Man put mother in cardboard box after beating her to death, APD says
Police had been called for mental health eval
On Sunday evening, police were called to a well-kept adobe home on Candelaria NW in front of Valley High School to take 37-year-old John Gabriel McArthur to a mental health hospital for an evaluation.
It wasn’t until the following day, while he was being interviewed by homicide detectives, that he told them they had interrupted him while he was getting rid of his mother’s body.
He told them he had choked and beaten her to death and then stuffed her body into a cardboard box.
Officers found that box when they were sent back to the house in the 1700 block of Candelaria NW on Monday to check on her.
The staff at Kaseman Hospital evaluating McArthur couldn’t reach his mother and
were worried about her. They told police the mother had told them she saw him putting something in her drink, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.
McArthur was arrested and is charged with murder and tampering with evidence.
His mother is not identified in the complaint, and Fred Duran, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, did not answer any questions about the case Tuesday. The complaint does not make it clear who called officials to request a mental health evaluation or why, if the mother had expressed concern over McArthur tampering with her drink, no one checked on her welfare when picking him up.
Her neighbor says the woman worked at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and a woman with the same name works in the social work department there.
Margie Kadlec said the woman had lived in the house for less than a year and her son had moved into a detached room next to the garage a couple of months ago. Kadlec said the woman was quiet and reserved but friendly, and McArthur never talked to her.
She said she occasionally saw him pacing in circles and talking to himself.
“If he sees you, he just kind of rushes off or walks away,” she said. “He never made any eye contact.”
Kadlec said she never heard of trouble at the house until police told her the woman’s cellphone had been found on the patio and she was missing.
“Last night, I saw car lights and assumed she was back, and I was happy,” she said. “But it was the police again. One went behind the garage and one was looking through the window with a flashlight so I think that’s when they found her body.”
As police and the Office of the Medical Investigator combed through the property, a detective interviewed McArthur at APD headquarters Downtown, according to the complaint.
“As (the detective) was reviewing Mr. McArthur’s Miranda Rights with him, Mr. McArthur excitedly uttered, ‘I killed her,’ ” the detective wrote in the complaint.
McArthur told detectives he had been living with his mother since February and that she was “having difficulty with his behavior.” The detective wrote that police records show McArthur’s mother had asked for assistance with treating him, but the Journal could not find reports of prior contacts with police. He does not have a criminal history in New Mexico, according to online court records.
McArthur told police that on Sunday he poured a powder called “Dragon’s Breath” in his mother’s drink and she drank it, according to the complaint. He said she didn’t get sick from it and later in the afternoon she asked him to leave and took his house keys.
That’s when he lost his temper and began to choke her and beat her until she died, according to the complaint. McArthur told police he put her body, and his clothes, in a cardboard box and was going to take them to an unknown location.
McArthur was in the middle of getting ready to load the box into his mother’s car when the officers arrived to take him in for a mental evaluation.
“Since Mr. McArthur had left his mother’s remains out of sight, the officers did not see anything suspicious, nor did Mr. McArthur disclose his actions to them,” the detective wrote in the complaint.
The officers took him to Kaseman. Police arrested him there Monday night.