The Deck - Alfonso McCoy Jr. & Debra Gomez (Queen of Clubs, Arizona)

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Our card this week is Alfonso McCoy Jr. & Debra Gomez, The Queen of Clubs from Arizona.It seems like more than just a coincidence that this couple is on that particular face of cards, because by all accounts, Debbie was Alfonso’s queen. They’d only been together a few years or so, but according to both families, Alfonso always took care of his people. When he did choose to settle down, he was loyal to that one person. He was Debbie’s protector. But in the darkness of winter more than twenty years ago… not even he could save them.If you know anything about the murders of Alfonso McCoy Junior and Debra “Debbie” Gomez in February 2001 in Phoenix, Arizona, you can anonymously contact Silent Witness at 480-948-6377 or toll-free at 1-800-343-TIPS. OR you can type what you know at silentwitness.org. If you’re comfortable reaching Detective Nunley directly, you can email him at [e-mail] call him directly at 602-256-3523. View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/alfonso-mccoy-jr-debra-gomez Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

Our card this week is Alfonso McCoy Jr. and Deborah Gomez, the queen of clubs from Arizona. And it seems like more than just a coincidence that this couple is on that particular face of cards. Because by all accounts, Debbie was Alfonso's queen. They'd only been together a few years or so, but according to both families, Alfonso always took care of his people. When he did choose to settle down, he was loyal to that one person. He was Debbie's protector.

But in the darkness of winter, more than 20 years ago, not even he could save them. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. In the late afternoon hours on February 21, 2001, 20-year-old Raimundo Navarrete, who went by Raymond, had been out and about running some errands around Phoenix when he decided to swing by his mom Debbie's house. It was something that he did every couple of days or so since he'd recently moved out of her home on West Thomas Road. As he and his buddy Michael pulled up to the one-story ranch, Raymond was a bit surprised to see both Debbie and her boyfriend Alfonso's cars in the driveway, because they were rarely there at the same time.

One of them was usually working. Brushing off what didn't quite feel right, though, they started to walk towards the front door. But as they approached the stoop, Raymond stopped dead in his tracks. Here's Phoenix police detective Mark Nunley. So when he approached the door, the door was locked, but he noticed the window, which is right next to the front door, was broken and that a large panel of it was removed. So somebody could have easily climbed into the house through the window. The two friends hesitantly made their way through the front door using Raymond's key. And inside was more of the same.

Something was off. And the first thing that alerted Raymond was the pitter patter of paws amidst the deafening silence. His mom's large dog, typically an outside pet, was inside the house. Then he noticed that the back door is now open as well, that the sliding glass door was open.

Raymond was surprised that his mom hadn't come to greet him by this time, He noticed that the back door is now open as well, that the sliding glass door was open. Raymond was surprised that his mom hadn't come to greet him by this time, because usually if she's there and it's during the day, if he's walking in the door, she'll be greeting him. Instead of letting that sinking feeling steer him back out of the house, his reluctant curiosity continued to usher him down the hallway towards his mom's bedroom, while apparently apparently Michael stayed behind waiting for him in the living room.

Raymond did mention that right away to officers that when he was walking down the hallway towards the bedrooms, he noticed some legal papers on the ground and he described his mom keeping some of her important papers in a bag in the house and when he saw these papers on the ground, he recognized those as the important papers that Debbie keeps in the house. But here they are spread out all over the hallway and the bag is there like somebody had gone through them. I imagine Raymond was probably calling out

to Debbie at this point. But by the time he got to the wide open frame of his mom's bedroom door, the opportunity to try and convince himself that everything was just fine was over. That's where he discovered Debbie and Alfonso still laying in bed. And as he's looking closer, he notices what he thinks is blood on her face. He reaches down to touch her in bed and she feels cold. He takes a closer look at Alfonso and notices that Alfonso

had been shot as well. He tried to wake Alfonso up or to get a reaction, but there was no reaction from them. Likely alerted by his friend's panicked screams, Michael urged Raymond not to touch anything else. The two needed to get out and they needed to call 911. When Phoenix police got that call at about 4 45 p.m. they rushed to respond to the home located on what's considered to be a frontage road. The street was lined with houses, but it wasn't like a traditional subdivision or anything. It was actually off a major thoroughfare. The perfect place for intruders to make a quick getaway without being noticed by neighbors.

