Popular restaurant owner Greg Leon dies one week after murder conviction

Gregorio “Greg” Leon, the successful Lexington County restaurant owner who established a popular chain of Mexican eateries and who was convicted earlier this month of murdering his wife’s lover, died Friday night at a Columbia hospital.

The news was announced early Saturday morning in a tweet by Eric Bland, Leon’s longtime friend and attorney.

At the time of his death, Leon, 56, had been an inmate in the S.C. Department of Corrections in the first week of a 30-year prison sentence. Under state law, he would have had to serve the entire sentence. It turned out to be a life sentence.

Leon was found hanging in his cell at the Kirkland Correctional Institution at 12:36 p.m. Friday, according to a statement released Saturday by the Department of Corrections. He was transferred to a local Prisma hospital, where he died shortly before midnight. While Leon had a cellmate, he was alone in his cell at the time and the death is being investigated as a suicide, according to the Department of Corrections.

He was discovered after a security check had been completed. Leon had already been cleared following a standard mental health evaluation. “There were no indications that he (Leon) needed to be placed on suicide watch or needed a higher level of scrutiny,” according to a document provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections.

In his tweet, Bland paid tribute to Leon, saying, “He left a legacy for sure... He was super religious. I met with him on Thursday and ... he told me God has a plan for him and that somehow he believed some good will come to him.”

Bland, who was with Leon in the hospital when he died, said the Prisma hospital medical staff permitted Leon’s friends and relatives to gather at his bedside.

“This is a testament to how much Greg was loved.... Almost to a person every single one of Greg’s employees came to the hospital (to) express their grief and support the family,” Bland wrote. Corrections officers were also present, Bland wrote.

Leon’s death was the tragic last act in a storied saga of a man who came with little from Mexico, became a wildly prosperous South Carolina entrepreneur who sent money back to his home region and provided hundreds of jobs, and was found guilty of a murder that prosecutors say he committed with “malice in his heart.”

“Gregorio was the type of guy who paid the medical bills of a worker struck with brain cancer, who hosted epic barbecue tailgates at University of South Carolina football games and donated thousands of dollars to his home village in Mexico,” wrote a Los Angeles Times reporter in a story several years ago.

Along the way, Leon also had brushes with the law, running afoul of immigration laws pertaining to undocumented workers and getting involved in a bribery operation that led to the downfall of longtime Lexington County Sheriff Jimmy Metts. At the time of his death, Leon was also facing charges for allegedly bribing a witness to make false statements to attorneys about the victim in his murder trial.

“I was stunned, everyone who worked on this case was absolutely shocked,” said 11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard, who had recently won the conviction against Leon. “None of us foresaw this, and none of us wanted this outcome. Our job was to hold him accountable but that’s true for any case, regardless of whether someone is well known or not.”

“I am deeply sad for his family. I know they have been through a lot and families on both sides of the aisle are the ones who pay the most,” Hubbard said.

Leon, who started the San Jose Mexican chain of Midlands restaurants, was convicted July 6 by a Lexington County jury of murdering 28-year-old Arturo Bravo Santos on Valentine’s Day 2016. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison on the murder charge and another five years for possession of a weapon during a violent crime. The sentences were to be served concurrently.

Leon’s lawyer at the trial, Jack Swerling, said in a statement Saturday that he was “extremely saddened” at the news of Leon’s death.

“Throughout the time I represented him, he vigorously asserted his innocence. The one thing I am certain of is that Greg Leon never planned to kill Arturo Bravo Santos, as was alleged. This is a tragic end to a tragic story,” wrote Swerling. “Greg was a good man. I spent scores of hours with him preparing for trial.”

Swerling, a veteran criminal defense attorney, said he had planned to file an appeal and believed there were significant issues in Leon’s trial that could well have won him a new trial.

Bravo Santos was killed after Leon followed his wife to a park-and-ride in Lexington County. There, Leon found 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 the park-and-ride with a GPS tracker he had hidden in her car. Prosecutors argued that a suspicious Leon had been trying to catch his wife having an affair. Leon testified he believed his wife was addicted to drugs and that he shot Bravo Santos in self defense because the younger man threatened him and acted as if he was reaching for a gun.

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.

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 Bland, who spoke in court after the jury verdict.

Leon is survived by his seven children, who range in age from 14 to mid-40s. Many of them appeared along with his friends every day of his trial and his chain of nine restaurants is now largely held in their names, Swerling said.

His wife, Rachel, has primarily been living in Mexico since the killing. As a condition of Leon’s bond, the couple had not had contact since Leon’s arrest.

Leon’s death is being investigated by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the Richland County Coroner’s Office and the Department of Corrections Inspector General.

Swerling also noted that Leon “was a devoted family man, father of seven children, and a superb businessman from humble Mexican roots. He successfully established nine Mexican restaurants in the Midlands, was a generous philanthropist to many people and causes, a devout Catholic and a valued friend to hundreds, if not thousands, of people.”

In 2014, Leon’s longtime friend, former Lexington Sheriff Jimmy Metts, pleaded guilty to one federal felony charge of conspiring to harbor illegal immigrants and was sentenced to a year in prison.

In 2015, Leon, who had been ready to testify against Metts, pleaded guilty in federal court to hiring “unauthorized aliens,” according to charges against him. He paid a $180,000 fine.

Leon also pleaded guilty in 2015 in state court in Orangeburg County to “to paying a public official for assistance” for his involvement in paying money to Metts to get the sheriff to let undocumented Mexican workers who worked in his restaurants out of Metts’ jail. Leon was sentenced to 200 hours of community service for that offense.

At that hearing, before Judge Lawton McIntosh, one of Leon’s lawyers, Dick Harpootlian, told the judge that Leon was ready to testify against Metts.

Also at that hearing, Assistant Attorney General Creighton Waters — who earlier this year gained national recognition for being the lead prosecutor in the Alex Murdaugh double-murder case — told the judge that Leon had operated restaurants in the Midlands for 30 years and “during that time, he primarily employed a number of undocumented immigrants.”

During the hearing, Waters said that when an undocumented employee of Leon’s would be arrested, Leon tried to get Metts to release him soon after the arrest so the employee could avoid getting caught up in the deportation process. At the time, Metts’ Lexington County jail was authorized to accept and process undocumented immigrants. Because of his position as sheriff, Metts had the power to intervene in the booking process and release someone.



Once, Leon left an envelope stuffed with $2,000 in cash on Metts’ desk, Waters said. Another time, Leon paid an intermediary, former Lexington town council member Danny Frazier, to give cash to Metts, Waters said at that hearing.

In prison, Leon had been given the inmate number 00391435.

But Bland, in a Facebook post last week after Leon’s conviction, recalled him as much more: “So many times over the past 24 years I have needed something whether I was sick or needed help on something and Greg was the first one at my door, whether it was during the day or in the middle of the night.

“I will miss him dearly and so will his family, his 159 workers and the more than 50 families (that) he provides financial assistance to in both the United States and in Mexico.”

At his sentencing, his son Alex Leon stood next to his father and pleaded emotionally with the judge for leniency.

“He’s been the best dad you could ever ask for,” he said.