Aside from the moment on April 14, 1998, when Joaquin Latee Leal III said he saw Terry Cheek’s lifeless body in the garage of his uncle’s Glen Avon home and exclaimed “What the (heck)?” to his cousin, he did not ask any questions.
Not when 20 minutes earlier, Leal testified Monday, Aug. 19, when that cousin Leal hadn’t seen for years, Googie Harris Jr., showed up out of the blue where Leal lived in Pomona and said “Roll with me to my pop’s.”
Not when Harris Jr. asked Leal to help load the body into the passenger’s seat of Horace Roberts Jr.’s pickup they used, prosecutors said, to frame Cheek’s lover for her slaying.
Not when Harris Jr. and Leal dumped Cheek’s body under the cover of darkness at Lee Lake near Corona.
Not when the two men drove back to Leal’s home.
And not when, about 10 months later, Leal moved into the home in Glen Avon — now part of Jurupa Valley — with his uncle, Googie Harris Sr., who prosecutors say masterminded the plot to kill his estranged wife because she was having an affair with Roberts and feared she’d divorce him and take his dream home.
Leal and Harris Sr., who prosecutors say both strangled Cheek, have pleaded not guilty to murder in the death penalty case.
“Why did you pick up what you thought was a dead body, no questions asked?” Riverside County Managing Deputy District Attorney Will Robinson demanded while cross-examining Leal in Superior Court in Riverside.
“I was asked,” Leal replied.
“Would you say picking up a dead body no questions asked is going a long way?” Robinson pressed.
“It’s family,” Leal said.
“No conversation like, ‘Hey cousin, what was that all about,’ “? Robinson said.
“Like I told you the first time: ‘What the (heck)?’ He didn’t answer me, so I left it alone,” Leal said.
Leal also withstood rat-a-tat-tat questioning from Harris Sr.’s co-counsel, Darryl Exum, without changing his account.
Leal was about 32 at the time, 13 years older than Harris Jr.
“You didn’t say ‘Son, what are we doing here?’ ” Exum asked.
“No,” Leal said.
Leal testified Monday under friendlier questioning from one of his attorneys, Peter J. Morreale, that he was “very” scared at the time he was moving the body and has “thought about it a lot” in the preceding 26 years.
There has been other testimony against Leal.
Nancy Doud was his girlfriend for about a year in 1998. Doud testified last week that on the night of the killing, Leal showed up at her home and said, “It’s done.”
A few days later, Leal and Doud were at the apartment of Leal’s sister, Bonnie Broadus, in Pomona.
Using Joaquin Leal’s nickname, Doud recalled what happened next
“We go in and ‘Quin goes into the room with (Broadus) and I heard her yell, and ‘Quin came back out and I just knew he had told her. She comes out of the room and starts praying, trying to rebuke the devil out of him, just praying and asking the Lord to forgive him for what he has done. She is putting her hands on him, praying.”
The attorneys for Leal, 58, say they believe Harris Jr., 45, and possibly Harris Sr., 67, committed the killing. Harris Sr.’s attorneys say his son and possibly Leal killed Cheek.
Harris Jr. was originally charged with murder, but he pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact before the trial started in July. Before he was charged, he spent time in a jail cell with two paid informants, one of whom told him “The first to talk, walks,” according to testimony.
Harris Jr. testified for the prosecution that his father planned the killing. Harris Jr. said that as his stepmother walked into the garage as she prepared to leave for work in San Juan Capistrano, Leal and Harris Sr. grabbed her from behind and strangled her.
Harris Jr. said his job was simply to dump the body with the help of Leal.
They parked Roberts’ pickup on the shoulder of the 15 Freeway, about a mile from where the body of the 32-year-old Cheek would be discovered by a fisherman five days later.
Circumstantial evidence and lies by former Temecula resident Roberts as he tried to cover up the affair with his Quest Diagnostics co-worker doomed him to serve almost 20 years in prison after he was convicted at the end of a third trial. Harris Sr. even attended some of Roberts’ parole hearings to persuade the board to keep Roberts locked up.
But advanced DNA technology eventually pointed authorities to the Harrises and Leal. A judge declared Roberts factually innocent and he was paid $11 million by the county to settle a wrongful incarceration lawsuit.
Harris Sr. is not expected to testify. Closing arguments and jury instructions were scheduled for Tuesday.
Related Articles
Man found dead in Big Bear Lake hotel room, homicide investigation launched
San Bernardino man killed, another injured after stabbing outside Bloomington market
Teen arrested on suspicion of making Instagram threats to Murrieta school
For Orange County Sheriff’s deputies who stopped shooter at Cook’s Corner, memories are vivid
Cook’s Corner mass shooting anniversary: Major changes for some, but some things remain same
