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Welcome to Desert Journal Online, established in May 2001 in New Mexico. Our website offers our true crime book, Satan's Den Exposed - The David Parker Ray Story, and poetry and photo collections, Bombshell Liberation and Interference, and provides free access to our featured columns, photos and news archives.











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Satan's Den Exposed
The David Parker Ray Story

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Last modified: April 14, 2008

Headline News From Our
Feb. 14, 2003 Issue

Bonnett’s suspected slayer arrested

Kevin Light-Roth

  The Seattle, WA, area can sleep easier with Monday’s arrest of a Tacoma man accused of slaying T or C native Tython Bonnett on Feb. 5.

Tython Bonnett

EB accountant’s sentencing delayed

  Having pled guilty to two counts of fraud and two counts of forgery, Elephant Butte accountant Rose Mary Pedersen was to be sentenced in District Court Thursday.

Judge Pestak expects county’s favorable nod
to continue video arraignment program in jail

  With two former jail administrators – Jim Coslin and Russ Peterson – presently serving on the Sierra County Commission, Judge Tom Pestak this week said he’s 90 percent certain that the county board will approve expenditures required to continue closed circuit TV arraignments at Magistrate Court.

The Wildlands Project Comes to Hidalgo County

  To refresh everyone's memory, let's take a look at what we know about the Wildlands Project.

IRS tax help rolls across New Mexico

  A helping hand from the Internal Revenue Service may be as close as your neighborhood as the agency's mobile unit rolls across New Mexico to offer service in locations convenient to its customers, including in Truth or Consequences.

CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE

  One thing disgusts me more than anything else in my profession – wanton disregard for the truth.

OBITUARIES

   Notices for Tython K. Bonnett, Harry G. Steinhauser & John A. Almaraz.

CLICK ON PHOTO
FOR PHOTO SERIES

These four members of Hot Springs High School’s Army Junior Recruit Officer Training Corps (ROTC) stand at attention with four sabers donated Monday morning by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1389 in Elephant Butte. Click on photo to see more photos of the special presentation.

…Like the tumbling walls of Jericho

The west wall of the old First Baptist Church sanctuary on Broadway in downtown Truth or Consequences begins crashing to the ground Wednesday afternoon with the help of a bulldozer. Click on photo to see photo series of the demolition.

DJ photo by Bill Johnson

Tython Bonnett

Lifelong T or C resident

Kevin Light-Roth

Bonnett’s suspected slayer

arrested in Seattle, WA area

Funeral services set

today for T or C native

Desert Journal Staff Report

The Seattle, WA, area can sleep easier with Monday’s arrest of a Tacoma man accused of slaying Truth or Consequences native Tython Bonnett more than a week ago.

Today (Friday, Feb. 14), the 19-year-old Bonnett will be remembered in prayer and song as his family and friends mourn his loss during a funeral service at 2 p.m. at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in T or C. (See the Obituary column, page 2.)

According to Seattle Times reporter Ian Ith, police arrested Kevin Light-Roth, 19, of Tacoma, WA, at a motel in Fife Monday morning for the shooting death of Bonnett. Light-Roth was considered armed and dangerous and police acted on a tip of his whereabouts.

Charges were expected to be filed against Light-Roth this week, Ith said in e-mail to the Desert Journal Wednesday.

Police accuse Light-Roth of killing Bonnett at an apartment in Federal Way, WA, on Wednesday, Feb. 5, then dumping Bonnett’s body in the middle of a road in Tacoma, according to the Seattle Times.

<<<   >>>

…Ribbon cut at open house

Local officials and members of the welcoming committee of the T or C/Sierra County Chamber of Commerce cut the ribbon for a ceremony at Personal Expressions, a gift shop on Broadway in downtown Truth or Consequences, on Wednesday.

DJ photo by Bill Johnson

EB accountant’s sentencing delayed

Restitution

only expected

By Fred Mramor of the Desert Journal

Having pled guilty to two counts of fraud and two counts of forgery, Elephant Butte accountant Rose Mary Pedersen was to be sentenced in District Court Thursday.

Pedersen’s sentencing was continued, however, pending a pre-sentencing report as ordered by Judge Kevin Sweazea.

