Suicide or Murder?

Is This a Thirty-Year Timeline of Love and Loss or Bitterness and Betrayal?

Days before she died, Brenda Leon emailed a friend to confirm she was coming to a reunion.

fifty-two-year-old Brenda Joyce Leon and Michael Anthony Leon

This detail does not appear in any of the news coverage of Brenda’s case. It is buried in the condolence entries on her Legacy.com obituary page, posted in October 2015 by a woman named Judy Mimiaga Fain: “We were just planning a most precious blood reunion, and she had just emailed me that she was coming.”

Brenda Joyce Leon was found dead from a gunshot wound in her home on Bedrock Court in Antioch, California, on September 28, 2015. She was fifty-two years old. A suicide note was on her laptop. A firearm was at the scene. Antioch Police investigated and closed the case as a suicide.

But a woman who is planning to end her life does not typically email a friend to confirm she will be attending a reunion. She does not call her daughter the night before to confirm plans to visit grandchildren the next morning. She does not apply for new jobs. She does not plan a trip to Oregon four days out. According to court records, Brenda was planning to move out of the Bay Area to be closer to her grandchildren. She was applying for new jobs. She had recently confirmed a visit with her grandchildren just hours before she died.

On January 22, 2026, more than ten years after her death, her husband, Michael Anthony Leon, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. A one-time Antioch mayoral candidate, Leon, is accused of killing his wife and staging the scene to look like a suicide. He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces fifty years to life.

This case has already drawn significant attention for its dramatic elements: a cold case reopened, a politician accused of murder, and digital forensics cracking a decade-old mystery. But as a forensic psychologist who has spent years studying staged suicides, what strikes me about the Leon case is not the drama. It is how clearly the evidence, if the prosecution’s allegations prove true, maps onto two research-based timelines that were specifically developed to understand what happens within coercively controlling relationships.

One describes the path toward victim suicide. The other represents the path toward intimate partner homicide. These timelines point to fundamentally different triggers, different trajectories, and different stories about what was happening inside this marriage in the months before Brenda died.

Two Triggers, Two Trajectories

In 2020, criminologist Jane Monckton Smith published research that fundamentally changed how we understand intimate partner homicide. By analyzing 372 domestic homicide cases, she identified an eight-stage timeline that preceded the killing in nearly every one. The stages are sequential, predictable, and identifiable before the final act. In 2022, Monckton Smith and colleagues developed a parallel eight-stage timeline describing the path toward victim suicide within coercively controlling relationships.

Both timelines are rooted in the same early stages. Stage 1 (Pre-relationship history in the homicide timeline, History in the suicide timeline) concerns the backgrounds each person brings to the relationship: the perpetrator’s history of controlling behavior or domestic violence, and, in the suicide timeline, the victim’s history of vulnerability. Stage 2 (Early relationship in both) describes a romance that moves quickly into serious commitment. Stage 3 (Living with control in the homicide timeline, Relationship in the suicide timeline) is the sustained period of coercive control that defines the relationship.

The first three stages are identical across both timelines. It is only at Stage 4 that the paths begin to diverge, and the divergence reveals which story is actually unfolding: is this a victim on the path toward suicide, or a perpetrator on the path toward homicide?

Critically, both timelines are dynamic, not linear. Victims can cycle between Stages 3 and 6 repeatedly, sometimes for years, before progressing to Stage 7 and Stage 8. Most never reach Stage 7 or Stage 8 at all. The same is true for perpetrators on the homicide timeline. Stages do not march forward in a single inevitable progression. They cycle, stall, and sometimes reverse. What matters for investigators is not whether someone has reached a particular stage, but which trajectory the evidence describes.

The Suicide Timeline: A Victim’s Trajectory

The suicide timeline is victim-focused. It was developed to characterize victims who die by suicide in the context of a coercively controlling relationship, and to make visible a pattern that had been largely invisible to investigators and coroners.

After the shared early stages, Stage 4 is Disclosure. The victim tells someone what is happening. She confides in a family member or friend, calls the police, or goes to a doctor and describes the abuse. This is an act of reaching out, a signal that the victim has recognized the abuse for what it is and is looking for a way through it.

Stage 5 is Help-seeking. The victim goes further and reaches out to formal systems for help: police, courts, shelters, attorneys, and medical professionals. What happens at this stage is decisive. When the system responds effectively, the trajectory can be interrupted.

