Inset: Leroy Vallejos (Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center). Background: A still image of body-worn camera footage showing a police officer removing bagged-up human remains from a chest freezer at a residence in Albuquerque, N.M. (Albuquerque Police Department/KRQE).
Shocking new details have been revealed in a bizarre murder case out of New Mexico, where a man allegedly killed his own mother, dismembered her body, stored her remains in a freezer, and then went about his business for several weeks before his arrest.
Leroy Felix Vallejos, 49, stands accused of myriad crimes including two counts of murder in the first degree, three counts of battery, two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of abuse of a resident resulting in death, according to Bernalillo County jail records.
The victim, 69-year-old Ernestina Lucero, was killed sometime in the fall of 2025 at her own home on Rhode Island Street NE in Albuquerque.
In October 2025, she was reported missing by family members and neighbors. That same month, the defendant himself called his mother's home health care company asking to be paid even though he said he had not seen her in over a week, according to a criminal complaint obtained by Albuquerque-based CBS affiliate KRQE.
Police eventually performed a welfare check at the residence and Vallejos allowed law enforcement to enter and perform a search, the complaint says. The defendant allegedly said his mother was traveling in Mexico on a vacation with her boyfriend, but investigators became suspicious when they found the woman's medication in the bathroom, according to the charging document.
Officers then looked inside a chest freezer and, after moving around some boxes of frozen food, found garbage bags containing what appeared to be obvious female human remains, police said.
Body-worn camera footage recently obtained by KRQE shows the immediate interaction after the gruesome discovery.
"What's up, boss?" the defendant asks.
To which the officer replies: "Let's step outside."
"All right," Vallejos replies.
Then the officers makes the arrest, saying: "Go and put your hands behind your back. She's in the freezer."
A further search of the home found bloodstains under the sink, according to law enforcement. In a custodial interview, Vallejos admitted to choking his mom to death some three weeks prior, police said. The defendant went on to say Lucero was conspiring against him with others and she was part of a "group of people giving their lives to darkness," according to the complaint.
"I f–ing strangled her, eh," Vallejos says in the footage.
Later, the defendant and a detective go over what happened after the woman was killed and dismembered.
"I put her in the freezer," Vallejos says.
The detective clarifies: "Okay, you left her in the freezer."
Slightly annoyed-sounding, Vallejos replies: "I told you, I put her in there and I left her in there."
The man then reportedly described how he used an electric saw to dismember the victim's body — before focusing on the purported nature of the relationship between mother and son.
"I went for years and years, trying to please her, trying to make her happy," the defendant told a detective. "I begged, I pleaded."
At one point, Vallejos relays concerns that his mother was somehow involved in the supernatural, telling the detective: "It's witchcraft. She did witchcraft on me. I don't know what she did."
During another interaction, however, the admitted killer appears somewhat contrite about the brutal matricidal violence.
"I just went off, man, I didn't think about it," Vallejos told the detective. "During, it was just like, why couldn't you just leave me the f— alone? What did I ever do to you? Besides love you?"
Later on, the defendant added: "I messed up, man. I wish I didn't do that."
Vallejos also told detectives he thought about turning himself in — but was worried about what would happen to his dogs.
In December 2025, a court deemed the defendant incompetent to stand trial. Earlier this month, he was committed to New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute in order to receive mental health services until he is deemed competent to stand trial.
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