State police make sixth arrest tied to Dixon-area slayings
State police have arrested another Northern New Mexican in the aftermath of a triple homicide in late May at a home near Dixon.
According to a news release state police issued Thursday, Rede Stanton, 39, of El Prado is being held on suspicion of burglary, larceny and tampering with evidence. Police say he broke into the residence where two men and a woman lay dead and ransacked the house.
Police discovered the slayings
May 30 after two men called to report they had found the three bodies in a home on N.M. 580 in the tiny community of Cañoncito, a few miles east
of Dixon.
The victims in the home later were identified as Kierin Guillemin, 27, of Vadito; April Browne, 42, of Taos; and Abraham Martinez, 36, of Dixon. State police say they recovered surveillance video from an in-house camera showing brothers Roger Gage and John Powell shooting the three victims in a bedroom in the early hours of May 29. The brothers were arrested earlier this month and are facing murder charges.
The news release says officers also uncovered video of Stanton breaking into the house before state police arrived at the scene May 30. According to an affidavit for his arrest, Stanton opened the bedroom window of he house and poked Martinez’s body to see if he was alive. Then he went to his car to put on gloves and retrieve a crowbar to break into the house, the affidavit alleges.
“Inside the residence, Stanton is seen on video burglarizing money and narcotics from the bedroom where the deceased bodies lay,” the news release says.
According to the affidavit, he told state police he took black tar heroin.
State police arrested Stanton on Wednesday at a gallery in Arroyo Seco, court documents say. He told police that he was scared to report the murders “because it appeared to him to be a professional hit.”
Stanton is the sixth person arrested in connection to this case.
In addition to the two murder suspects, state police also arrested Martinez’s father and brother — accusing them of stealing from the crime scene before reporting the deaths — and arrested Powell’s girlfriend on charges of tampering with evidence. Police have accused the woman of retrieving money and drugs that were stolen from the home.
State police don’t believe Stanton had a hand in the slayings, according to the news release.
He is being held in the Taos County jail.