Two Peaks murder suspect takes plea deal
Man confessed to assisting second suspect in killing of woman early last year
TAOS — Albert Jean Hunsaker III, who confessed more than a year ago to his role in the slaying of Naomi Chaney in a small community west of Taos, has accepted a plea deal in the widely publicized case.
Hunsaker, 33, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, a seconddegree felony, and tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony, during a March 10 hearing before 8th District Court Judge Sarah Backus. A charge of first-degree murder initially brought against him was dismissed.
According to the plea agreement, Hunsaker will spend the next 60 days undergoing a diagnostic mental health evaluation before returning to court for sentencing.
David Thomas of the 8th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said Hunsaker could face more than 20 years in prison. Hunsaker initially pleaded not guilty to the charges and was scheduled to stand trial in January.
According to a statement of probable cause, Hunsaker confessed to assisting a second man accused in the case, Clayton Jones, in killing Chaney after a night of drinking by wrapping a winch wire around her neck and dragging her behind a vehicle in the rugged Two Peaks area of Carson early last year.
Chaney, a former beauty queen and Marine Corps veteran, was last seen on her 36th birthday, Jan. 30, 2016.
Her body has not been found, though Hunsaker led state police agents to the area where he believed they would find her remains.
Meanwhile, 40-year-old Jones, who also reportedly confessed to killing Chaney, pleaded guilty to the fatal shooting of another woman in Slab City, Calif., in April 2016, about three months after Chaney disappeared.
According to a February report in The Highlander newspaper in Chaney’s hometown of Marble, Texas, Jones was sentenced
in December to 37 years for killing 39-year-old Shalon Gheen, 39, a former resident of the Taos area who may have known Chaney, and assaulting two other people.
Sgt. Jorge Cabanillas of the Imperial County Sheriff ’s Office in California told The New Mexican last year that investigators booked Jones into the local jail on charges of murder and attempted murder in Gheen’s death.
When detectives interviewed him, the conversation somehow turned to Chaney, according to court documents.
Cabanillas declined to discuss exactly what Jones told investigators or how Chaney’s disappearance came up in the interview.
But on May 2, Imperial County detectives called New Mexico State Police, reporting that Jones claimed to have killed Chaney one night in late January with Hunsaker’s help.
Acting on the tip, agents drove to Hunsaker’s home in Carson Estates, an off-the-grid community on the mesa between Taos and Ojo Caliente.
Court documents say they detained Hunsaker and drove him to the station in Taos for an interview, where he recounted a night of drinking with Jones and Chaney that ended in the grisly murder.
Information from The New Mexican was used in this report.
A version of this story first appeared in The Taos News ,a sister paper of The Santa Fe New Mexican.