Two women vanished from the same house on Wheeler Street in Albuquerque, five months apart. Lisa Duncan was found in a shallow grave and she had died a horrific death. Velda Leyba’s body has never been found but the search for her uncovered two female skeletons in a South Valley field. What was going on in that house on Wheeler Street?
Velda Leyba vanished from a house on Wheeler St., near Gibson and I25 in Albuquerque, on December 6, 1992. She called her daughter and said she would be at her birthday party shortly after leaving a friend’s house in the South Valley. Then she never showed up. Police refused to accept a missing persons report on her until her car was located three months later, abandoned at 7200 Isleta southwest, near Interstate 25. Leyba’s purse and wallet were still inside the locked vehicle.
She has never been found.
Five months later, Lisa Duncan also vanished from that same South Valley house. Duncan and Leyba were friends. Duncan was reported missing on June 23, 1993, by her mother.
She was last seen at her home on Bletcher SW on the 21st of June. Her purse was missing. Her phone line was cut and a handcuff key lay in the hallway. She left behind two kids who didn’t live with her due to a molestation case that put her ex-husband, Donald Duncan, in prison. Duncan’s mother, Lorraine Lockett, was the one who reported her missing. Crime Stoppers offered a $1000 reward on information leading to her whereabouts.
Duncan’s skull was eventually found by a dove hunter. Police searched the area and found the rest of her remains in a makeshift grave off NM 44. She had been shot in the right side of her head, then buried and covered by a concrete slab. Several of her bones were broken. Wild animals had scattered her remains but some of her bones were still in the grave, with clothes and shoes attached.
Obviously, Donald Duncan became Suspect Numero Uno. Interestingly, he was also one of the suspects in the McKnight murders, as several anonymous witnesses reported he had been running drugs using the ranch’s airstrip with Judy McKnight’s son, Randy Rickley, when Cotton McKnight caught them. McKnight had a meeting scheduled with state police and FBI after Thanksgiving, but he was murdered before he could make the meeting. He had also told Tony Fabry, a cop at the time of his murder, that he had a “big problem” he was wrestling with. So people thought that Donald Duncan offed him to cover up his cocaine and marijuana enterprise with a motorcycle gang based out of Roswell.
He also had motive. He had gone to prison for eight years for raping Duncan’s daughter, Heidi Rodriguez, as well as his own daughter from a previous marriage. Lisa Duncan testified against him at his trial. He got out in April 1993 and began to contact Lisa Duncan on numerous occasions.
However, police soon found out that Donald Duncan did not have the opportunity to commit the crime. It is unclear how they determined this but one source says they ruled Donald out with a polygraph. They also somehow cleared Duncan’s married boyfriend at the time, Gerald Chavez.
Then a new suspect emerged: Rudy Gonzalez, Sr. and his son, Rudy Gonzalez, Jr. Duncan’s daughter, Heidi Rodriguez, was dating Junior. About two weeks prior to her disappearance, she and Junior allegedly stole a ring from Lisa. who angrily confronted them at their home, even bringing a cop with her.
Senior then arranged to meet Lisa at a jewelry store and return the ring. He instructed his teenage neighbor, Leroy Gutierrez, to wait outside with a gun and shoot Lisa upon his signal. However, Lisa showed up with none other than Donald Duncan, the man who had raped her daughter, as an enforcer. Gonzalez Sr. demanded that Lisa buy the ring back from him and she refused. Outside of the store, Gonzalez Sr. and Duncan got into an altercation. Gonzalez Sr. signaled for Leroy Gutierrez to shoot Duncan, but Gutierrez instead got out of the car and handed Gonzalez the gun. The shooting didn’t happen, and Gonzalez, Sr., was furious.
Just days later, Leroy Gutierrez said he was a witness to Gonzalez, Sr. and Jr., handcuffing Lisa Duncan behind her back, beating her, and saying, “This is what happens to rats.” Then they transported her to the desert, where she pleaded for her life before they shot her in the head and buried her. Leroy had nightmares for weeks about this and his mom heard him saying things like “Why did they choke her?” in his sleep.
When cops went to talk to Heidi and Rudy Gonzalez, Jr., about this incident, Senior rudely interjected himself and refused to let them speak to his son. This and the ring incident aroused their suspicion. When Leroy Gutierrez told them what he knew, they arrested the Gonzalezes and charged them with murder. They found evidence like handcuffs boxes in Senior’s closet and a newspaper article about Lisa Duncan hidden in a box in his room.
Both men were convicted. But in 2000, they appealed to a hung jury. Then it happened again in 2002. While the court ruled they could be tried yet again, it’s not clear that they ever were. You can read about it here. For that reason, Duncan’s murder is technically unsolved.
Then a detail about the house on Wheeler Street and a connection to Velda Leyba’s disappearance emerged thanks to a confidential informant in 2011. As of yet, I haven’t figured out if the house on Wheeler St was Gonzalez’s home or who lived there. But, somehow, Duncan was connected to the house on Wheeler St just as Leyba was. A confidential informant claims both women were killed in the home.
When Duncan’s body was found, police obtained a search warrant for the house, where they noticed blood on the carpet, but they decided that wasn’t important. Nothing came of that investigation. But oddly, the warrant was stashed in the case file for Velda Leyba. When Leyba’s case was reopened in 2011, a detective combing the file found the warrant and wondered why it was put in Leyba’s file and how the two cases were connected. It appears somehow police already suspected a connection, given how they put Duncan’s warrant in Leyba’s file.
The Wheeler St. house was finally searched in 2011, nearly twenty years after both women were killed there. Amazingly, the current tenant said he has not changed the carpet, so police combed it for DNA. In the 12 years since, there have been no updates as to what they found, if anything.
In 2013, police excavated a South Valley field to try to find Leyba’s remains. Instead, they found the skeletons of two other women. As of now, those remains have not been identified. They were sent to Texas due to a lack of staffing at the Albuquerque OMI. What is disturbing is that so many women are missing from Albuquerque. What if these bones belonged to Anna Love Vigil, Nina Herron, or one of the many other unfound? Could it be the second West Mesa Bone Collector grave?
I assume the killings are drug-related or gang-related but I could be wrong. Leyba had a drug problem after suffering through the tragedy of losing her nine-year-old daughter. Meanwhile, Duncan was attending ITT Technical Institute and had two children who didn’t live with her. It is not obvious that she was involved in drugs, but her mother acknowledged she had been involved in the drug trade with Donald Duncan in Roswell.
In the Lisa Wortman case, someone said a woman was killed at a Bandidos party, stabbed in the pelvis and then slashes in the stomach. When he gave the victim’s name, she was found alive somewhere. Could he have been confused and referring to Velda Leyba?
I don’t know why these two women were murdered so close together at that house. I also don’t know why police didn’t look more closely into the blood when they first found it. I hope that Leyba’s body is found so that Isabel Candelaria, her daughter, can have closure. Duncan’s family also deserve closure about the truth of what happened to their mother and a conviction that sticks.
https://www.koat.com/article/mysterious-bones-remain-unidentified/4392867