Despite the Evidence, Contra Costa County’s Sheriff-Coroner Called Her Death a Suicide

A man who once ran for mayor of Antioch will stand trial for the murder of his wife more than a decade after he told police she killed herself.

At a preliminary hearing Oct. 16, Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge H. Glenn Kim found there was probable cause to show that Michael Leon, 68, shot and killed Brenda Leon, 52, in 2015.

Key evidence presented in court was found in electronics seized from the family home roughly two weeks after Brenda’s death. A suicide note found on Brenda’s computer was written on Michael’s laptop, then transferred to Brenda’s computer on the morning of her death, according to a forensic analysis by the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office. 

Michael, who is in jail awaiting trial, has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Deputy Public Defender Matt Cuthbertson, said his client was “disappointed” in the judge’s decision and looks forward to a jury trial where he will be “afforded proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

In the courtroom, Brenda and Michael Leon’s daughters appeared frail and shaken; both declined to comment. Matt Guichard, an attorney who is representing the daughters in a civil suit against Michael Leon, told KQED, “ You’re sitting in a courtroom discussing the death of your mother, and seeing your father, the accused, in the same courtroom. It’s hard to wrap your head around.”

That Michael Leon will stand trial for murder more than a decade after his wife died underscores an ongoing debate in California about the reliability of death investigations in counties such as Contra Costa, where the sheriff is also the coroner. Critics say the sheriff-coroner arrangement is prone to conflicts of interest and can — intentionally or otherwise — undercut the medical expertise that’s standard in other death-investigation systems. 

In these counties, the sheriff-coroner must consult with a forensic pathologist on the medical cause of death — such as a gunshot wound or heart attack — in sudden, violent or unnatural cases. But the sheriff-coroner, who typically has no medical training, has the last word on the manner of death, whether natural, accidental, suicide, homicide or undetermined. In Brenda Leon’s case, the sheriff-coroner determined that the manner of her death was suicide.

An analysis by the California Newsroom found that 48 of the state’s 58 counties use a sheriff-coroner system. More than 19 million people — nearly half of California’s population — live under a combined sheriff-coroner office, according to the 2024 American Community Survey and other publicly available data.

That leaves just six counties — Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Joaquin and Ventura — where a licensed physician and surgeon with board certification in pathology, known as a medical examiner, investigates the cause and manner of deaths. (The remaining four counties appoint or vote for their coroners, who don’t have to be medical professionals.)

California, along with Montana and Nevada, are the only three states where county officials can choose a sheriff-coroner system, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet, A 2024 federal survey of death investigation systems across the United States found that standalone medical examiners or coroners conduct the most efficient and high-quality investigations, in part because they can “make operating decisions without having to balance competing priorities or influences.” 

Critics say there’s an inherent conflict of interest in having sheriffs determine the manner of deaths in the jails they run or when a civilian dies as a result of an officer’s actions.

In 2017, two forensic pathologists accused then-San Joaquin County Sheriff-Coroner Steve Moore of overriding their opinions in death investigations to shield himself and other law enforcement officers from prosecution. County supervisors later voted to replace the sheriff-coroner’s office with an independent medical examiner’s office.

Related Article

After Riverside County jail deaths reached a two-decade high in 2022, California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened an investigation, which is ongoing. In the meantime, state legislators passed a law this year to take coroner duties away from the Riverside County Sheriff’s department and install an independent medical examiner by next July. 

Another new law, prompted by a string of deputy-involved deaths in Santa Barbara County jails, takes effect Jan. 1, 2027. It requires counties with sheriff-coroners to ask another county with a medical examiner or standalone coroner, or an independent forensic pathologist, to determine both cause and manner of in-custody deaths. 

Riverside County Sheriff-Coroner Chad Bianco, who is also president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, told KQED that both bills, “[weren’t] about just getting it away from the jurisdiction of the place where the death occurred.” The bills were driven, he said, by liberal politicians “making sheriffs appear to be corrupt in the eyes of the public.”

