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A former Marine wanted for the murder of his girlfriend spent six years on the run in Latin America and was living in El Salvador under the alias ‘Jack Donovan’, it emerged on Tuesday.
Raymond ‘RJ’ McLeod, 36, was found on Monday teaching English in the 71,000-inhabitant city of Sonsonate, 20 miles inland from the Pacific coast.
Considered so dangerous he was set the highest-ever bounty by U.S. Marshals, he was tracked down after a woman saw a Univision Spanish-language special about his case, and recognized him as teaching in the town.
McLeod told people he was Canadian, and used the fake name, Univision reported. He was arrested on Monday in front of his class full of students at Direct English school in Sonsonate.
An administrator at another nearby school said it was common that the identities of staff were unverified.
‘The hire teachers and don’t ask for identification,’ the administrator told DailyMail.com.
‘They don’t even verify if they are licensed to teach. A lot of the teachers there have tattoos.’
Raymond ‘RJ’ McLeod is pictured on Monday in El Salvador, after he was arrested following six years on the run
Mitchell is pictured with her mother, Josephine Wentzel, a retired detective, who worked on the case
Univision reported that he was paid $1,000 a month.
The Marshals in April 2021 added him to their list of 15 ‘Most Wanted’, and offered a reward of $50,000 for information leading to his arrest – double the usual amount.
He was sought for the June 2016 murder of his new girlfriend Krystal Mitchell, 30, in an apartment they were staying in while visiting his friends in San Diego.
Mitchell’s mother, Josephine Funes Wentzel, a retired police detective, was instrumental in tracking down McLeod said the San Diego district attorney, Summer Stephan.
‘This defendant’s brazen attempt to evade justice is over and the work to hold him accountable in a court of law for the murder of Krystal Mitchell can now begin,’ said Stephan.
‘Huge credit goes to the victim’s mother who never gave up searching for her daughter’s killer and worked closely with our office and other law enforcement to make this arrest possible.’
Wentzel, who traveled across Latin America – at one point being threatened by a knife on the Guatemalan border, at another point being savagely attacked by a wild dog – said McLeod was spotted by a woman in El Salvador.
‘Obviously my daughter cannot be brought back, but I’m relieved that this man is no longer a threat to the women of Mexico and Central America,’ she told Univision.
She said she spent long stretches of time in Guatemala – he was seen in a video clip in Christmas 2016, dancing with a woman at a bar inside the Almost Famous hostel in the coastal town of Livingston – but said she did not particularly focus on El Salvador.
‘I did look in El Salvador, but I was never particularly focused on that country,’ she said.
‘A Hispanic friend told me: “He won’t go to El Salvador – they’ll kill him.”
‘But that’s where he was – in the same community of the person who told me that.’
Wentzel said that the local authorities were tipped off by a local woman.
‘There was an official complaint. A woman in El Salvador remembered having read an article on Univision’s site, and saw the man.
‘She rang to report him.’
Wentzel said she too shared the Univision article widely, in the hope of tracking him down.
‘I shared that article because it was in Spanish and explained everything.
‘I sent it out to multiple people on social media.
‘He was hiding in a small town in El Salvador, pretending to be Canadian. They could go right to his classroom and arrest him.’
McLeod was described as armed, dangerous, an ‘avid bodybuilder’ and ‘heavy drinker’
Krystal Mitchell, 30, from Phoenix, had only been dating McLeod for a few weeks when he killed her
She was found strangled, after they had visited a bar and McLeod got into an argument with another man, also an ex-Marine. All three were kicked out of the bar. McLeod and Mitchell returned to the rental apartment, and Mitchell was found dead the next day, with obvious signs of a struggle.
McLeod, who investigators said had a history of violence, went on the run – traveling through Mexico into Central America.
He was spotted in Guatemala in 2017, and in Belize the following year.
Marshals appealed for help, but warned he was considered ‘armed and dangerous’ – and described him as ‘an avid body builder and a heavy drinker’.
When he was added to the Top 15 list, in 2021, Marshal Steve Stafford of the Southern District of California said they would never give up.
McLeod is seen on Monday after he was arrested by Salvadoran police
Marshals said that McLeod was recognizable from his distinctive skull tattoos
The former Marine was living in Phoenix, Arizona at the time he went on the run
‘The passage of time will never deter the Marshals’ fugitive investigation for McLeod,’ he said.
‘If anything, it fuels our determination. We will leave no stone unturned until he is brought to justice.’
Mitchell’s mother, a former detective, Josephine Wentzel, came out of retirement to help track down her daughter’s alleged killer, and thanked Frankie Sanchez, the regional U.S. Marshals Task Force Chief, and his colleague Francisco Barajas for their ‘excellent work’.
‘I have had faith and trust in them, and ever since meeting Francisca Barajas, I had full confidence that this day would come, and he would be the one to catch him,’ she said.
‘I told him, ‘You are my hero. We are bonded for life.’