Pedersen was charged last March with six counts of fraud, 11 counts of forgery, and one count each of racketeering and tampering with evidence after defrauding her client, the Agape Mission Project and its president, Sherrill Burk, for a total amount of $43,500.32 in fraudulent credit card and check cashing charges occurring on both legitimate accounts belonging to Burk and fraudulent accounts set up by Pedersen under Burk’s name between Jan. 1, 1999, and April 30, 2001.

All charges against Pedersen, 57, except the two counts each of fraud and forgery, were dismissed in a plea agreement.

It is unlikely that Pedersen will be sentenced to jail time but will probably be ordered to pay restitution to her one known victim.

State Police Agent Norman Rhoades said during Thursday’s hearing that if Pedersen’s case had come to trial, the state could have shown that Pedersen had committed fraudulent transactions totaling $50,000 to $60,000.

Rhoades said he explored the possibility of other victims and was surprised that none came forward to file charges against Pedersen.

Rhoades said that in examining documents related to the case, it appeared Pedersen hadn’t simply made mistakes but her actions were deliberate and she attempted to cover up her fraudulent transactions.

Pedersen has been doing business as an accountant in Sierra County more than a decade.

<<<   >>>

…Knock ’em dead

Trojan horses attack the Truth or Consequences First Baptist Church with a vengeance Wednesday. Actually, the church is taking on a major renovation project. On top, the east wall comes crashing down, stirring up dust and rubble, while some of the wall is captured at a 45-degree angle in its descent. In middle, the dragon finds resistance on the northwest corner but finally breaks it loose with debris captured in its fall. On bottom, the entire north wall is knocked down in unison by the metal monsters, causing a boom and crash that shook the ground (why the photo may be a little out of focus). The walls were totally gone within a half hour that the battle began.

DJ photos by Bill Johnson

Judge Pestak expects county’s favorable nod

to continue video arraignment program in jail

By Fred Mramor

of the Desert Journal

With two former jail administrators – Jim Coslin and Russ Peterson – presently serving on the Sierra County Commission, Judge Tom Pestak this week said he’s 90 percent certain that the county board will approve expenditures required to continue closed circuit TV arraignments at Magistrate Court.

The county this month came very near to discontinuing the video arraignment program, in which prisoners appear in court from the county’s holding facility through a closed circuit TV system, because the county didn’t include the cost of the program in its budget.

But Commission Chairman Jim Coslin said Wednesday he agreed with the magistrate that the savings from not having to transport prisoners from the county holding facility to court will be well worth the closed circuit system’s $200 a month maintenance contract.

Coslin added that video arraignments reduce the safety and flight risks of transporting prisoners to and from court.

Though he couldn’t speak for the other county commissioners, Coslin said he will support the expenditure of county funds to continue the video arraignment system, adding that the issue will probably be resolved at the next commission meeting on Feb. 20.

Following a court security appropriation by the State Legislature, Sierra County began using the video arraignment system in July 2001, according to Magistrate Pestak.

The initial cost for Sierra County’s video system was from $40,000 to $50,000 for the equipment itself, installation and training, Pestak said.

Pestak said his serving on the legislature’s technology committee helped secure the video system for Sierra County.

The magistrate said he’s especially proud that with the closed circuit system, Sierra County is on the leading edge of technology, rather than the trailing edge, as rural counties usually are.

In addition to the cost-savings and security benefits the video arraignment system provides, Pestak said scheduled arraignments won’t have to be postponed when no jailers are available to transport prisoners to court, as often happened before the system was installed.

Pestak said he doesn’t anticipate that the closed circuit system will ever be used in actual trials, but that he can accept guilty pleas (on misdemeanors or lesser offenses) and therefore pronounce sentence during an arraignment.

Although it will require a change in the law, which currently allows the closed circuit system to be used only for arraignments, the system may be employed in the future for motions hearings and non-adversarial pre-trial hearings, Pestak said.

Pestak said he’s not sure the state’s multi-line insurance board will see it his way, but that he thinks the 16 New Mexico counties using the closed circuit arraignment system should have the additional benefit of lowered insurance premiums with their lower exposure to the security risks of transporting prisoners to court.

<<<   >>>

The Wildlands Project Comes

to Hidalgo County (Part 15)

A Country Girl's Musin'

By Judy Keeler

To refresh everyone's memory, let's take a look at what we know about the Wildlands Project. Much of this, according to their own words:

The Problem - "human activity is undoing creation; the remaining degraded and fragmented lands will not sustain their biological diversity and evolutionary processes."

