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SALT LAKE CITY — The day Richard Leetham disappeared, he had plans to write a report for one of his classes at Salt Lake Community College.
The 35-year-old West Jordan man had struggled with drugs and endured a few beatings for it, but was seeking out a change, then-girlfriend Sharlene Rushton testified in court Thursday.
"He was going back to school," she said. "He was trying to get straightened up."
On August 17, 1994, Leetham left home at 3 p.m. and said he'd be back by 5 p.m., according to Rushton. She walked him to his white Ford truck, with a black bicycle in its bed, and that was it.
"He never came back," she said.
Months later, Leetham's body would be found near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, his truck would be tracked down in Tijuana, Mexico, and Jose Leyva-Padilla would be arrested in connection with Leetham's death.
Sixteen years later, Leyva-Padilla was charged with murder and aggravated robbery, a first-degree felony.
In a preliminary hearing in 3rd District Court Thursday, Marco Frescas-Hernandez said he was in custody with Jose Leyva-Padilla in the fall of 1994. He said Leyva-Padilla talked about killing Richard Leetham on more than on occasion.
"He told everybody in the tank," Frescas-Hernandez said. "He was bragging that he took (Leetham) up somewhere and smoked him."
He said Leyva-Padilla said the truck that turned up in Mexico was the only thing that tied him to Leetham's slaying.
He told everybody in the tank. He was bragging that he took (Leetham) up somewhere and smoked him.
–- Marco Frescas-Hernandez
"He was going to say he got (the truck) from someone else," Frescas-Hernandez recalled.
It was his belief that Leetham was killed over drugs, because he "had been ripping people off … taking stuff without paying."
Rushton said Leetham was angry because someone had sold him baking soda instead of drugs, so he started printing counterfeit money to pay for the bogus drugs.
"I believe he was actually stealing and that's why he was getting beat up," Rushton said, referring to previous incidences where she tracked down a battered Leetham.
Julie Alvarado, meanwhile, was in a relationship with Leyva-Padilla and remembered Aug. 16, 1994, as her birthday. It was also the day he told her he was leaving for Mexico. He left the next morning only to return that evening in a white Ford truck with a black bike in the back.
"He told me to let my kids ride it," she testified.
She said he packed up some clothes and left. He called her a few times, she said, from Tijuana.
She said he came back in October, around Halloween.
On Oct. 11, 1994, Leetham's body was found. Utah's chief medical examiner, Dr. Todd Grey, said it decomposed to the point that while there was potentially evidence of three gunshot wounds, he could only definitively identify one.
"The pattern of injury was through the sternum, the heart and the vertebrae," Grey said, noting the bullet that passed clean through would have paralyzed the man.
Email:emorgan@ksl.com
