Antioch woman’s death was ruled a suicide, but her children refused to believe it. Now, the DA says they were right
ANTIOCH — Brenda Joyce Leon was found dead in 2015 from a gunshot wound, with no clues but the firearm and a suicide note left behind. Her obituary noted that among the surviving family was her “loving husband,” a man who’d run for Antioch mayor and lost just three years earlier.
The police ruled it a suicide, according to court records. But Leon’s family wasn’t so sure — in 2021 her two grown children sued an anonymous man, “John Doe,” writing in court filings that while they couldn’t list his identity, they were sure he’d killed their mom and staged the scene to throw off the cops.
Now, almost a decade after Brenda Leon’s death, Contra Costa prosecutors say her children were right — it wasn’t a suicide after all.
The suspect is 66-year-old Michael Anthony Leon, Brenda’s husband of 33 years who billed himself as a doer, not a talker, when he ran for mayor in 2012.
Now Michael Leon is behind bars, facing charges of murdering his wife with a gun, which carries 50 years to life in prison. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.
The case was reopened by the District Attorney’s cold case unit, headed then by Deputy District Attorney Satish Jallepalli, and now by Deputy District Attorney Chad Mahalich. The office announced the charges on Friday.
Exactly how Brenda Leon’s death went from suicide to homicide remains unclear. The DA’s news release says authorities “uncovered previously unknown digital evidence and new factual details that were central to the decision to file charges.” A 2024 court filing from Leon’s wrongful death lawsuit says that the DA’s cold case unit was on the trail back then, and served a search warrant on “electronics” that provided new leads.
The premise of the wrongful death suit was simple. Leon’s children alleged that the killer “forged a suicide note and falsified evidence at the scene of the killing and suppressed evidence and information that would allow” police to identify the killer. It’s unclear if they suspected Michael Leon was behind it, but the suit refers to Leon’s killer as a male several times. The attorney who filed the suit didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In 2012, Leon ran for mayor, garnering 1,740 votes, and fishing last in a four-man race where Wade Harper was elected. During the race, he told his news organization he was a marketing manager with a heating and air-conditioning company, who was encouraged to run by neighbors after helping remove some nearby squatters and forcing local landlords to clean up their properties in small claims court.
“I believe it’s my civic duty to try to help. At some point, you have to just stop talking about doing something about it and do it,” Leon said in a 2012 interivew. “If you look at the city forefathers at those meetings, nothing really seems to be done.”
He said that community patrols by the local police department would be a good first step. But three years later, on Sept. 28, 2015, police were inside the couple’s home on the 3900 block of Bedrock Court in Antioch, investigating Brenda Leon’s death. That year was a hallmark for Antioch police, who solved all seven of the city’s homicides, though one of them took five years and a massive gang investigation to make arrests. But Leon’s apparently slipped through the cracks until it was re-classified in recent years, prosecutors said.
Her obituary describes her as an affectionate mother and grandmother who lived in Concord for 36 years and graduated from Carondelet High School before getting a job at her dad’s transportation company. It lists Michael Leon, her “loving husband,” as one of the survivors.
“She lived life as a friend to all and carried the qualities of loyalty, selflessness, and unconditional love with her throughout her time on this Earth. Family and friends would describe her as a loving and proud mother who found true happiness in watching her family grow,” the obituary says. “She enjoyed the simple things in life and always reminded those around her to find the good in everyone and everything.”
The DA’s news release lauds Leon’s family for having “never lost faith that the truth would come to light.”
“Today’s filing in Contra Costa Superior Court honors that perseverance and demonstrates that cold cases are never forgotten, regardless of how much time has passed, DA Diana Becton said in a written statement.