Midlands restaurant owner used GPS to track wife before deadly shooting, say prosecutors

Prosecutors outlined on Wednesday the fatal chain of events that led to the deadly encounter between restaurant magnate Greg Leon and his wife’s lover, who was found dead in a parking lot, naked except for his socks.

In calling 12 witnesses over two days, 11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard and Deputy Solicitor Suzanne Mayes have advanced the argument that Leon, consumed with murderous rage, tracked his wife to the quiet park-and-ride using a GPS locator hidden in her Mercedes. Wielding a .357 Smith and Wesson revolver, he then fired four shots into the back seat, two of which hit and killed Arturo Bravo Santos, his wife’s lover, prosecutors say.

The fatal encounter between Leon and Bravo in the parking lot was set in motion earlier on that Valentine’s Day2016, according to a timeline pieced together from Facebook posts, call records, texts, surveillance footage and testimony from law enforcement experts and investigators.

Leon’s wife, Rachel, and Bravo exchanged messages throughout the day on Feb. 14, 2016. She sent Bravo kissing emojis, and he replied with a picture of himself in a patterned sweater. The sweater was later recovered from the car.

Around 5 p.m., Rachel Leon texted Bravo, “Love come now.”

“Ok,” Bravo replied. Later that evening, Rachel stepped away from a family Valentine’s Day dinner at Carrabba’s Italian Grill on Columbiana Drive to arrange to meet Bravo at the park-and-ride at 110 Riverchase Way.

On cross examination of Lexington Police Department Detective Marc Miramontes, defense attorney Jack Swerling, who argued in his opening statement that that Rachel was being manipulated for her money, asked whether Bravo was growing angry that Rachel had not answered his other calls and texts throughout dinner. Miramontes said that he did not know.

Shortly before 7 p.m., the Leons left the restaurant separately. At 7:15 p.m., surveillance footage showed Greg Leon’s Range Rover arriving at one of his restaurants, which attorneys have referred to as San Jose #1. Leon managed that restaurant personally and maintained an office there. Around this time, Rachel had two brief phone calls with her husband in less than two minutes. She later made a third call to her husband, which was not answered.

Bravo, whose name was listed in Rachels phone as “Avi,” called her at 7:39 p.m., and the two spoke for less than a minute. At 7:43 p.m., surveillance footage showed Rachel’s white Mercedes SUV arriving at the park-and-ride, where Bravo was waiting. She then climbed into the back seat of the silver Toyota Tundra that she had bought for him just three days previously.

Back at the San Jose #1, surveillance footage of the restaurant’s lobby taken shortly after 8 p.m. showed that Leon appeared unsettled. Rachel’s phone records indicate that calls from Leon’s mobile phone at 8:08 and from his restaurant five minutes later went unanswered.

Around the same time, video showed that Leon was staring obsessively at his phone. For several minutes he stood behind the host stand and then paced over to sit on a bench in the corner without looking up from the screen. He appeared to be trying to look something up, said Miramontes, who noted that at 8:10 p.m. an app on Leon’s phone would have shown that the Mercedes was at the park-and-ride.

The app was developed by Spireon, a vehicle tracking company specializing in fleet management, which also manufactured the GPS device hidden under the hood of Rachel’s car,

“For some reason he gets up in a hurry,” Miramontes said. “He sees something and gets up. It appears to be a fast walk or slow run, whatever you want to call it.”

CCTV footage showed people staring in surprise as Leon sped out of his restaurant still looking at his phone. An exterior camera showed the Range Rover reversing quickly down an alley behind the restaurant.

The Range Rover arrived at the park-and-ride approximately ten minutes later, just before 8:23 p.m. Within seconds of arriving, Leon, who held a concealed weapons permit, had pulled a gun out of his right pocket. Prosecutors have argued that this is a .357 revolver that Leon purchased in 2006 from a Columbia pawn shop.

Suddenly he raised the gun and rushed around the passenger side of the truck, disappearing from view of the camera. While there is no sound on the video, Swerling said in his opening statement that Leon heard his wife scream. At 8:23 and six seconds, the passenger side door to silver pickup opened, Miramontes testified. Four seconds later, a muzzle flash is seen on the video. Leon is seen again eleven seconds after the shots are fired in between the Toyota truck and his wife’s Mercedes.

But it’s unknown what happened in the 15 seconds that Leon is out of view. In a bracing cross examination, Miramontes, who earlier testified on direct examination that he didn’t see Bravo reach for a weapon on the video of the parking lot, admitted that he actually could not see what was happening inside of the truck.

“What you can’t see, you can’t see,” Swerling agreed.

Who was Arturo Bravo Santos?

Prosecutors have painted a picture of a puppy love relationship between Bravo, an undocumented construction worker, and Rachel Leon, the wife of a wealthy restaurant owner and mother of seven.

Bravo posted songs on her Facebook wall, she sent him emojis, and she kept photos of a trip they had taken to Charleston, including one of the cuddling that Bravo had edited to include the words “Te Amo, A y R” — I love you, Arturo and Rachel.

A picture on her phone taken just three days before the murder showed the couple standing proudly next to the 2014 silver Toyota Tundra outside of the Dick Dyer Toyota dealership in Columbia. On Valentine’s Day, Bravo filled that truck with gifts: a stuffed teddy bear in a red basket, flowers wrapped in plastic, a gold heart box of Lindt chocolates, a bottle of champagne.

But Swerling has dismissed Bravo’s affections as the smooth actions of a seducer.

“He was seeing other women as well in the same kind of situation,” Swerling said in his opening statements.

“He took advantage of Rachel Leon. He knew she was married, and he knew she was married to Greg Leon,” Swerling said “He milked her.”

Investigators initially believed that the man they found face down in the Lexington County parking lot was actually named Arnulfo Gil Liles.

That’s the name listed on a Mexican consular ID card and a Wells Fargo debit card found in Bravo’s truck. It was also the name that matched his fingerprints, according to investigators.

His real identity was not discovered until several days later, when family members brought Lexington Police Department investigators paperwork from North Carolina that confirmed his real name.

Fake names on documents are common for people like Bravo who were living and working illegally, said Miramontes. But he could not offer an explanation about why Bravo, whose only criminal history was driving without a license or insurance, would have been fingerprinted under an alias.