Now, because it had come over dispatch that Alfonso and Debbie were found together, in the bed, shot to death, there were some early assumptions from law enforcement that it was possible this could have been a murder-suicide. But those initial impressions were soon squashed. I mean, first, the broken window likely indicated forced entry, because though Alfonso didn't technically live with Debbie, he had been sleeping over there all the time. He seemed to have full access to her house. And as more of Debbie's family had gotten word from Raymond and frantically made their way to the scene, investigators learned from them that there was zero history of violence

between the two. Quite the opposite, actually. According to Debbie's family members, who we were able to speak with for this episode, she wasn't normally lucky when it came to love. But even though there was a bit of an age gap between 41-year-old Debbie and her younger 32-year-old boyfriend Alfonso, things just seemed to click this time. Here is Debbie's sister, Becky, who recalled getting the gut-wrenching news that the two had been killed while she was at work.

My boss, who I was good friends with, drove me out there. I remember telling him, they better not say that this is a murder-suicide because Alfonso would never do that, because he was such a nice man. He was such a good person. I knew it at that point, you know, like I knew they can't accuse him of that. They were in Debbie's bedroom, in the bed together, under the blankets initially it looked like. Those were sort of moved, pulled

back. But based on what officers saw and then what the investigators later observed when they were doing their investigation, it looked like they had both been shot right there in the bed. There wasn't any sign of a struggle, that there was any positioning of the bodies. They were in bed, likely when they got shot. As far as the gunshot wounds, initially officers just saw the blood and when the investigators started looking at the bodies as the medical examiners, the office is showing up with the medical legal investigators to recover the bodies to take them to autopsy. They do notice that Alfonso appears to have a gunshot wound in his forehead and no sign of an exit wound.

He also has an injury to his hand and looks like it had been bleeding for a little while. So the initial thought was maybe he was also shot in the hand or maybe his hand was up when he was shot. Debbie had a gunshot wound to her face and an apparent exit wound to the back of her head. And there was some blood spatter on and behind the bed that was consistent with that. The couple was naked when they were found in bed, but according to detectives, there were no signs of sexual assault on either victim. So you can surmise that maybe they had been intimate before falling asleep,

or perhaps they just slept in the nude, which factored into building out a timeline of their last movements. Detectives learned that the last person to see Debbie and Alfonso was Debbie's adult daughter, Jenna Gomez. She'd been over the night before with her baby girl and they'd left at around 8.30 PM. She said when they left, the couple seemed totally fine. Now we know calls to Debbie went unanswered between that time she left and 10 AM the next morning when Jenna's boyfriend had driven by the house.

That's when he noticed that both cars were there, which again was weird considering they both worked and it was a weekday morning. But police confirmed that Debbie and most likely Alfonso too hadn't actually made it to work the next day. Now it wasn't a particularly bloody scene, but disturbing nonetheless. Investigators found and collected two shell casings on the floor closer to the door.

And then later, as they were recovering the bodies, they located a projectile. So it's the expended bullet that comes out that was on the mattress. It appears that it might have gone through a blanket, which is interesting, you know, to theorize where that came from. If we have Alfonso with a gunshot wound to his head and it appears to have retained a bullet and then a through and through gunshot wound to Debbie, you know, why is there a projectile on the bed?

So it sort of raises the thought that there's probably three shots that were fired versus just the two when they were only able to find two casings. As Raymond mentioned, there were those papers strewn about in the hallway outside of the bedroom, which investigators collected as evidence. There was an open drawer

that maybe someone had rifled through. And then there was something else kind of strange. BB guns that were typically tucked away were just kind of left out and about. One of them was on a chair in the living room. One of them was on the floor in a bedroom. And these are BB guns, but they look like a revolver or a pistol at first glance.

