‘I was scared for my life,’ SC restaurant owner Greg Leon testifies in his murder trial

Greg Leon looked at his wife as she sobbed hysterically next to the naked body of her lover, just seconds after Leon killed him.

“What the f--- have you done,” Leon said he asked as his wife tried to pull up her pants.

Taking the stand in his murder trial Thursday, Leon testified that he never set out to kill his wife or catch her in an affair on Valentine’s Day 2016. Instead, he thought she was buying illegal drugs. It was only after he had shot and killed Arturo Bravo Santos, a 28-year-old construction worker, that Leon knew for certain that his wife was cheating on him.

After a three-day recess, Leon’s defense team began its case Thursday by calling him to the stand. In testimony that lasted much of the day, Leon admitted to following his wife to a park-and-ride off of U.S. 378 in Lexington County and to shooting Bravo Santos.

But the 55-year-old restaurateur remained steadfast that he had followed his wife out of concern for her safety and acted in self-defense when he shot and killed Bravo Santos.

“At the time it’s a window, it happened so fast... I believed he was going for a gun,” Leon testified on direct examination by his attorney, Jack Swerling

Leon repeatedly denied that he knew anything about his wife’s affair before arriving at the park-and-ride and said he believed that he was showing up at a drug deal when he arrived there.

But on hearing his wife scream, he drew his gun and pulled open the passenger door to the pickup truck. Inside, he found his wife and a naked Bravo Santos inside.

“I freaked out, it was the last thing I expected to find,” Leon testified. After Leon told his wife twice to get out of the truck, Leon testified that Bravo Santos said, “Goyito, yo te mato.” — “Little Greg, I’m going to kill you,” according to Leon’s testimony. As Bravo Santos reached towards the center console, Leon fired four shots, he said. Three stuck Bravo Santos, two fatally.

“I was frightened, I was scared for my life. I was scared for my wife also,” Leon testified. The entire encounter from the time Leon got out of his car lasted barely a minute. It wasn’t until he had fired the fateful shots that he fully understood what he had stumbled upon, he said.

Over more than an hour of searing cross examination by 11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard, Leon agreed to many of the facts presented by the solicitor but rejected any suggestion that he acted with malice in his heart.

Prosecutors have argued that in the weeks leading up to the shooting, Leon used his phone to search for dating profiles belonging to his wife. But he testified that he barely knew how to use his iPhone and didn’t know how to use Google search.

“I can’t read and write very good, I don’t use the keyboard,” Leon testified. He also stated that he didn’t really understand how to use the GPS tracking app that ultimately led him to his wife.

He testified that many of his actions after the shooting — calling his lawyer before he called 911, telling 911 operators four times that he had shot his wife even though he knew she was alive, and throwing the gun on the side of the road — could be explained by fear.

“I just found my wife with another man and I shot him. I’m panicking,” Leon testified. It was his personal attorney, Eric Bland, who convinced him to call 911. The two met at a gas station in Orangeburg and then drove back to the Lexington Police Department where Leon was arrested by officers with their guns drawn.

But even if he was not trying to kill his wife, Leon twice laid the blame for everything that has occurred since Valentine’s Day 2016 at her feet.

“None of us would have been here if she was a good wife?” Hubbard asked.

“Yes, sir,” Leon replied.

The Leons

Leon said he thought that his wife was happy. In his testimony, he described how they had eloped when she was a teenager with a third grade education. They went on to have seven children. Their ages range from the mid-40s to 14.

Leon built a thriving chain of Mexican restaurants across the Midlands that made them rich. Rachel wanted for nothing, Leon testified. She collected money for the candy concessions in his restaurants and only worked Friday evenings when he needed another cashier.

“She took care of the house and I took care of the business,” Leon said.

“It was an excellent marriage, for you,” Hubbard said cuttingly.

But Leon’s description of his wife portrayed a deeply isolated woman. After roughly three decades in the U.S., she barely spoke English and rarely left the house except to take their children to school or doctors appointments, visit family or go to one of the restaurants. In all that time, Leon said, he remembered his wife attending only two functions with family or friends.

In the year leading up to the shooting, Leon said he’d started to notice changes in his wife. She began sleeping until 10 a.m. and once forgot to pick up their daughter from school. Cash began disappearing from the home safe were he kept money from his restaurants, although Rachel denied taking it. He would later find out that $50,000 was missing.

She had lost up to 40 pounds. “She looked pitiful, she really did,” Leon testified about her weight loss. But in pictures of Rachel and Bravo Santos in Charleston that Hubbard displayed, Rachel appears smiling, happy and healthy.

Leon also said that he never spoke to her about fears that she might have a drug addiction or followed up on plans to hire a private investigator. His phone also displayed no searches for how to intervene with a family member addicted to drugs, Hubbard said.

Despite his suspicions that she was addicted to drugs, he testified that the couple was intimate three to four times a week and he believed that their marriage was good.

“She wouldn’t return your calls, she would snap at you, you would go to bed by yourself… and that’s a happy marriage?” Hubbard asked

“Yes sir,” Leon replied.

Mistrial narrowly avoided

Thursday’s testimony began after circuit court Judge Walton J. McLeod IV rejected the defense’s motion for a mistrial.

On the previous Friday, pathologist Dr. Janice Ross, who performed Bravo Santos’ autopsy, claimed his wounds showed that Bravo Santos’ right arm was down at the time of the shooting. This testimony came as a surprise to defense attorneys, who had based part of their self-defense case on previous reports and statements from Ross that Bravo Santos’ arm had been raised when he was shot.

“What we’re talking about here is not a lay witness changing a statement. We’re talking about an expert witness with technical skills, medical skills,” Swerling said.

Ross’ presentation of new evidence that’s detrimental top his client violated rules that require prosecutors to disclose evidence in trials, Swerling said. As a result, Swerling argued that Leon’s defense team had been unable to prepare a defense to these claims.

Hubbard pushed back on this characterization, saying that his office had never withheld information and that prosecutors only discovered that Ross had changed her interpretation of Bravo Santos’ wounds as they prepped her just before she testified.

In siding with the prosecution, McLeod stated sufficient steps had been taken over the three day recess to correct whatever prejudice may have arisen from Ross’ testimony. Those include the defense having been able to secure a pathologist to testify on July 5.

“I find that nothing has transpired in light of all the accommodations that have been made that have denied the defendant of a right to a fair trial,” McLeod said.