Trial update: Restaurateur defends happy marriage on cross examination

Midlands restaurateur Greg Leon testified Thursday in his murder trial in Lexington County.

Leon is accused of killing his wife’s lover on Valentine’s Day 2016. Prosecutors say Leon murdered Arturo Bravo Santos, a 28-year-old construction worker who was having an affair with Leon’s wife. Leon’s attorneys say he shot Bravo Santos in self defense.

Bravo Santos was gunned down on the backseat of a truck in a Lexington County park-and-ride. Leon’s wife, Rachel, who was also in the backseat of the truck, was unharmed. Leon, owner of the popular San Jose Mexican restaurants, had followed her to the quiet parking lot off of U.S. 378 using a tracking device attached to her car.

Barely 30 seconds after Leon arrived, the fatal shots were fired, according to surveillance footage played before a jury of seven women and five men on the first day of testimony in Leon’s murder trial.

3:21 p.m. — Leon says ‘nobody at fault’ for alleged witness tampering

In the final portion of a contentious cross examination, Leon continued denying that he encouraged a witness, Ruby Sierra, to make false statements to attorneys. Leon largely repeated his earlier testimony under direct examination, maintaining that one of his employees, Maria Moreno, reached out to him about Sierra and who prodded Sierra to make untrue statements.

On the other hand, Leon says that while he wanted Sierra to make the statements about Bravo Santos’ supposed violent character and gang connections, he never verified them.

“You’re sitting her today saying you don’t know if it’s true or not,” Hubbard asked

“Yes sir,” Leon replied.

2:52 p.m. — Solicitor cross examines Leon

In an aggressive back and forth, 11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard dug into Leon’s marriage and his actions throughout the night of the shooting. Leon, who mostly answered with “yes sir” or “no sir,” continued to deny that he knew his wife was having an affair up until the shooting. Hubbard appeared to dismiss the restaurateur’s claims that he was too embarrassed to tell anyone about his concern that his wife had a drug problem, and cast Rachel as a neglected wife.

Leon maintained they had a happy marriage, but at times he appeared to cast blame on his wife for the shooting.

“So it was all Rachel Leon’s fault,” Hubbard asked

“Well she’s the one who had an affair,” Leon replied

But Leon later stated that he would have been at fault for shooting his wife if he had “carelessly” struck her when he fired into the backseat of the truck, after believing that Bravo Santos was threatening him and reaching for a gun.

““You just happened to be a good shot that night?” Hubbard asked.

“I guess,” Leon replied.

12:25 p.m. — Restaurant owner denies paying witnesses to lie

While Greg Leon admitted that he wanted Arturo Bravo Santos’ former roommate and lover to make statements beneficial to his case, he denies paying her to lie. He encouraged her to make these statements even though he thought his criminal charges were likely to be dropped.

“I figured it couldn’t hurt,” he told the jury, when asked why he endorsed a plan by Maria Moreno, a former employee he had a “soft spot” for, to get Bravo Santos’ former roommate and lover, Ruby Sierra, to make negative statements to attorneys about the dead construction worker. Sierra testified earlier in the trial.

Under questioning by his attorney, Swerling, Leon firmly and repeatedly denied telling anyone to lie under oath or to make statements about the night of Feb. 14, 2016, when Bravo Santos was killed.

Leon admitted that he did give Moreno cash at his restaurant after the two women returned from making false statements at the office of lawyer Dick Harpootlian, but he denied paying Sierra. When Moreno told him that she had lent Sierra $500, Leon recalled, “I said that it didn’t have anything to do with me.”

Sierra testified that Moreno gave her $900 from cash that Leon gave her following their meeting at the lawyer’s office.

11:50 a.m. — ‘Hysterical’ Leon says he wasn’t trying to shoot his wife

Leon said that he knew his wife was alive when he made the fateful 911 call saying “I shot my wife and her lover,” he testified Thursday. Leon denies aiming for his wife. Instead, he shot at Arturo Bravo Santos, who had told Leon: “Gordito, I’ll kill you” and acted as if he was reaching for a weapon, Leon testifiedı.

Immediately following the shooting, Leon confronted his wife outside of the truck as she put her pants back on with Bravo Santos naked on the ground in front of them, Leon said.

“What the f--- have you done?” Leon remembered saying to his wife, who wouldn’t look at him.

Asked why he told 911 that he had shot her when he knew that he hadn’t, Leon told his attorney Jack Swerling that he was “Freaking out. I was hysterical,” Leon said. Leon said he ditched his gun on the side of the road and told one of his sons to check on his mother before he met with his attorney, Eric Bland, at a gas station in Orangeburg.

Leon turned himself in at the Lexington Police Department, accompanied by Bland, later that night.

11:21 a.m. — Leon installed tracker on wife’s car, tried to hire PI over drug concerns

In the year leading up the fatal shooting of Arturo Bravo Santos, Leon noticed that his wife lost about 30 to 40 pounds and had become terse with him. Combined with suspicions of missing money, Leon grew concerned that his wife was using drugs, he said.

The restaurant owner said that he reached out to attorney Eric Bland, who Leon considers a personal friend, because he wanted to hire a private investigator. Bland was on vacation at the time. Leon also admitted to having a GPS tracker installed on his wife’s car.

But Leon, who testified that he used a Motorola Razor phone until just before the shooting and doesn’t text, insists that he barely knew how to use the app connected to the tracker.

“I tried it (the app) a couple of times and the couple of times I would try it I couldn’t’ get it to pull up,” Leon said.

11:06 a.m. — Leon asked his wife about the missing money

Leon has testified that in the year leading up to the shooting, over $50,000 was taken from a home safe where he kept cash from his restaurants. While he was suspicious at the time, he said that he wasn’t able to prove anything. When he asked his wife, Rachel, she would angrily deny taking any money, Leon testified.

“When money stared going missing out of the safe I questioned her several times,” Leon said. “She would get very upset. She would say make your own deposits.”

Leon’s wife bought gifts for Arturo Bravo Santos, including a 2014 silver Toyota Tundra truck, which she purchased for him three days before the fatal shooting.