Man Confesses to Storing Mother’s Remains in Freezer for Weeks, Shocking Bodycam Footage Reveals

Startling revelations have emerged from a peculiar murder case in New Mexico, where a man is suspected of killing his mother, dismembering her body, and hiding her remains in a freezer. Remarkably, he carried on with his daily life for several weeks before being apprehended.

Leroy Felix Vallejos, aged 49, faces a slew of charges, including two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of battery, two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of causing a resident’s death through abuse, as per the records from the Bernalillo County jail.

The victim, 69-year-old Ernestina Lucero, was reportedly murdered in the fall of 2025 at her residence on Rhode Island Street NE in Albuquerque.

In October 2025, concerned family members and neighbors reported her missing. That same month, Vallejos contacted his mother’s home health care provider, requesting payment despite claiming not to have seen her for over a week, as detailed in a criminal complaint obtained by CBS affiliate KRQE in Albuquerque.

Subsequent to these events, police conducted a welfare check at the home, with Vallejos granting them entry to search the premises. According to the complaint, he told officers that his mother was on vacation in Mexico with her boyfriend. However, investigators grew suspicious upon discovering her medication left behind in the bathroom, as noted in 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.