The Mission - "to protect and restore the natural heritage of North America through the establishment of a connected system of wildlands."

To stem the disappearance of wildlife and wilderness everyone must "allow the recovery of whole ecosystems and landscapes in every region of North America." "Recovery on this scale will take time - 100 years or more in some places."

The Vision - "rests on the spirit of social responsibility and acknowledges that the health of American society and its institutions depends on wilderness."

The Challenge - "Wild land proponents are called to their task" by their perception "that existing parks, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges do not adequately protect life in the face of increasing human populations and technological changes."

Despite the establishment of parks and reserves from Canada to Central America, wild land proponents claim "true wilderness and native, wild land-dependent species are in precipitous decline." They give as examples: "Grand predators-including the grizzly bear, gray wolf, wolverine, jaguar, and American crocodile - have been exterminated from large parts of their pre-Columbian range and are imperiled in much of their remaining habitat."

"The disappearance of these top predators and other keystone species hastens the unraveling of ecosystems and impoverishes the lives of human beings."

"Forests have been over-cut, cleared, and fragmented, leaving only scattered remnants of once vast ecosystems."

"Tall- and short-grass prairie, once home to an extraordinary concentration of large mammals, has been almost entirely destroyed or domesticated."

"Deserts, coastal areas, and mountains are imperiled by sprawling subdivisions and second-home development.”

 "Motorized vehicles penetrate the few remaining roadless areas on illegal roads and tracks."

"A rising tide of invasive exotic species - ecological opportunists of the global economy - threatens a new wave of extinction and the eventual homogenization of ecosystems everywhere."

To further alarm their followers they claim these trends, taken globally, "are among the notable causes of the current and sixth major extinction event to occur since the first large organisms appeared on Earth a half-billion years ago."

As a remedy, they believe "regional and continental networks" should be established that "will protect wild habitat, biodiversity, ecological integrity, ecological services, and evolutionary processes.”

True wilderness, in their opinion, means creating: "Extensive roadless areas - vast, self-regulated landscapes - free of mechanized human use and the sounds and constructions of modern civilization;"

"Viable, self-reproducing populations of all native species, including large predators;"

"Natural patterns of diversity at the genetic, species, ecosystem, and landscape levels."

We should also be aware: The Wildlands Project's preserve model is referred to as the principle design to protect biodiversity within Section 10 of the United Nation's Global Biodiversity Assessment - authorized under the U.N. Convention for Biodiversity.

Conservation Biology's preserve model, largely untested, will be used to establish large swaths of land as core preserves with surrounding buffer zones and linking corridors.

Member groups to the Wildlands Project "will recruit other activists, professional ecologists, and sympathetic agency personnel to assist in developing the proposed wild land areas."

Trust groups such as the Nature Conservancy will be plugged into the proposals so when gaps are identified within a proposed reserve network, these privately held areas can become priorities for land acquisition.

Using the preserve model, the activist groups will "identify and map existing protected areas including federal and state wilderness areas, parks and wildlife refuges, heritage areas, monuments, BLM Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs), and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Research Natural Areas (RNAs)."

Activists will rely on other maps including: "National Park system maps, National Wildlife Refuge maps, BLM Wilderness Status maps and Nature Conservancy preserve maps."

After all the already protected areas are laid out onto a single map, "the next step will be to overlay this map with a map of large roadless areas."

These roadless areas are defined as containing 100,000 or more acres in the West and 50,000 or more acres in the East.

Although it "may be necessary to allow some roads to remain open to official use for short periods to allow active restoration in severely abused areas, or for reintroduction of extirpated species, the majority of dirt and gravel roads on public lands should be closed quickly."

Unprotected roadless areas on federal and state lands will be targeted for future wilderness bills, heritage sites or other "protective" legislation.

Private lands within these areas will be given the highest priority for agency or trust acquisition.

In addition to legislating wildlands, the maps will also be used to appeal grazing, mining and timber harvesting and to establish litigation strategy in areas determined to be "priority wild lands."

At least half the land area in the 48 contiguous states would be encompassed in core reserves and inner corridor zones.

