Greg Leon, Midlands restaurateur, found guilty of murdering his wife’s lover
South Carolina restaurateur Greg Leon was found guilty Thursday of murdering his wife’s lover on Valentine’s Day 2016. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder.
Jurors returned their verdict just after 4 p.m. after deliberating just under 2.5 hours.
Leon, who started a chain of Midlands restaurants, San Jose Mexican, was convicted of murdering 28-year-old Arturo Bravo Santos after finding Bravo Santos with Leon’s wife in the back seat of a pickup truck. When he was shot, Bravo Santos was naked except for a pair of socks.
Leon had tracked his wife to a Lexington County park-and-ride with a GPS tracker hidden in her car.
Driven by rage, Leon was a “control freak” driven to kill his wife and her lover to avenge his wounded honor, 11th Cicruit Solicitor Rick Hubbard said in his closing arguments.
“His plan was to kill two people, his wife and her lover,” Hubbard said. “And he succeeded in killing one person, Arturo Bravo Santos.”
Roughly an hour after the verdict, Judge Walton J. McLeod IV sentenced Leon to the minimum of 30 years in prison. He also sentenced Leon to five years for possession of a weapon during a violent crime. The sentences will be served concurrently.
The verdict came after a nearly three-week trial in Lexington County, South Carolina. The judgment was reached by a jury of seven women and five men who began their deliberations at about 1:40 p.m. Thursday.
Immediately following the verdict, muffled sobs were heard in the courtroom. As Leon was led away in handcuffs, tears streamed down the faces of some of his friends and family, more than a dozen of whom showed up each day during the trial to support him.
Dressed in black crocodile skin shoes, a blue suit that hid his ankle monitor and a white shirt unbuttoned to display a red crucifix that he has worn in court everyday, Leon appeared impassive as he was handcuffed.
Before Leon was sentenced, seven people testified with emotion about what they called Leon’s good character. They included two of his sons, a former Town of Lexington councilman and a man who said Leon had saved his home from foreclosure.
“He is without question the hardest working businessman I have ever met in my life... There are so many people that depend on Greg, their livelihoods, their families... my life is crushed,” said Eric Bland, Leon’s corporate attorney and and a long time friend who helped him surrender to police after the shooting on Feb. 14, 2016.
The verdict marks a stunning fall for a man who his defense attorney Jack Swerling cast in his closing arguments as a living embodiment of the American Dream.
“Who shattered his dream? Did Greg Leon shatter the dream? No,” Swerling said, casting the blame for the killing on Bravo Santos, who “invaded” Leon’s family.
But in his electrifying closing argument, a righteous Hubbard urged the jury to hold Leon accountable and reject his claim that he had fired in self defense.
“Tell Greg Leon you know the truth,” Hubbard urged the jury. “The truth is he is guilty and he is guilty of murder. He had malice in his heart when he pulled the trigger and killed Mr. Santos.”
Leon’s claim of self-defense suffered a severe blow when Dr. Janice Ross, the pathologist who performed Bravo Santos’ autopsy, testified that Bravo Santos’ arm was down by his side when he was shot. Until then, Ross had said his arm was raised, which supported Leon’s claim that Bravo Santos was reaching for a weapon. No weapon was found in the vehicle.
“It’s just amazing how she changed her testimony... she changed the entire dynamic of the case. How about that?” said Swerling, who tried the case along with Alissa Wilson. This reversal of her early testimony led to a dramatic three day recess when it appeared that McLeod might declare a mistrial.
Throughout the trial, defense attorneys repeatedly argued that there was no concrete evidence of premeditation. They also said forensic evidence supported Leon’s claim that Bravo Santos appeared to be reaching for a weapon. “Greg Leon had one second… to make a life altering decision about whether or not he was in immediate danger,” Swerling told the jury in his closing argument.
But over the course of the trial, Hubbard, along deputy solicitor Suzanne Mayes, laid out a damaging timeline of Leon’s actions before and after the murder. From placing a GPS tracker on his wife’s car, searching dating websites on his cell phone to discarding the gun, Leon’s actions proved malice, prosecutors argued.
Perhaps the most damning evidence was a 911 call that Leon made 11 minutes after the shooting.
“I shot my wife and her lover, dude,” Leon could be heard saying on the recording.
“Where on there do you hear anything about I had to shoot a man in self-defense?” Hubbard asked the jury, after playing the call again in his closing arguments. “It’s the closest we’ll get to what’s in his head.”
A missing voice
To reach their verdict, the jury also sorted through evidence that included video footage from the parking lot where Bravo Santos was shot and a reconstructions of the shooting. Jurors also heard from 23 witnesses, including law enforcement investigators, two pathologists, a pawn shop owner, Bravo Santos’ former roommate and lover, and Leon himself.
But one voice was conspicuously absent: Rachel Leon’s.
Maria Raquel Leon — known as Rachel — worked as a cashier on Friday nights at Leon’s restaurants, managed the candy concessions at the host stations, had access to his safe and betrayed him with a younger man, according to testimony. She was not called to the stand.
So much of the case hinged on what happened inside of the 2014 silver Toyota Tundra that Rachel had bought for Bravo Santos just three days before the shooting using money that Swerling implied could have been taken from Greg Leon’s safe.
Where was Bravo Santos in the truck? Which way was he leaning? Did he open a door in an attempt to escape? Was he reaching for something?
Hubbard urged the jury to disregard Leon’s memory of the confusing scene. “If a man is willing to lie about one thing, you can’t trust him on anything,” he said in his closing.
Without an eyewitness’ testimony, jurors had to wrestle with those questions using only a sliver of light on a grainy security video that showed nothing more than shadows and a muzzle flash. They also were confronted with competing forensic reconstructions.
With no testimony from Rachel Leon, attorneys brought their own perspectives about the relationship between her and Bravo Santos, a construction worker from Mexico.
To Swirling, “not only was he (Bravo Santos) a gigolo… but he was was a predator” who targeted Rachel for her wealth. To Hubbard, the relationship was an escape from Leon, who was too self-absorbed to notice his wife’s unhappiness.
Photos of Rachel and Bravo Santos together showed a smiling and happy couple taking trips to Charleston. Bravo Santos also indiscreetly posted love songs her Facebook page.
“She is so utterly miserable with him (Greg Leon),” Hubbard told the jury. On the stand Leon said he believed their relationship was good and the couple had sex three to four times a week. But by Leon’s own admission, Rachel had few friends, rarely socialized and had grown increasingly short with him in the year leading up to the murder.
“His pride, my manhood, that’s what all of this about,” Hubbard said.
This story was originally published July 6, 2023 at 4:12 PM.