Man charged in three cold-case murders seeks to toss confessions to police

An injured and intoxicated Paul Apodaca was riding in the back seat of a patrol car in 2021 when he casually told two University of New Mexico police officers that he killed three women in the late 1980s.

Apodaca’s attorney now argues in court filings that his statements should be tossed out because law enforcement officers failed to inform Apodaca of his constitutional rights while he was discussing the homicides, including his right to remain silent.

In the same case, a prosecutor said in a court filing that the records of forensic pathologists who performed autopsies on all three women were destroyed in a fire in June 2010.

The fire in a warehouse in Downtown Albuquerque “destroyed approximately 90% of the archived, non-digitized records” of UNM Hospital, including those of the Office of the Medical Investigator, prosecutors wrote.

Apodaca, 55, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the shooting death of 18-year-old Kaitlyn Arquette, the stabbing death of 21-year-old Althea Oakeley, and the shooting death of 13-year-old Stella Gonzales. All three killings occurred in 1988 and 1989.

The statements he made to officers in the minutes and hours after he was detained are of central importance to the prosecution’s case against him, the motion contends.

“Mr. Apodaca was never a suspect or person of interest in either of the cases during more than 30 years of law enforcement investigation,” defense attorney Nicholas Hart argued in the July 25 motion. “Instead, those charges are based solely on Mr. Apodaca’s statements to law enforcement.”

In addition to his confession to UNM police, the motion seeks to toss out statements Apodaca made to an Albuquerque Police Department detective, and a third statement he made to officers at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

The 2nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office has requested a hearing with District Judge Cindy Leos to consider the motion.

“We are confident Apodaca’s constitutional rights were protected, and we believe the judge will deny the defense motion,” the District Attorney’s spokeswoman Nancy Laflin said in a written statement. Messages left for Hart, Apodaca’s attorney, were not immediately returned.

The motion contends that an APD detective questioned Apodaca in a UNM holding cell “despite recognizing that Mr. Apodaca did not seem to understand the situation and that he needed mental health treatment.” As a result, Apodaca was unable to waive his rights “voluntarily and knowingly,” the motion contends.

Initial confession

On July 20, 2021, two UNM police officers found Apodaca sleeping on campus, the motion said. He was wearing a GPS ankle monitor and was found to be in violation of the terms of his probation from a previous charge.

After the officers placed Apodaca in the back of a patrol car, one of the officers asked him if the air conditioning was flowing in the back seat.

“I don’t deserve it,” Apodaca replied. When the officer asked for an explanation, Apodaca said, “’Cause of all the things I’ve done.”

When the officer asked what Apodaca had done, he said, “I murdered Althea Oakeley.”

Apodaca then told the officers that he killed Kaitlyn Arquette and that he had killed both women in 1988 or 1989.

Arquette was driving home from a friend’s house in July 1989 when she was shot in the head on Lomas NE near Arno, just east of Downtown. Her car crashed into a light pole. Arquette died the next day.

The case drew national attention as Arquette’s mother — author Lois Duncan, who wrote the hit “I Know What You Did Last Summer” — worked tirelessly for answers until her death in 2016. She also wrote the nonfiction book, “Who Killed My Daughter?,” about the case.

Oakeley, a UNM student, was stabbed to death while walking home from a get-together at a fraternity gathering in June 1988.

Apodaca then told the officers that he had killed “another girl that was crossing the bridge. I don’t remember her name.”

Gonzales was walking home with a friend on Central Avenue near the Rio Grande when she was shot in the back of the head on Sept. 9, 1988. She died two days later.

The defense motion contends that jurors should not be allowed to hear any of Apodaca’s statements because “those interviews would have never occurred without the unconstitutional actions” of UNM police and the APD detective.

Apodaca is being held in the Lea County Correctional Facility on a probation violation.

He has a violent criminal history, including a 1995 conviction for raping a family member. He was the first person in Bernalillo County sentenced under a new law requiring sex offenders to register with the sheriff’s office.

Apodaca has spent his life in and out of prison and jail, and more recently, seemed to be homeless.