"One hundred years ago, John Muir argued that the newly withdrawn Forest Reserves in the West should be protected from logging, mining and livestock grazing."

A key part of the Wildlands Project is to "return to Muir's vision for management of our public lands." In support of the Wildlands Project member organizations have petitioned to list over 2,000 species as threatened or endangered and have filed lawsuits challenging federal management for over 100 species.

By establishing "partnerships with grassroots and national conservation organizations, government agencies, indigenous peoples, private landowners, and with naturalists, scientists, and conservationists across the continent, a network of wildlands from Central America to Alaska and from Nova Scotia to California" will be created.

<<<   >>>

IRS tax help rolls

across New Mexico

To assist with tax returns in T or C

A helping hand from the Internal Revenue Service may be as close as your neighborhood as the agency's mobile unit rolls across New Mexico to offer service in locations convenient to its customers, including in Truth or Consequences.

During February and March, taxpayers can get tax help and problem-solving assistance from the IRS. Those who qualify can also take advantage of courtesy basic income tax return preparation.

These services are available at the dates, times and locations listed later in this article.

"You don't need to come to us, we're coming to you," IRS spokesperson Bill Brunson said.

"Taxpayers want convenient services. That's what we're trying to offer - the right service at the right times in the right locations," he said.

Help includes tax forms, answers to tax questions, face-to-face help solving federal tax problems and courtesy basic return preparation for taxpayers, generally those with incomes of $35,000 and less.

Taxpayers intending to take advantage of the courtesy return preparation need to bring all relevant information with them, including photo identification for themselves (and their spouses, if applicable); Social Security cards (or Individual Income Tax Number cards) for each person listed on the tax return; their tax booklets; all wage and earnings statements (Forms W-2); interest and dividend statements (Forms 1099); copies of last year's tax returns, and any other information concerning income and expenses for the year 2002.

If filing jointly, both spouses must be present to sign the required forms to e-file (electronic filing).

2003 IRS Mobile Tax Assistance Schedule for southwest New Mexico:

Truth or Consequences – From 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 19 and 20, in the Civic Center’s Green Room, 400 W. 4^th St.

Silver City – From 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Friday , Feb. 21, from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 24, and Wednesday, Feb. 26, in the Miller Library’s Bach room, conference room A, 1000 W. College Ave.

The IRS Mobile also will serve Carlsbad, Gallup and Grants, NM, as well as Window Rock, AZ.

<<<   >>>

The Shadow Advisory

...Second David Ray book

is more fiction than fact

One thing disgusts me more than anything else in my profession – wanton disregard for the truth. I suppose that’s why I’m in this business – a poor one indeed – and why crime authors like Jim Fielder of Seattle, WA, can soak up the bucks writing trash – pure trash, even knowing the truth.

I wouldn’t be writing what I’m about to convey if not for the fact that one particular section of Fielder’s book, Slow Death - a second book about David Parker Ray and his infamous sexual torture case at Elephant Butte Lake released last month and only a half year after English author John Glatt’s book Cries in the Desert was released in June 2002 - is absolutely false and only a few people know it, including Fielder. That’s because I told him the truth, but he chose to ignore it and chose to listen to only one side of the story.

Since I was a witness, I know what I’m talking about. I was there and everything I am about to say is the truth – no dispute about it.

In talking about Dennis Roy Yancy – now serving a 20-year prison term for the murder of young mother Marie Parker – and his youthful years dabbling in Satanism, Fielder wrote (last paragraph, page 80):

“The Sentinel went so far as to hire an undercover reporter to infiltrate the [occult-related] gang and report on their evil ways.”

Wrong – the Sentinel publishers never knew about the Satanic gang until the Sentinel’s photojournalist, who was NOT hired to be undercover anything, told them about it just before Halloween 1987.

This particular Sentinel employee, whose name I shall keep anonymous as he wishes me to do (he’ll only talk to police), was hired to do routine everyday newspaper work, and I think I also remember that he may have worked as a disc jockey at KCHS Radio Station, which also belongs to the Sentinel publishers. I know, I worked alongside him day after day and he is among the best of my friends to this day. And I told Fielder about it during one of his few phone calls to my office since the David Ray case broke in March 1999.

Sentence two, same paragraph: “The reporter got sucked into the group and refused to expose his new friends.”