But Monckton Smith’s research found that the system is often unhelpful. Police come and leave. Protection orders go unenforced. Shelters have no beds. Attorneys say she cannot afford a divorce. Each failed attempt to get help deepens the victim’s sense that escape is impossible.

Stage 6 is Suicidal ideation. The victim begins to think about ending her own life. This stage may also be present in the perpetrator. The ideation may be fleeting or sustained, private or disclosed.

Stage 7 is Entrapment. This is the critical stage that distinguishes a domestic abuse-related suicide from other presentations. In Monckton Smith’s research, “in most cases the victim considered, and had said, they were trapped in a situation from which they felt there was no escape.” The trigger that moves a victim from cycling between Stages 4 through 6 into Stage 7 is the crystallization of hopelessness: the sense that things will never change, that every exit has been tried and failed, the abuse will go on forever, and there is no way out. It is not the abuse itself that precipitates the suicide. It is the conviction that the abuse cannot be escaped.

Stage 8 is Suicide.

A victim may cycle between disclosure, help seeking, and suicidal ideation many times over months or years before arriving at entrapment, and many victims never arrive there at all. But the pattern, when it does progress, is recognizable: the victim discloses, seeks help, finds no effective help, develops suicidal thoughts, and eventually concludes that she is permanently trapped. She then ends her life.

The Homicide Timeline: A Perpetrator’s Trajectory

The homicide timeline is perpetrator-focused. It was developed to characterize perpetrators who commit intimate partner homicide in the context of coercively controlling or abusive relationships (Monckton Smith, 2020).

After the shared early stages, Stage 4 is the Trigger. This can be a real or perceived separation: the victim announces she is leaving, files for divorce, or begins making concrete plans for independence. The perpetrator is convinced the wife is having an affair, or believes he will lose her if she discovers his dire financial straits. For a controlling individual, this is not just an emotional blow. It is the collapse of the architecture of control.

Stage 5 is Escalation. The perpetrator’s behavior intensifies. Feelings of revenge, injustice, or humiliation are associated with increased controlling and threatening behavior. Surveillance may increase. Threats may become more explicit.

Stage 6 is the Change in thinking. This is the stage where the perpetrator’s cognitive framework shifts. In the earlier cycling between Stages 4 through 6, the thinking may be, “I will get this person back.” The critical shift that drives progression toward Stage 7 is the emergence of what can be understood as “last chance” thinking: “I am really going to lose this person.” The perpetrator moves from believing the relationship can be salvaged to believing it cannot, and from that belief, the resolution shifts from reconciliation to elimination. The thinking is no longer about winning the person back. It is about ensuring that, if the perpetrator cannot have this person, no one will.

Stage 7 is Planning. The perpetrator takes concrete steps: researching methods, acquiring weapons, creating opportunities to get the victim alone, or staging alibis.

Stage 8 is Homicide.

As with the suicide timeline, the perpetrator may cycle through Stages 4 through 6 multiple times, sometimes over years. Many perpetrators never progress to Stage 7. But when the cycling ends and “last chance” thinking takes hold, the trajectory accelerates.

What the Court Records Say

Recent court filings, reported by the Bay Area News Group, have filled in critical details that were not public at the time of Michael Leon’s arrest. What follows is drawn from those filings and represents the prosecution’s account of events. Leon has been charged but not convicted, and the allegations have not yet been tested at trial.

According to court records, Brenda Leon had recently told her husband she wanted to end their thirty-three-year marriage. Family members told authorities that Michael refused to accept a divorce and had been “extremely controlling” of Brenda over the years and was prone to anger.

In contrast, family members described Brenda as optimistic about the future. According to court records, she was planning to move out of the Bay Area to be closer to her grandchildren. She was applying for new jobs. She had plans to leave for a trip to Oregon with friends just four days after her death. The night before she died, she called one of her daughters to confirm plans to visit grandchildren on the very morning of her death.

Court records also detail what prosecutors allege Michael was doing on the day Brenda died. He left their Antioch home for work around 5:45 a.m. and left work a little before noon. During his time at the Rolling Hills Cemetery and Funeral Home in Richmond, his workplace, he allegedly used his work laptop to draft several versions of a suicide note from Brenda’s perspective. The note confessed to infidelity, expressed unhappiness, took blame for the marriage, and barely mentioned their children.

On the same laptop, prosecutors allege he conducted Google searches about how investigators differentiate suicide from homicide, how blood spatter crime scene analysis works, and how people can use cellphone records to make it seem like they are in a different location.

