Former Calif. mayoral candidate allegedly staged wife’s 2015 killing as a suicide

ANTIOCH, Calif. (TCN) -- Prosecutors have charged a 66-year-old man with murder, alleging he killed his wife in 2015 and staged it as a suicide.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office announced Jan. 23 that Michael Anthony Leon was charged with murder in connection to his wife’s 2015 death. He was taken into custody Jan. 22. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison. 

On Sept. 28, 2015, officers responding to a residence found 52-year-old Brenda Joyce Leon dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, KTLA reports. Investigators found a suicide note at the scene. 

At the time of her death, she had been married to her husband for 33 years; they had two adult children and two grandchildren, KTLA reports. 

After Brenda Joyce Leon’s death, the couple’s adult daughters, Michelle Wonders and Monica Tagas, reportedly filed a wrongful death suit against an unknown male killer, referred to in the suit as “John Doe,” KTLA reports. The suit claimed the killer staged the scene and wrote the note before authorities came to the home. 

The district attorney’s office conducted an investigation and “uncovered previously unknown digital evidence and new factual details that were central to the decision to file charges,” according to their statement. People reports Wonders and Tagas filed a new wrongful death suit on Jan. 23 naming their father as the defendant.

In 2012, Michael Anthony Leon ran for mayor of Antioch, California, on a campaign focused on local crime, not raising taxes, and making the town friendlier to small businesses, KTLA reports. He came in fourth place in the four-way race, receiving 1,740 votes, according to the outlet.