Suspect’s ex-girlfriend, roommate face charges

5 have been charged with murder in 26-year-old’s death; 6th suspect also arrested after being accused of disposing of body inside garage

Two people connected to murder suspect Manuel Rios Alderete face criminal charges for their alleged roles in covering up the November death of 26-year-old Adan Ponce-Galdeano.

Rios Alderete’s onetime girlfriend, LeAmber Boyd, and roommate, Cristian Javier ‘Javi’ Diaz Cordero, were charged Friday with one count each of tampering with evidence and conspiracy to commit tampering with evidence, according to criminal complaints filed in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office believes Ponce-Galdeano was killed in late November during a meeting at suspect Michael Sweeney’s home on Sunset Circle in Santa Fe. An arrest warrant affidavit for co-defendant Edgar Herrera says the meeting was arranged under the pretense that Sweeney planned to settle a debt to Ponce-Galdeano. However, an unnamed source told investigators Sweeney planned to “‘take him out’ like a ‘cartel hit,’ ” the affidavit says.

The source said Sweeney provided several men with firearms and directed them to hide in the house; they emerged with gunfire when an argument between Sweeney and Ponce-Galdeano became heated, according to the affidavit.

Arrest warrant affidavits say Ponce-Galdeano was shot several times before he was suffocated with a plastic bag.

The five people charged with murder in his death — Sweeney, Rios Alderete, Herrera, Angelo Martinez and Raul Rodriguez-Valencia

— have been arrested by the sheriff’s office. A sixth suspect, Zachary Rhoades, was arrested after he was accused of disposing Ponce-Galdeano’s body inside the garage of a Lone Butte home and threatening the residents at gunpoint.

Boyd is accused of helping to clean up Sweeney’s bloodied home in exchange for 150 fentanyl pills, according to her statement of probable cause.

She told investigators she was at Rios Alderete’s Sycamore Loop home when he arrived “one night on or about Nov. 24,” and was acting “proud but nervous.” According to the statement, Rios Alderete told Boyd he had shot and killed Ponce-Galdeano so he could steal $90,000 the victim had hid in a storage shed.

However, neither Rios Alderete nor his associates found the money, according to court documents.

Boyd said Rios Alderete asked Cordero and Rhoades — whom she said she had an “ongoing and personal” relationship with — to dispose of the body, according to the statement.

Rhoades told county investigators Cordero was supposed to pick him up after he left the body in Lone Butte, but Cordero didn’t show up.

Cordero told investigators in a Dec. 15 interview he had volunteered to pick up Rhoades but did not find him at the Arroyo Coyote Road residence where Ponce-Galdeano’s body was later discovered.

“[Rhoades] showed up at [Cordero’s] house later on and began yelling at Cordero for not picking him up,” according to Cordero’s statement of probable cause.

Court documents do not indicate Cordero had any other involvement in covering up Ponce-Galdeano’s death.

Herrera told investigators in an interview after his Jan. 10 arrest he went back to Sweeney’s home Nov. 25 and saw Boyd “scrubbing the blood off the carpet with a shampooer,” according to Boyd’s statement.

A detective interviewed Boyd the next day, and she admitted to cleaning Ponce-Galdeano’s blood from Sweeney’s carpets after he promised to pay her 150 fentanyl pills in exchange. She told law enforcement Sweeney and his girlfriend had purchased the cleaning supplies.

Sweeney’s girlfriend has not been charged in the case, according to online court records.

Boyd and Cordero are scheduled to appear Feb. 14 in Magistrate Court, online court records show.