Dateline: Who is Levi Chavez and what do we know about his crimes? Disturbing details of the 2007 incident, revealed

NBC’s Dateline Season 22 Episode 1, titled The Officer’s Wife, followed the story of the death of 26-year-old Tera Chavez as her husband, Levi Chavez, became the prime suspect in the crime.

Levi Chavez is a former police officer from Albuquerque, New Mexico who discovered his wife’s body on October 22, 2007. Initially, Tera’s death was ruled out as suicide, but with conflicting pieces of evidence, Levi Chavez became the prime suspect in the case.

The official synopsis of the episode reads:

Police officer Levi Chavez and his wife Tera live in suburban Albuquerque, New Mexico. After mysterious incidents at their house, Levi comes home to find a horrific scene in their bedroom.

More on this in our story.

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Dateline: Who was Levi Chavez and what crimes was he suspected of committing? Details explored

Levi Chavez was a police officer in Albuquerque. He and his wife, Tera Chavez were high school sweethearts and had married young. They lived in Los Lunas with their two children.

On October 22, 2007, Chavez came back to his Los Lunas home in the morning and discovered the horrific scene in front of him. He found the body of Tera Chavez in their bedroom who died due to a gunshot wound in her mouth.

Apart from her lifeless body, a gun was placed beside her in the bed and a note on the nightstand, written “ I’m sorry, Levi.” was found.

Levi immediately called 911 and reported the incident. The police led by Detective Aaron Jones from Valencia County ruled the incident as a suicide.

However, further investigations revealed that the gun used by Tera was Levi’s service weapon, a semi-automatic 9mm Glock. Detective Jones also found out through Tera’s journals that she wanted to get rid of the unfaithful marriage and live an independent life.

Furthermore, Jones also found out that the gun was shot by a left-handed person while Tera was a right-handed person. With all this evidence coming to light, Tera’s death was later ruled as a homicide, making Chavez the prime suspect in the murder.

As per Dateline, Chavez was charged with the murder of his wife on April 7, 2011.

Chavez was reported to have many extramarital affairs, including with some of his fellow female officers. One of his partners revealed that Tera had found out about his fraudulent activities and was thinking of reporting it. The woman, Levi alleged he was with, the previous night the crime occurred, changed her earlier statement, and revealed that she couldn’t recall when Levi came to her place.

Almost six years after Tera’s death, in 2013, Levi Chavez stood on trial for the murder.

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Dateline: Levi Chavez was acquitted by the jury

As per Dateline, no physical evidence directly linking Levi to Tera was found. On the other hand, Tera’s claims about Levi’s fraudulent activities were also not allowed to be included in the murder trial.

As a result, the jury acquitted Levi Chavez and he was free to go. Chavez’s family were relieved after the case whereas Tera’s family still believed that Levi killed Tera.

Levi Chavez gave up his police officer certification and is now an Attorney.

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