Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, say they have finally caught the man responsible for the shocking 2014 murder of a woman known for helping the city’s most vulnerable.
Danette Webb, 53, was a volunteer at Noonday Ministries who was beloved for her work helping the city’s unhoused population. She was found dead at her home in June 2014, her hands, feet, and mouth bound with duct tape and her body nude.
The case went cold for years, until a new lead led to the arrest on Friday of Webb’s accused killer: one of her fellow volunteers, according to police.
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Lance Beaton, 59, has been charged with an open count of murder in the case.
“Detectives had few leads over the years, but they developed a lead this year that led to a suspect who also worked with Webb at Noonday in the past,” Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, said in a press release.
Beaton was reportedly interviewed by a detective and an FBI agent this week, before a DNA sample obtained from him matched DNA found under Webb’s fingernails at the time of her death.
Police say Beaton may have been stalking Webb, and he is believed to have made a copy of her house key before using it to break in at a time he thought she’d be out of town. Investigators believe she was likely killed during a confrontation in the home when Beaton was surprised to find she was actually not out of town, according to court records. Webb’s friends had told investigators in the wake of her murder that she’d feared someone had been entering her home “and moving things around,” a criminal complaint notes.
Beaton had been accused by an ex-girlfriend previously of copying her house key and using it to break in when she was away, making off with underwear, condoms, and sex toys. During a search of Beaton’s home in connection with Webb’s murder, police said they did indeed find sex toys that had been stolen from his ex-girlfriend.
Suzan Hagler, Webb’s former partner, told the Albuquerque Journal she wasn’t familiar with Beaton and had never heard his name until police mentioned it to her this week.
“It was a huge relief in a way that there might be some form of justice. Although there is no real justice in my mind. He deserves to suffer every single day of his remaining life,” she told the outlet.
