he was part of the gang that Anaya was part of as well. Popeleski then led the cops down a long maze of ever-changing stories that implicated fellow gang members in the cabin murders, while simultaneously absolving himself of guilt. The cops fed Popeleski names of gang members and dates, and he went along with it, helping create a version of events and a timeline out of thin air. In transcripts of the police interviews with him that Maurice Moya published in his book, cops would say, “Was so-and-so here?” and Popeleski would just nod and say yeah.
Popeleski, who had a history of snitching on his fellow gang members and lying to police, characteristically pinned the entirety of the blame on the other 3 men. He conveniently left out how he had sold guns from the cabin on the streets of Albuquerque and how he had robbed Ben Anaya, Sr. and how he had driven the Jeep to Arizona to see his girlfriend. He also failed to explain how the other gang members had found the cabin when they weren’t supposed to know that Anaya, Jr. was there. The only people who definitely knew Anaya, Sedillo, and the boys were in the cabin were Ben Anaya, Sr., and Popeleski.
I really think Popeleski played more of a role in the murders than he told cops and he may have been the sole person responsible. He profited from the quadruple homicide more than anyone else. He was also the only person confirmed to have been at the scene.
Another thing that makes zero sense – this guy who was hated on the streets was the only one not killed at the cabin that night. Also, if he was up at the cabin with Ben Jr and Cassandra prior to the murders, then he knew for a fact there were kids in that cabin. Yet he never went back for them or made an anonymous call to anyone to go save them. He never anonymously reported the murders or made any other attempts to ensure his friends were discovered.
At his trial, attorney Ray Twohig theorized that Popeleski may have deposited the deadbolt keys in Ben Anaya Sr.’s pocket and the trash bag of clothes at Porfie’s house as feeble attempts to let them know to check the cabin for the boys. The attorney also suspected that Popeleski later returned to the cabin and attempted to burn it down to hide evidence. These all seem like quite plausible stories, but there is no evidence to support them, which is how Popeleski managed to escape any proper justice.
The most chilling sign of Popeleski’s character was how he left the cabin with his dead friends inside it and robbed Ben’s father in Albuquerque. Cops figured out he was the one behind the robbery because he sold all the guns from Anaya Sr.’s house to someone named “Green Eyes.” Green Eyes was never tracked down by cops. The Albuquerque Tribune also reported that he tried to sell guns from the Torreon cabin to Jeremy Sedillo, Cassandra Sedillo’s brother, without telling him the guns were from the cabin where his sister lay dead.
Who freaking does that, after witnessing the executions of his friends and barely getting away alive? Then after all that, he and his friend took Anaya Sr’s Jeep for a sweet vacation in Arizona, where he saw his girlfriend. They abandoned the Jeep in Pecos when it broke down. Again, who freaking does that?
Interestingly, Nieto implicated Wilkins and Buchner in the cabin murders during his police confession. But when he took the witness stand at Popeleski’s trial, he claimed that he had never even been to the cabin and neither had Wilkins or Buchner. He claimed that he had been coerced to say that by police. So now only Popeleski was telling this story of the four men at the cabin.
His motive appeared to be robbery and grand theft auto, and maybe even revenge for getting jumped out of the 18th Street Gang. This matches his history of robbery and motor vehicle theft and betraying his friends in the gang in the past. But why did four people have to die for that? Especially the toddler boys?
Popcorn has not cleaned up his life since leaving prison in Nevada. In 2017, he was arrested at Bean’s Café in Anchorage, AK, for violating probation. Apparently he was on probation for a cabin burglary in Alaska a few years prior (sounds familiar, right?). People said he smoked spice, behaved violently toward monks at the Brother Francis shelter nearby, and was trespassing at the café, which resulted in his violation and arrest. I wasn’t able to verify if he is still incarcerated.
I find it interesting that he moved all the way to Alaska. He was likely hiding from Wilkins and Buchner, who probably want him dead. What a coward. He did the second longest sentence of the four men but I don’t think it was nearly long enough.
