Man accused of fatally beating girlfriend with bat, shooting dog near Socorro

A man was arrested in connection with the 2022 fatal beating of a woman in Socorro County — a case that authorities say dragged on because it took more than two years to receive lab results in the case.

Dennis Wallace, 58, of Kansas City, Missouri, was arrested by New Mexico State Police on Monday in Albuquerque on a warrant for an open count of murder, tampering with evidence and three counts of extreme cruelty to animals in the Aug. 17, 2022, death of 56-year-old Karen Brown. Wallace is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

In January, the Socorro County Sheriff’s Office got lab results showing blood on a baseball bat matched both Wallace and Brown’s DNA, according to a criminal complaint filed in Socorro County Magistrate Court.

Such results often take months to get, but the “lab was extremely busy,” SCSO Capt. James Nance told the Journal.

On Monday, State Police spotted Wallace riding a motorcycle at University and Menaul NE and learned he had a warrant after running the license plate, State Police spokesperson Amanda Richards said. The agents followed Wallace to an apartment off Carlisle, where they arrested him without incident, she said.

At about 12:30 p.m. Aug. 20, 2022, the Socorro County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call for a welfare check on Brown in the 200 block of Highland Springs Ranch Road, about 30 miles south of Socorro, according to the complaint.

When deputies arrived at a camper, they smelled decomposition and found blood all over, including on a baseball bat and shotgun, deputies said. They also found a white dog locked in a cage and a small dog that was shot in the head, the complaint states.

A day later, a detective found Brown’s remains within a half-mile of the camper, the body showing “trauma to the head,” according to the complaint. They interviewed Brown’s boyfriend, Wallace, and he told detectives he was shot in the stomach the day of the homicide and complained of a head injury.

Several months later, on March 28, 2023, Wallace’s stepson and daughter told detectives Wallace told them Brown shot him, deputies said. They told detectives Wallace said he then chased Brown, who hit Wallace with a bat before he took the bat and hit her, “and she went down.”

Wallace told the stepson and daughter that Brown was breathing when he left, the complaint states.

The stepson told detectives that at one point, Wallace told him that Brown’s body “was too far away from the RV to be seen,” according to the complaint.