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Murder trial begins for Ponderosa man accused of killing teacher
David Salazar sits next to lawyers awaiting his date as Sergeant Griffin testifies his part of the investigation.
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Modified
The first day of the trial for David Salazar, charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence, June 26 was a long one with the prosecution calling on officers involved, experts in DNA and forensics, eye witnesses and the defendant's family.
Salazar, 46, was arrested in Ponderosa for the killing of Joseph Keleher, 59, a teacher for Jemez Valley Schools, on Jan. 30, 2023. At the time, Salazar said Keleher had molested his son. Salazar also told the arresting officer said he was a “head cacique” of all nine tribes in New Mexico, explaining that the kills he makes were what made him “cacique” and had his first confirmed kill at the age of 7. He said he needed to commit “honor killings” to maintain the “cacique” title and said the governor would have record of that, according to the officer’s report.
Salazar's trial is currently under way, with testimony beginning Wednesday.
The prosecutor began by calling deputies and detectives to give testimony on the crime scene investigation.
The question of whether Salazar's son was molested or not came up frequently, even when the defense lawyers were questioning the officers involved with the investigation. However, each of the officers said their job was to collect the evidence from the scene and not interview the defendant or follow up on any information that did not have to do with the material evidence.
"I am not the lead detective," Sandoval County Deputy Chavez said, who was one of the first officers that responded to the scene and was not involved beyond securing it.
Sgt. Thomas Griffin was also present at the crime scene. While waiting for the search warrant, Griffin did a walk around and took photos of the crime scene and the suspect's house. Some of the things he took notice of were broken glass from the window of the victim's house, tire marks outside the residence and a shotgun shell underneath a propane tank. Griffin indicated that the tire marks matched that of Salazar's Corvette. Griffin then briefed state police, they went into the deep search of the victim's and the defendant's houses. Griffin said, after being asked about the molestation accusations, that his job was to secure and photograph the scene.
New Mexico State Police Investigator Richard Candelaria processed Salazar for booking and processed Salazar's home. One of the first pieces of evidence discussed was a pair of boots Candelaria collected while processing of Salazar. Candelaria explained the distinct pattern on the bottom was what they looked for to match up with any shoe prints at the crime scene.
Candelaria then went over the gun and bullets found at Salazar's house, saying the casings were consistent with shot gun shell casings. The shotgun itself was found in the rafters of Salazar's garage. "You can see here that the shotgun has no dust on it whereas the items around it are covered in dust," he said. "That indicated to me that the gun had been placed there recently."
The prosecution also asked Candelaria "if any allegations that were made as to the reason the crime was committed" would be helpful to his part of the investigation.
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"Not at all," he responded, explaining it is the goal of the crime scene investigation team to be neutral. "We consider ourselves to be fact finders," he added.
The crime scene manager, Nathaniel Garcia with New Mexico State Police, matched evidence from the crime scene to evidence collected at Salazar's house. With photos for reference, Garcia explained what he found when searching the home.
Garcia noted that the first thing he noticed was how small the victim's property was. He described it as a rectangular home with all rooms in view from one point. The next thing he said he noticed was the angle of the victim's body on the floor, noting that Keleher's legs were blocking the door from opening and he was face down. A trail of blood from the kitchen sink, which is on the other side of the broken window, led to where the body was found.
Garcia also noted several small pellet holes in the wall of the house that were consistent with shotgun shots.
When the photos of Keleher's body were presented, many people in the bleachers of the courtroom became visibly uncomfortable or even began to cry. It wasn't until the front of Keleher was shown that some left the room entirely.
Garcia, however, proceeded to explain the crime scene.
A detail he explained thoroughly was the broken glass in the sink. He said the glass in the sink was an indication the window had been shot from the outside and that there was blood on top of the glass in the sink, meaning the victim would have been injured after the glass broke and not before.
He went on to explain the shoe prints found outside the window, which he confirmed with side-by-side photos matched the pattern on the boots recovered by Candelaria.
"You see this zig-zag here and these lines on either side match the shoe prints here," he said as he pointed to the photos.
Garcia also confirmed the bullet casings found at the scene matched the unspent ones Candelaria found at Salazar's house.
After a lunch recess, the experts took the stand. The prosecution first questioned the forensic pathologist assigned to analyze the autopsy report and body.
Dr. Emily Helmrich, a teaching forensic pathologist with University of New Mexico Health Sciences, confirmed the gunshot wounds to Keleher's chest and back were consistent with shotgun wounds.
Again with photos for reference, Helmrich pointed to the large hole in the center of a bunch of little holes on the left side of his chest.
"What can come out of a shotgun are small, shotgun pallets, and those are small circular metallic type of ammunition, and those small circular pellets will cause small circular injuries on the body, and those are those small circles that we see here," she explained.
Helmrich also detailed that she found small metal pellets in Keleher's chest as well as wadding or plastic from the shot that embeds itself in the wound. She also found this in the sack surrounding Keleher's heart, adding that the wadding indicated he was shot at close range.
Forensic scientist Rosalind Archuleta, who works with DNA testing from crime scenes, analyzed the DNA on the shotgun and the shells recovered from the scene.
Her analysis indicated that most of the DNA on the gun and the bullets belonged to Salazar. She told the jury that the chance of the DNA recovered from both matching someone besides Salazar in the whole world was minimal.
After another recess, the prosecution began to call witnesses to the stand.
The first witness to testify was a neighbor who called police the day of the crime to report Salazar was driving his Corvette in an unsafe manner on the highway outside their homes around 4-5 a.m. She said while it is normal for him to drive erratically, it was not normal for him to do so that early in the morning.
She also testified that Keleher lived in a leased cabin near her and that the land was leased out by Salazar's uncle. She said she had known Salazar most of her life. "Since we were teenagers. So 30-plus years," she said.
Salazar's 18-year-old daughter also took the stand and described a call she received from him the day of the murder.
"He called me that morning, and I decided to answer the phone and the first thing he said to me was 'I killed him,'" she said.
She added that this confused her at first and she asked who he was talking about. "He said 'That man touched my son.' I was like, 'Who are you talking about?' He said, "The neighbor,'" she explained.
The prosecution then showed a video of Salazar's daughter visiting him at the jail. In the video, she confronted him about the phone call. However, he repeatedly denied saying he killed someone. "I didn't do nothing wrong," he said in the video.
She eventually figured that her dad was talking about Keheler. She said had him as a teacher but had never heard anything about molestation accusations by him until after the crime.
Prosecution then asked if this was the first time Salazar had accused someone of molestation.
She confirmed that it was not the first time and that Salazar had previously claimed she and her older sister had been molested. She said both those claims were untrue.
The last witness to take the stand was Salazar's 14-year-old son, who Salazar claimed had been molested by Keleher.
His son stated that he did not know Keleher besides him being a teacher at his school and that he never had any conversation with his dad about Keleher prior to the murder. He said the one time his dad asked if he had been molested, he told him no.
Testimony also revealed that the defendant's children lost their mom a year before the murder, and their older brother had also recently died.
The trial continues Thursday.