Prosecutors say he then transferred the final version of the note onto Brenda’s laptop using a thumb drive and manipulated the metadata to make it appear the note was created approximately forty-five minutes after he had left for work that morning. No thumb drive was recovered at the scene.

After leaving work, according to court records, he visited a pastor to discuss his troubled marriage, met with friends, returned briefly to the Bedrock Court home (ostensibly to grab his wallet), and then came back around 5 p.m. and called 911.

Family members told police they expected Michael to receive up to $250,000 from Brenda’s 401(k) plan, money he would not have obtained if her plans to divorce had been finalized.

Against the Suicide Timeline

If Brenda Leon died by suicide in the context of a coercively controlling relationship, we would expect to see evidence of the later stages of the suicide timeline: disclosure, help seeking, suicidal ideation, and entrapment. These are the stages that Monckton Smith’s research identifies as the behavioral signature of domestic abuse-related suicide.

There is no evidence that Brenda was on this trajectory.

There is no indication in the public record that Brenda disclosed abuse to anyone. There is no record of her seeking help from police, courts, attorneys, shelters, or medical professionals. There is no evidence of suicidal ideation communicated to any family member, friend, or coworker. There is no evidence of the failed rescue, the unanswered call, the disbelieved disclosure, the system that did not respond, that Monckton Smith’s research identifies as the pathway from help seeking to entrapment.

The suicide note on her laptop expressed despair. But prosecutors now allege that her husband wrote the note at his workplace.

What the record does show is a woman engaged in the fullness of life, the opposite of withdrawal. In the days before her death, Brenda confirmed plans for a reunion. She was planning a trip to Oregon. She was applying for new jobs. According to court records, she was planning to move to be closer to her grandchildren. Her coworkers described a woman who talked constantly about her grandchildren and was engaged and optimistic.

In the final hours: the night before she died, she called her daughter to confirm plans to visit grandchildren the very next morning.

In suicide risk assessment, future orientation is one of the strongest protective factors we evaluate. It is not dispositive on its own. People can conceal suicidal intent, and ambivalence is real. But Brenda’s future orientation was not a single data point. It was a consistent pattern across multiple relationships (friends, family, coworkers), multiple domains (travel, employment, housing, grandchildren), and multiple time horizons (that morning, four days out, and beyond).

The behavioral profile is overwhelmingly inconsistent with the suicide timeline. Neither disclosure, nor help seeking, nor suicidal ideation, nor entrapment appears anywhere in the available evidence. The stages that distinguish a genuine domestic abuse-related suicide from other outcomes are absent.

Applying the Homicide Timeline

The homicide timeline tells a different story. If the prosecution’s allegations are accurate, the evidence maps onto Monckton Smith’s eight homicide stages with uncomfortable precision.

Stage 1: Pre-relationship history. Family members described Michael Leon to investigators as “extremely controlling” and prone to anger. While we do not have detailed evidence of Michael’s behavior before this relationship, descriptions from family members span the length of the thirty-three-year marriage and suggest that controlling behavior was present from the beginning.

Stage 2: Early relationship. We know little about this stage, except that the marriage began when both were young and endured for more than three decades. What family members describe as a pattern of control that persisted across the entire marriage is consistent with coercive dynamics that became established early.

Stage 3: Living with control. In Monckton Smith’s framework, coercive control can operate for decades without becoming visible to anyone outside the household (Monckton Smith, 2021). The victim maintains a functional public persona. The couple appears normal. Brenda’s coworkers described running into her and Michael around town as “always a pleasant surprise.” The invisibility of the control is not evidence against it. It is evidence that the control was effective.

Stage 4: Trigger. This is the stage where the two timelines diverge most sharply. According to court records, Brenda told Michael she wanted a divorce. He refused to accept it. She was not merely talking about leaving. She was actively doing it: applying for jobs, planning to relocate, building a life that did not include him. For a man described as extremely controlling, a wife who is not just threatening to leave but actually leaving represents the ultimate loss of control. Monckton Smith’s research identifies pending separation as the single most dangerous moment in a coercively controlled relationship.

The suicide timeline’s Stage 4, disclosure, is absent from the available evidence about Brenda’s behavior. The homicide timeline’s Stage 4, the trigger of pending separation, is documented in court records.

Stage 5: Escalation. While the public record does not detail escalating threats in the period before Brenda’s death, the family’s description of Michael as prone to anger in the context of a wife who was actively leaving is consistent with the heightened tension this stage describes.