But Raymond mentioned that those were out of place, that they shouldn't have been out. Debbie or Alfonso, they didn't, like, ever take them out and handle them, really. Debbie and Alfonso weren't known to have any real guns, but investigators collected those BB guns, along with the bedding, swabs of blood from the scene, as well as swabs of other things

around the house for possible DNA. And the clues didn't dry up as they exited the front door to search around the house. Investigators discovered a wooden dowel in the yard on the ground below that broken window, the kind of thing that was used to either keep someone from being able to slide it open or to keep it propped open. They thought that their suspect probably had to mess with it in order to gain entry into the home. Officers noticed some tire tracks in the front yard. It looked like a car had pulled in and then pulled right back out.

There were no footprints around the dirt, so they weren't sure if this was a suspect car or if this was just somebody who maybe was turning around or what. But they noticed these tire tracks in the front yard and they also noticed the vegetation that's by that front window that was broken, it had been trampled. There were some footprints on that vegetation. It was trampled down, not enough to get a shoe impression in the dirt or in that vegetation, but clearly somebody had been walking on that recently and those plants were smashed down. Investigators took photos of those tire tracks

and they even got shoe impressions from everyone who they knew that had entered the home, just in case they ever found something to compare it to. Although no one could say for sure that anything was actually stolen from the house, overall the scene made it feel like whoever did this was likely looking for something. But the killer wasn't going to let Alfonso or Debbie stop them from taking whatever it was that they may have been after. The way these two were attacked, cold blooded, shot in the face. Surely that said something.

This was likely a targeted attack. The victim's families were able to point out something crucial to detectives that only added to the narrative that the murders were probably committed by somebody who knew the couple. Debbie's dog, Sugar Bear, wasn't quite as sweet and cuddly, at least with strangers, as his name might suggest. Here is Debbie's niece, Becca. I loved him.

He was a great dog. He was scary aggressive. If he didn't know you, it was scary. So whoever was in that house, whoever did that, he knew and he loved because no way. As investigators sat down with Debbie and Alfonso's loved ones, two possible theories emerged right out of the gate.

The first involved an ex-boyfriend of Debbie's, a guy that we're gonna call Henry. The two had actually met all the way back in high school and it seemed like they ended up dating sometime after that, then had broken up, then reconnected later down the line and became more serious before breaking up yet again. And all along, the relationship had been tumultuous to say the least. I think the Henry thing was the first and foremost for most of the people that we talked to. This ex-boyfriend Henry didn't have a great history.

He had some violent history. He had done some prison time for some violent acts and their relationship wasn't great. They did apparently stay in contact when he was in prison, writing letters. And I believe Debbie saved some of those letters. Those were actually collected from the home. But there was no documentation that there was any specific threats found in those letters when the investigators initially collected them.

Now, Henry had been in prison for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon not related to Debbie. At the time of the murders, he'd only been out like six months or so. But the relationship between him and Debbie at that moment was a little confusing. Cuz depending on who you talk to, they paint a bit of a different picture. Some people thought maybe they had recently reconnected or at least ran into each other, possibly at a local spot called the Boomerang Bar.

But others said that it was all one-sided. Who was initiating it varied from source to source. But when they went back to speak with this ex, Henry didn't act like a guilty man. He made himself available and fully cooperated. He claimed he'd only found out about the murders from the news. Henry corroborates some of the information that detectives initially learned about sending some letters, about seeing Debbie at a boomerang bar, about Debbie coming over to his house and wanting to find him.

He maintained that he actually never made contact with her. They never actually met up. They never actually had any physical contact or got in touch with each other on the phone. There were also some rumblings that maybe Henry had an issue with Debbie dating Alfonso, but Henry disputed that. Yeah, it was safe to say he assumed the recent communication attempts meant

that there was a chance they were on the road to rekindling, but he acted like there was no anger or animosity about her relationship with Alfonso. The second theory that came to light almost immediately had to do with money as a motive. Apparently Debbie's mother had passed away about two years prior, and there may have been a bit of a dispute regarding her will and the home that Debbie had been living in that had once belonged to her mom. Depending on what family member was interviewed, there were different understandings of what

was happening with the will. There was the will that initially was supposed to leave the house to Debbie and her sister, and then as their children became adults, they were to sell the house and give the proceeds to the sisters and then their children and sort of distribute it that way amongst the family. Then there was talk of a second will existing because of an executor that was a family friend. It seemed like Debbie's son Raymond took those documents all over the floor as a sign that what had happened likely had to do with this dispute over the will in the house.