Wrong again, very, very wrong. My friend, the photojournalist, never knew the gang members or Yancy personally.

What my friend did do, however, was attach himself to Sierra County’s multi-agency task force that was formed to investigate occult related crimes, including the activities of Yancy and his friends.

My friend the photojournalist became very involved (perhaps over-involved) with this task force, which consisted of city police, sheriff’s office, state police and even included retired District Attorney’s Office Investigator John Ashbaugh (I think he was working as an investigator for the sheriff’s office at that time 15 years ago.)

Third sentence, same paragraph: “One of those friends was Dennis [Roy] Yancy.”

Other witnesses to my friend’s involvement will testify, I mean swear on the Bible, that my friend the photojournalist never befriended Yancy or never infiltrated Yancy’s gang like a spy. What a joke. These witnesses include Mike Worley and Ricky McNutt, both former employees of KCHS. They too will know the truth, all of it, just like author Fielder did because I told him about it. But he did not yield to the truth.

Fourth sentence, same paragraph: “The reporter was fired by the Sentinel, but not before five-year-old Frances Baird’s grandfather (Neil R. Baird, died 1992) wrote a blistering editorial condemning the activities of Dennis Roy Yancy and his ilk.”

Another lie and that could have only come from the unknowing – I was there more than Neil’s widow, Myrna Baird Kohs, or than little Frances because I got stuck in the middle of a dispute between Neil Baird and my friend the photojournalist.

My friend the photojournalist was NOT fired – he quit. Why? Because Neil violated my friend’s trust. My friend the photojournalist divulged information about the task force and its activities to Baird in confidence. Nothing was supposed to be leaked or released about the occult related gang until after the multi-agency task force completed its investigation.

My friend made an agreement with police that nothing would get published until after police finished their probe. Seems reasonable enough – like every other investigation, give the police time and eventually you’ll get a good story and not disrupt or interfere with the probe.

At the time, I was caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, I agreed with my friend the photojournalist that confidence should be kept by the editor but Neil Baird chose to publish some information before the multi-agency task force completed their probe, thus disrupting its progress and virtually ending it.

On the other hand, at the time I didn’t clearly understand the agreement my friend had made with police to withhold possible public information. In other words, I thought he was keeping the public in the dark and uninformed at the time. I tried to persuade him that what Baird did, even though prematurely, may have been in the public’s interest.

But my friend was so angry with Baird that he quit, even after I begged and pleaded for him to stay on the Sentinel team. But now I understand my friend’s reasons for quitting and the need to keep confidentiality between reporters and editors and not disrupt a police investigation by leaking sensitive information in published reports.

Now that I think about, Neil stole all of the glory from my friend the photojournalist by writing his shallow editorial (which I won’t repeat here).

If Baird had waited, my friend the photojournalist would have developed a very comprehensive report (perhaps a prize winner) with numerous photographs to prove the occult activities that were going on in Sierra County at the time (and they still are, to some degree). And the people of Sierra County would have been better informed about the occult-related crimes and activities that were taking place around them.

But that would never happen because my friend QUIT and all the public got was Baird’s sputtering, meaningless words.

Make no mistake about it, Mr. Fielder, you knew that too because this was another fact I told you that you chose to ignore in your incredulous book. What a shame and a waste of good paper.

Because a whole paragraph is riddled with lies and deceit, I only wonder how much more of Fielder’s book misleads readers. The publishers should have called it a fictional piece and given David Ray and his cohorts different identities.

I have heard several other complaints from other readers of Fielder’s book and I also want to expose other lies – like the $12 million jet that the Full Gospel Tabernacle purportedly owns. Hell, they can’t even keep their bus running!

Or how a “murder” suspect killed Sheriff’s Deputy Kelly Clark when the suspect was involved in grand theft with no previous homicides haunting his criminal history.

Or how then-sheriff Terry Byers could be blamed for Deputy Clark’s death when her transport was of a prisoner who wasn’t considered dangerous and who probably was going to be released in three months anyway. Perhaps the blame should be put on the murderer and the lack of communication from jail staff for not telling the transporting officer about the prisoner’s violent tendencies, such as throwing food through his cell’s bars earlier that day or week. Clark’s death was not Byers’ fault, no sir, yet petty stupid people and even Fielder’s book still blame him to this day.