Stage 6: Change in thinking. The Google searches prosecutors attribute to Michael are, at this stage, made visible. How do investigators differentiate suicide from homicide? How does blood spatter analysis work? How can cellphone records be used to fake a location? If these allegations are proven, they represent the digital footprint of a mind that has moved past “I will get her back” and into the “last chance” thinking that Monckton Smith describes: “I am really going to lose her.” The resolution is no longer reconciliation. It is elimination. The financial motive, $250,000 from Brenda’s 401(k) that would be lost in a divorce, provides additional acceleration.

Stage 7: Planning. Prosecutors allege the suicide note was written at a cemetery. Not metaphorically. They say Michael sat down at the Rolling Hills Cemetery and Funeral Home, his workplace, and drafted multiple versions of a suicide note from his wife’s perspective on his work laptop. The note confessed to infidelity, blamed Brenda for the marriage, and barely mentioned the children. Content that, when later analyzed, struck Detective Kristopher Dee as inconsistent with Brenda’s character and writing style. According to prosecutors, the final version was transferred to Brenda’s laptop via a thumb drive, and the metadata was manipulated. No thumb drive was recovered at the scene. His movements on the day of the killing (leaving work early, visiting a pastor, meeting friends, returning home briefly for his “wallet”) allegedly created a series of potential alibi witnesses. If true, this is a plan with drafts.

Stage 8: Homicide. Brenda was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head, with a suicide note on her laptop and a firearm at the scene. In my work documenting over a hundred cases where murders were staged as suicides, this combination (firearm, fabricated note, no signs of forced entry or struggle) is among the most common presentations. It exploits a cognitive bias that every first responder brings to a death call: the base-rate assumption. Suicide is common. Staged homicide is rare when a scene looks like a suicide; the path of least resistance is to close the case.

The Detective Who Saw It

Antioch Police Detective Kristopher Dee was not fooled.

In the weeks following Brenda’s death, Dee heard from one family member after another who cast doubt on Michael Leon’s account. According to court records, many of Michael’s friends and even his own children were deeply skeptical. In October 2015, just one month after the death, Dee served a search warrant on the Bedrock Court home, seizing electronic devices, ammunition, and sections of drywall covered in blood.

Dee identified the staging mechanism. He found evidence that the suicide note had been inserted onto Brenda’s computer using a thumb drive, but no thumb drive was recovered at the home. He concluded that someone had placed the note on her computer and then left the residence before Michael’s 911 call.

He analyzed the note and found it suspicious. He pored through hundreds of text messages between Brenda and Michael. He determined that the writing style of the note, and of a text sent from Brenda’s phone that day apologizing to Michael, was much more consistent with Michael’s writing than Brenda’s. Family members agreed.

Dee saw the staging. He identified the method, the stylistic inconsistency, and the unanimous skepticism of everyone who knew the couple. And yet Brenda’s death was still ruled a suicide.

The reason, according to prosecutors, was that the forensic technology needed to prove the note’s digital origin (to demonstrate definitively that it was drafted on a different device at a different location) was not available in 2015. That technology became available through a 2024 search warrant, which reportedly recovered multiple drafts and Google search history from Michael’s work laptop.

Detective Dee had the behavioral evidence. He lacked the digital proof.

The Gap Between Seeing and Proving

Dee represents the best-case investigative scenario: an officer who recognized the behavioral red flags, pursued the evidence, identified the staging mechanism, and documented his findings. He did exactly what we train investigators to do.

It was not enough.

The behavioral evidence could not overcome the physical presentation of the scene. The scene said suicide. The behavior said something else. And in the absence of definitive forensic proof, the scene won.

This is the central challenge of staged suicide investigations. The staging is engineered to be the loudest story the scene tells. Everything the perpetrator does (the positioned firearm, the fabricated note, the cleaned-up evidence) is calculated to make the suicide narrative the path of least resistance. When behavioral evidence contradicts that narrative, many departments resolve the tension by deferring to the physical evidence.

Monckton Smith’s dual timelines offer a structured way to address that tension. When an intimate partner death is ruled a suicide but the victim’s behavior is inconsistent with the suicide timeline, when there is no evidence of disclosure, help seeking, suicidal ideation, or entrapment, while the homicide trigger of pending separation is documented, the framework gives investigators a research based argument, grounded in hundreds of analyzed cases, for keeping the case open.