Lawrence “Woody” Nieto
You already know Nieto’s testimony. He sang like a bird about his friends, but his account does not seem reliable. Then, in trial and on the witness stand for Popeleski, he recanted his statements. Yet Nieto got the most time out of all the men – 130 years. Due to a clerical error, he was let out early, but he still somehow got the most time out of all the implicated men.
The Albuquerque Tribune reports that this was because the prosecuting attorney used emotional “spin doctoring” to strike fear into jurors. There was no physical evidence placing him at the crime scene because there was no physical evidence gathered period. Nieto was described by his attorney as “simple” and “a special education boy.” Meanwhile, the prosecuting attorney painted him as a cold-blooded killer, who snuck into a cabin at night and killed children and would strike again. Which argument do you think would get you more by the gut?
Apparently, Nieto got so much time because jurors believed that he knew the toddlers were locked inside the cabin and yet he never bothered to go back to the cabin and let them out. But they declined to give him the death sentence, which prosecutors wanted.
Then a tape surfaced that showed police trying to coerce Nieto into what to say. The police even planted the names of Buchner and Wilkins in Nieto’s mind. This allowed Nieto to get out in 2016.
The families of the victims were obviously not happy he was released. At his release trial, Judge Vigil informed Nieto that the deaths of the children should haunt him for life. As a form of punishment, he had Nieto read the autopsy reports in court. However, he made Nieto stop when Linda Garcia, the grandmother of the kids, began to let out anguished sobs. Judge Vigil said that he hoped that Nieto would renounce the lifestyle he had led and work with at-risk children as a form of atonement. I’m not able to verify if Nieto has done this but he doesn’t appear to have committed current crimes in New Mexico.
Nieto apparently feels “really bad” about what happened to the boys. Well, I guess I’m glad he feels bad. That doesn’t bring the little boys back. It doesn’t give Cassandra Sedillo or Ben Anaya Jr. a second chance to live their lives and achieve their dreams. And it certainly doesn’t fix the shattered hearts of Porfie and Linda Garcia.
That said, I’m not even sure he was present at the scene. I think his mental disability made him an easy scapegoat. But later tapes of cops feeding him names and coercing confessions shed doubt on his culpability.
Shaun “Sager” Wilkins
Wilkins was the first person arrested for the murders and charged with killing all four people. It was believed that he shot his friend, Ben Anaya Jr., and his girlfriend, Cassandra Sedillo, in cold blood with a .22 shotgun and the help of his friend Roy “Eazy” Buchner.
Based on the words of Popeleski and Nieto, Wilkins was charged with four counts of first-degree murder, burglary, and assault. Nieto and Popeleski both claimed that Wilkins was the one who committed the shootings. He then exited the cabin carrying the murder weapon and fired it into the air to scare Popeleski off.
Apparently most people were scared of Wilkins. Ben Anaya and Shawn Popeleski both feared him. Ben Anaya warned his little brother, Bruce Anaya, not to hang out with Wilkins because he feared Wilkins would get Bruce in trouble. After Wilkins got wind that Popeleski was a rat, he had him brutally ranked out of the gang. Then he began to feud with Ben Anaya Jr. for hanging out with Popeleski. This rivalry was believed to be the core of the quadruple homicide. However, if this were true, then it seems weird to me that Popeleski was unharmed while Anaya was the one who was killed. Why not just shoot Popeleski right along with the other two victims?
Wilkins had a lengthy juvenile and adult criminal record. But after his murder charges resulted in mistrial, he was able to walk free. He claims that he turned his life around in a 2002 TV interview on KRQE News. Yet he was arrested again in 2010 for burglary, armed robbery, and kidnapping. Then he skipped out on probation and was arrested again for that in 2017. He also attacked his father in his father’s home at some point. It seems this man has never actually turned his life around. Whether or not he was the one who murdered Ben Anaya and Cassandra Sedillo, it seems like he fits the profile of a violent criminal. I always thought he looked a little nuts in his photo.