Critics say there’s also the issue of who is qualified to manage forensic procedures such as autopsies and tissue analyses. While sheriff-coroners work with licensed physicians who draw conclusions based on science, skeptics are troubled that a sheriff-coroner has the final say. 

“Having someone with no medical expertise running the show,” said Justin Feldman, a social epidemiologist with the Center for Policing Equity at Yale, “How are they even going to judge whether or not their procedures are up to standard?”

Bianco bristled at the idea and suggested he’d defer to medical professionals. “If I didn’t have 100% confidence in my chief pathologist,” he said, “they wouldn’t be the chief pathologist.”

The murder case against Michael Leon would not have wound up in court last week if not for the perseverance of Brenda’s family. Her parents and two daughters never believed she had killed herself and fought for more than a decade to prove it. 

The Antioch Police Department denied KQED’s request for records or interviews, but a KQED analysis of the Contra Costa County sheriff-coroner’s report, death certificates and court documents shows that evidence pointed to a homicide from the start. 

Deputy-Coroner Waimun Wong, with the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office, led the agency’s investigation of Brenda’s death. Michael Leon told Antioch police that he found his wife lying in bed deceased, still holding the gun, according to Wong’s report. It also indicated that Brenda’s laptop was at the foot of the bed, which police said contained a suicide note.

According to court documents, Wong later told a police detective that he’d found no gunshot residue on Brenda’s hands, which he considered odd; typically, when a person shoots themself, there would be some residue.

Leon’s two adult daughters told the detective they suspected their father was responsible, according to court filings. They described his mood swings and explosive temper, and said they believed he was capable of murder. 

Most significantly, the detective discovered that the suicide note on Brenda’s laptop had been transferred there from a USB drive that was not found inside the house.

Wong kept Brenda’s manner of death “unassigned” pending a forensic analysis of other electronics seized in the home, the coroner’s report said. But he closed the case while the analysis was underway and called it a suicide.

The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office declined KQED’s request for comment, as did Wong, who retired in 2025.

But a KQED review of Wong’s report shows that his determination contradicted two significant forensic findings.

Dr. Arnold Josselson, the consulting forensic pathologist for the Contra Costa County sheriff-coroner, confirmed that Brenda Leon died of a gunshot wound to the head. But in his report, he also noted a key detail: While most self-inflicted gunshots leave soot and tiny abrasions or burns, known as stippling, around the wound, Josselson wrote that there was “no soot or stippling.” 

That discovery, coupled with the lack of gunshot residue on Brenda’s hand, stood out to Matt Guichard, an attorney who Brenda’s daughters had contacted on the advice of a friend. Guichard had spent seven years as a deputy district attorney for Contra Costa County in charge of the homicide unit. 

“It didn’t add up,” Guichard told KQED. “If you put a gun to your head, you will have a circle where the barrel imprints itself.”

He subpoenaed police records, including the electronic evidence that investigators had gathered shortly after Brenda’s death, and shared his findings with the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office. The DA revived the case, and Michael Leon was arrested Jan. 22, nearly 11 years after Brenda’s death.

The next court date is set for Nov. 2.

The judge’s decision to move the case to trial was encouraging to Gael Strack, a former San Diego County prosecutor who founded Alliance for HOPE International, a nonprofit that advocates for domestic violence victims and their families. In 2022, Strack helped pass a state law that requires law enforcement agencies to investigate further when a victim of domestic violence dies by an apparent suicide or accident. She and her colleagues identified roughly a dozen deaths in California that they believe were misclassified as suicides or accidents. 

Strack said getting sheriff-coroners to reconsider closed cases has been especially challenging. “The laws do not protect family members as much as they protect sheriff-coroners,” she said. “They have total discretion on whether to investigate further or to change a death certificate.”

Guichard echoed Strack’s concerns. “If not for reading the coroner’s report and seeing the electronics, this never would have been uncovered,” he said. “There are lots of questionable deaths that don’t get the thorough investigations they deserve.” 

Data Journalist Emily Zentner of The California Newsroom contributed data analysis to this reporting.

This story was published with support from The California Newsroom, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state with NPR as its national partner.