Man wrongly released from MDC recaptured
Matthew Joe was sought in connection with 2017 homicide
U.S. Marshals arrested a murder suspect in western New Mexico on Tuesday — months after he was mistakenly released from county jail by an employee’s typo.
Marshals spokesman Ben Segotta said they arrested 30-year-old Matthew Joe at his mother’s home in Thoreau.
Segotta said marshals had been looking for Joe a couple of weeks, but found him through a tip from a “confidential source.”
Police say Joe is a suspect in the July 2017 slaying of Jaime Dimas, 36, outside a popular restaurant in southeast Albuquerque.
In May, a District Court judge ordered Joe to serve a year in the Metropolitan Detention Center — on stolen vehicle and other charges — but a jail employee entered the wrong year as Joe’s booking date, leading the judge to believe he had already served his sentence.
The error resulted in Joe being mistakenly set
free and, by the time the mistake was discovered, Joe was long gone and three felony warrants were put out for his arrest.
Anna Dimas, Jaime’s mother, said she feels like she can breathe again.
“I feel like I was on a mission and my mission was completed,” she said.
Dimas said she was at home when Second Judicial District Attorney Raúl Torrez called to tell her Joe had been arrested.
“I couldn’t believe it happened this fast,” she said.
The day before, Dimas said she met with Torrez — and representatives of the U.S. Marshals — about Joe and the case against him.
“I felt like I had somebody by me, fighting with me,” she said. “I felt so alone before — I was in the dark.”
Dimas called the MDC employee’s typo a “blessing in disguise” because it brought attention to the case.
“If the outcome was different, I would’ve been pissed off,” she said. “Now we just have to finish and do it the right way, where no mistakes will happen again.”
Now that Joe is behind bars, Dimas said she hopes he gets the maximum sentence for taking her son away — but she also empathizes with Joe’s family.
“It’s so sad all around,” she said. “I feel when he was caught, I could breathe but — the same moment I caught mine — his mom lost hers. Nobody really wins.”