Part of the reason Wilkins was set free is that there just wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. There was no proof he was even at the cabin, beyond the testimonies of Popeleski. His attorney insisted he had never even been to the cabin and could not have known how to get there without guidance from someone like Popeleski. There is also some evidence that Detective Juan DeReyes with the Albuquerque Gang Unit believed that Wilkins had shot up his unit before the quadruple homicide, and so he had a grudge against Wilkins. This led him to plant Wilkins’ name in interrogations of Nieto and Popeleski, whose stories changed several times over the course of the investigation, usually to mold exactly what the police wanted to hear.
In 2006, Wilkins joined Buchner in suing the state police for their sloppy investigation and interview coercion.
Roy “Eazy” Buchner
Roy “Eazy” Buchner was supposedly inside the cabin when Cassandra Sedillo and Ben Anaya, Jr. were shot. This definitely makes him look like the killer or at least one of the killers if you believe these stories spun by the cops and Popeleski. Even more heinously, Roy Buchner is the one who allegedly ran back to the cabin from the car and locked the dead bolt on the door. Whether or not he intended to kill the toddlers with this action is unknown. Of course, none of his accomplices ever bothered to go back and save the toddlers, either.
Buchner also failed a polygraph. It showed he had been deceptive when he answered “no” to questions like if he had ever been to the cabin, if he was present when the murders happened, and if he participated in the deaths of the victims. He was apparently truthful when he said he did not directly fire the shots that killed Anaya and Sedillo. Later, in court, it was revealed that Buchner suffered from depression and this could have interfered with the polygraph’s accuracy.
Ultimately, Buchner’s trial ended in a mistrial due to lack of evidence. He served no time besides his time in holding, awaiting trial. This may seem like a shocking outrage, until you consider the fact that there is absolutely no evidence in existence that he was even at the cabin. The mishandling of the case means we will never know if he was involved or not. Even just a hair at the crime scene could have been enough to sentence him for the murders, but that evidence is gone forever.
The Lawsuit by Buchner and Wilkins
Buchner and Wilkins both led lawsuits against the state police for coercing confessions that ultimately were false. Buchner’s attorney, Ray Twohig, submitted video segments as evidence that show the cops being coercive and suggesting names to Nieto and Popeleski. One of those segments is actually how Nieto got out of prison early.
Buchner blames the police for helping Popeleski and Nieto create a false narrative of what really went down at the Torreon Cabin. He also claims that this false narrative and his trial has deeply impacted his quality of life. People now think of him as a baby killer. He is also bitter about wasting 3 years in jail, awaiting trial in Truth or Consequences.
Undoubtedly Buchner hung out with a bad crowd. He was involved in the 18th Street gang and he was friends with other people integral to this case. He had a criminal history of verbal and physical assault on police officers – despite being the stepson of a sheriff’s deputy. Therefore, his innocence is iffy.
But without anything to confirm his guilt, we can’t honestly call him a baby killer. If he is innocent, it is very sad that his life and reputation have been ruined by this evil incident. He was only 18 when he was arrested, 19 when he stood trial for these murders. His family remembers him as an affectionate, loving, funny, and slightly vain person. Few could believe he could commit a ruthless quadruple homicide.
I was unable to find a current photograph of him. It appears he lives in Dallas now.
Sources
Moya, Maurice. The Torreon Cabin Murders: A True Crime Story. Sunstone Press. ISBN: 978-0865348905.
https://www.abqjournal.com/9962/former-torreon-murder-defendant-i-was-was-wrongfully-held.html
https://apnews.com/article/155ffcb10f77fc7bc68161e2aaeb4709
https://www.krqe.com/news/man-once-connected-to-torreon-cabin-murders-arrested-again/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16422100/cassandra-sedillo
https://www.koat.com/article/massive-mistake-lets-murderer-free-10-years-early/5043624