In this case, the suicide trajectory is absent. The stages that characterize domestic abuse-related suicide (disclosure, help seeking, suicidal ideation, entrapment) do not appear in Brenda’s behavior. The homicide trajectory (trigger through pending separation, escalation, change in thinking, planning) is, if the prosecution’s account proves accurate, present at every stage. Every indicator points in one direction.

The framework would not have provided the digital proof. That required technology that did not yet exist. But it would have given Dee’s department a documented, evidence-based justification for refusing to close the case, and it would have told investigators exactly what questions to keep asking during the ten years between the death and the arrest.

The Indomitable Daughters

While the investigation stalled, Brenda’s daughters continued it.

Michelle Wonders and Monica Tagas suspected their father almost immediately. Between 2015 and 2026, they worked entirely through legal channels. In 2017, they retained attorney Matthew Guichard, a former Contra Costa County prosecutor. In 2021, they filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a “John Doe” defendant and used the civil suit to subpoena investigative records from both the police department and the DA’s Office. The day after their father’s arrest, they amended the complaint to name him.

At the courthouse, Monica Tagas spoke publicly: “We are not going to stop until we see this person that I’m ashamed to call my father behind bars.”

The daughters’ immediate certainty is itself a data point. They grew up inside the marriage. They observed the dynamics from a vantage point no investigator could access. Whatever they witnessed, whatever patterns of control, anger, and coercion they lived with, made the suicide narrative unbelievable from the moment they heard it.

Monckton Smith’s framework explains why. The behavioral patterns of coercive control are recognizable to those who live inside them, even when they are invisible to everyone else. The daughters did not need a framework to tell them what they already knew. But the framework gives their knowledge a name, a structure, and the weight of empirical research.

What This Case Should Change

Michael Leon’s preliminary hearing has not yet been scheduled as of this writing. He has been charged with first-degree murder with a firearms enhancement. He has not been convicted. The civil wrongful death lawsuit remains active, with a case management conference scheduled for April. The case will likely take years to resolve, and the allegations described in this article will be tested through the adversarial process.

But for investigators, the lesson does not depend on the verdict. The framework is always available.

Every new patrol officer learns on day one: every unexpected death should be treated as a homicide until proven otherwise. This is not a new idea. It is foundational to a death investigation. What Monckton Smith’s framework provides is a structured way to apply that principle when death occurs in the context of an intimate relationship.

The investigation should begin with the relationship itself. Before asking about triggers or timelines, investigators need to establish the nature and extent of the coercive control. The questions at this stage are specific, including:

• What kind of abuse did the perpetrator engage in? Was it verbal? Psychological? Physical? Sexual?

• Did he isolate the victim from family and friends?

• Did he control the finances, the communication, the victim’s movements?

• Did he constantly put her down?

• Had he ever strangled her?

• Did he ever threaten her? Did he threaten to kill himself?

• Was he obsessively jealous?

• Did he ever stalk her?

• Who knew about the abuse, and what did they observe?

• What do the victim’s family and friends say about the relationship when asked directly?

These questions map onto the shared early stages of both timelines (Stages 1 through 3) and, more importantly, establish the perpetrator’s capacity for violence. Strangulation history alone is one of the strongest predictors of future lethality. A pattern of escalating control tells investigators what this person was capable of before anyone asks what happened on the day the victim died.

Only after the coercive control has been established should the investigation move to the homicide timeline’s later stages. Was there a trigger? Was the victim actively leaving, filing for divorce, making concrete plans for independence? Was the surviving partner losing control of the person he had controlled? Was there escalation, increased surveillance, threats, desperation? Was there evidence of a change in thinking, the shift from “I will get this person back” to the “last chance” realization that “I am really going to lose this person”? Was there planning, evidence of research, preparation, or staging? These are the questions that flow from Stages 4 through 7 of the homicide timeline.

Only after the homicide timeline has been thoroughly evaluated should the investigation turn to the suicide timeline. And at that point, the questions shift to the victim’s trajectory. Was there evidence of disclosure? Did the victim tell anyone about the abuse? Was there help-seeking? Did the victim reach out to formal systems (police, courts, shelters, attorneys, medical professionals) and, critically, did those systems fail to respond? Was there suicidal ideation? Was there entrapment, the crystallization of hopelessness that comes from concluding that every exit has been tried and every exit has failed? These are the stages (Stages 4 through 8) that characterize a genuine domestic abuse-related suicide.