And I must question smutty crime author Fielder’s motives for glorifying the Sentinel and Frances Baird (but I’m sure she deserves maybe some pittance of recognition for being a young cub reporter on the beat) when it was the Desert Journal that won nearly all of the press awards for its David Ray coverage. Where are the Sentinel’s honors? There are none! What a sham! I’m sure Fielder got what he paid for – a bunch of trash.

I would recommend to readers John Glatt’s Cries in the Desert although I know it also contains some inaccuracies. Yet Glatt’s book seems to exclude the flat-out lies, disregard for the truth and to hell with the readers’ right to know the truth that are ever so prevalent in Fielder’s Slow Death.

I hope Slow Death takes a fast death and doesn’t reprint any second or additional editions unless the publishers care to iron out the truth and stick it in too.

<<<   >>>

CLICK HERE FOR MORE LINKS TO RELATED STORIES

OBITUARIES

Tython Kelby Bonnett, 19, a Truth or Consequences native and resident until a few months ago, died Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2003, in Tacoma, WA.

He was born Aug. 3, 1983, at Sierra Vista Hospital in Truth or Consequences, NM, to William and Twyla Bonnett. He was raised in T or C and graduated from Geronimo Trails High School in 2001. He was a member of the Full Gospel Tabernacle and the Power House Youth Group. He served in the Air Force for a short time after graduation. Ty's hobbies included snowboarding, skateboarding, water sports, playing the guitar and spending time with his friends. He was living in the Seattle area at the time of his death, and was a victim of homicide.

He was preceded in death by his father, William Bonnett, in 1989. Survivors include his mother, Twyla Bonnett of T or C; his sister, Keasha Bonnett of T or C; his girlfriend, Dolly Sein of Seattle, WA; maternal grandparents, Phil & Bobbie Woolford of T or C; maternal great-grandmother, Ona Sagely of T or C; paternal grandmother, Chris Bonnett of Seattle, WA; aunts and uncles, Aimee & Barry Brown of Rapid City, SD, Melissa & Russell Woolf of T or C, Robert Bonnett and Vicki Bonnett, both of Seattle, WA; great-aunts and great-uncles, Beverly & Dave Reif of Trinidad, CO, and Carol & Rex Kipp of Deming; and numerous cousins.

Services will be held at 2 p.m. today (Friday, Feb. 14) at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in T or C with Rev. Mike Skidmore officiating. Serving as Casket Bearers are Cody Masingale, Russell Woolf, Phil Woolford, Rodger Humphrey, Josh Ebberts and Jared Jankowski. Private interment will be held at a later date. Arrangements are by French Mortuary of T or C Inc.; 505-894-2574.

Harry George Steinhauser, 65, a resident of Alamogordo more than 30 years, died Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003, at the New Mexico State Veterans Home in Truth or Consequences. He was born Dec. 29, 1937, in Bradford, PA, to Frank Joseph and Kathryn Edith (Moore) Steinhauser. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a master sergeant. He had been the Colony Manager at the Animal Research Veterinarian Science Department. He was a member of the Lions Club, Eagle Club, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Masonic Lodge in Alamogordo and the First Baptist Church in Tularosa. He enjoyed gardening, landscaping and his dog.

Survivors include his two sons, James Steinhauser of El Paso, TX, and David Steinhauser of San Diego, CA; seven grandchildren; and one niece. He was preceded in death by his parents; his son, Perry; and his sister, Roberta.

Visitation will be from 1 to 5 p.m. today (Friday, Feb. 14) at Sierra Funeral Home in T or C. A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, at the First Baptist Church in Tularosa. Arrangements are by Sierra Funeral Home; 505-894-4428.

John A. Almaraz, 73, a resident of Winston, NM, the last two years, died Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003, at his home. He was born Jan. 27, 1930, in California. He was a retired construction worker and a U.S. Army veteran who moved to New Mexico from Gardena, CA, where he was a member of the American Legion.

He is survived by his sisters, Margaret Ingles of Gardena, CA, Rita Gutierrez of Hesperia, CA, and Blasa Chavez of Cerritos, CA, along with many newphews and nieces.

At his request, no local services are planned. Arrangements are by French Mortuary of T or C Inc.; 505-894-2574.