The sequence matters. When investigators begin with the assumption of suicide and then look for evidence to confirm it, they are working backward. The scene is designed to convey to them precisely what the perpetrator wants them to believe. He is counting on it. Starting with the coercive control, then working through the homicide timeline, forces investigators to ask questions that the staging was engineered to prevent.

Family members described Michael as “extremely controlling” and prone to anger across a thirty-three-year marriage. That alone establishes a relationship characterized by coercive control (Stage 3) and a perpetrator with the capacity for violence. The homicide timeline would then have flagged at nearly every subsequent stage. According to court records, the trigger was documented (Brenda was actively leaving). The change in thinking, if prosecutors’ allegations are proven, left a digital trail (Google searches on evading detection, multiple drafts of a fabricated suicide note). The planning was extensive (metadata manipulation, alibi construction, evidence removal). Only after working through all of that would investigators have turned to the suicide timeline, where they would have found nothing: no disclosure, no help seeking, no suicidal ideation communicated to anyone, no entrapment. Instead, they would have found a woman confirming plans for a reunion, applying for jobs, and calling her daughter to arrange a visit for the next morning.

Detective Dee deserves credit for recognizing what he saw. The daughters deserve credit for a decade of disciplined pursuit through legal channels. The technology that ultimately linked the note to Michael’s work laptop deserves its place in the story.

In every ambiguous death where an intimate partner is present, investigators should begin where their training already tells them to start: with the possibility that this was a homicide. Monckton Smith’s timelines give that instinct structure, vocabulary, and the weight of hundreds of analyzed cases.

Start with the control. Establish the capacity for violence. Work through the homicide timeline. Only then, if the homicide trajectory does not fit, evaluate the suicide timeline. The framework does not replace forensic proof. But it tells you whether to keep looking for it.

Brenda Leon was emailing friends about a reunion. She was applying for new jobs. She was planning to visit her grandchildren the morning she died. The coercive control was there. The homicide timeline, evaluated next, would have raised every red flag. The suicide timeline, evaluated last, would have come up empty. That sequence should have kept this case open from the start.

Monckton Smith’s timelines give us the right questions in the right order. If the charges are proved, this case is a testament to the fact that, armed with the right framework, the truth can always surface.

References

Bates, L., Hoeger, K., Nguyen Phan, T., Perry, P., & Whitaker, A. (2022). Domestic homicides and suspected victim suicides 2021–2022 (Year 2 report). Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme, National Police Chiefs’ Council/College of Policing/Home Office. https://www.vkpp.org.uk/vkpp-work/domestic-homicide-project/

Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office. (2026, January 23). Michael Anthony Leon charged with the 2015 murder of wife, Brenda Joyce Leon [Press release]. As reported in Asregadoo, T. (2026, January 23). With new digital evidence and details, the DA arrests and charges an Antioch man for murdering his wife in a 2015 cold case. Antioch Herald. https://antiochherald.com/2026/01/with-new-digital-evidence-and-details-da-arrests-charges-antioch-man-for-murdering-his-wife-in-2015-cold-case/

Gartrell, N. (2026, January 31). As his marriage crumbled, an Antioch man secretly drafted his wife’s suicide note with murder on his mind, police say. Mercury News/Bay Area News Group. https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/01/31/as-his-marriage-crumbled-an-antioch-man-secretly-drafted-his-wifes-suicide-note-with-murder-on-his-mind-police-say/

Leon, B. J. (2015, October 3). Obituary and guestbook entries. East Bay Times/Legacy.com. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/eastbaytimes/name/brenda-leon-obituary?id=16610761

Martichoux, A. (2026, January 27). Brenda Joyce Leon cold case: Former Antioch candidate for mayor charged with murder 10 years after wife’s death deemed a suicide. ABC7 News/KGO-TV San Francisco. https://abc7news.com/post/brenda-joyce-leon-cold-case-former-antioch-candidate-mayor-charged-murder-10-years-wifes-death-deemed-suicide/18480794/

Monckton Smith, J. (2020). Intimate partner femicide: Using Foucauldian analysis to track an eight-stage progression to homicide. Violence Against Women, 26(11), 1267–1285. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801219863876

Monckton Smith, J. (2021). In control: Dangerous relationships and how they end in murder. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Wong, W. (2026, January 27). Former Antioch mayoral candidate arrested in connection with wife’s 2015 murder. Yahoo News/East Bay Insider. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/former-antioch-mayoral-candidate-arrested-220954275.html

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