It sounds like both he and Jenna thought that the family friend who we'll call Gail was trying to take the house and sell it out from underneath them, leaving them all high and dry. So the theory was that maybe Gail had put a hit out on Debbie. However, others stated that there's no way this was the case. They said Gail was an older woman who had been extremely close with Debbie's mom, even helped care for her. Detectives weren't sure whatever came of the will, the house

or the money, and it didn't look like Gail was ever really even interviewed back then. And this debacle was actually something our reporting team was able to help clear up while we were working on this case. You see, Debbie's sister, Becky, was super surprised to hear us say that this will-slash-money thing was even considered a real theory. She hadn't seen Gail's actions as malicious at all. Oh, the will. No, there was no money to be had. even considered a real theory. She hadn't seen Gail's actions as malicious at all. Oh, the will. No, there was no money to be had. When everything was said and done, I think I got $1,000. When they sold the house and paid for it what they needed to pay for,

I got $1,000. So yeah, there was nothing to be had. So I don't know. I don't even remember that conversation about a will. At the time, both theories, one regarding love, the other money, sort of just fizzled out. There was nothing strong to substantiate either claim, so detectives were forced to move on. About a month following the initial investigation though, something new rose to the surface,

something that seemed to the surface. Something that seemed to be their strongest theory yet. Family had mentioned, well, I think Debbie had just recently made, I don't know if it was a silent witness tip or just gave information and she maybe had received some money from giving this tip to the police and there was suspicion that this was some Associates of Raymond. He's affiliated with some of these guys that are in gangs. They're into nefarious stuff whether it's drugs or violence or drive-bys or shootings or whatever, and that she learns about these things

because she's living at home with him and she has this information and she gives it to police. The story went that back in December, just a few months before Debbie and Alfonso were murdered, Debbie was woken up by someone pounding on the door. She opened it and it was one of her son's friends looking for him. Now remember, Raymond was living with his mom at that point. And apparently Raymond got up,

talked with this friend and then gave him a ride somewhere. It turns out that that friend was involved in a shooting and that Debbie learns about this and she gave information to the police about this, about where Raymond's friend was, and sort of implementing him in this other crime, which ultimately he is charged with and he pleads guilty to. Now, this guy, who we'll call Victor, he didn't end up going to prison until after Debbie and Alfonso were killed.

But Victor, gang affiliated, would have had the means and the motive to hurt Debbie. And unfortunately, Alfonso was likely just in the wrong place at the wrong time if that's what happened. Whatever the truth may be, victor or otherwise, that part is something that Alfonso's family feels strongly about to this day. That he was never intended to be the target. Now they'd heard rumblings about Debbie's son Raymond

being involved with illegal activity. Alfonso had even recently talked to his mom Muriel and his sister, Relma, about the situation. Here are the two recounting those conversations. When he came over, you know, we talk about everything. And I tried to warn him about her family because her children, they were gang affiliated. And he had never been around anything like that, you know?

We were just talking about this because he was trying to find a way to get out him. He knew, you know, he loved Debbie, but he knew the situation in this environment is not for him. And so he was a week too late, basically. During the first few days and weeks of the investigation, Raymond had been cooperative. But by the time detectives were hearing chatter about his dealings or associations possibly having something to do with the crime, he started evading them and wouldn't come in for another formal interview.

But though he wasn't talking, others were. And investigators were starting to pick up on little things here and there that didn't match up with what Freeman had told them in the early days. Like for one, he had mentioned he didn't have any guns at the time of the murders, but others were saying that he definitely did. And then, and possibly most suspicious, apparently someone said that he had actually stopped by his mom's house much earlier that day.

And look, from what Detective Nunley told us, it doesn't seem likely that Raymond would have committed the murders by his own hand. I think they believed that his involvement with gang associates brought the wrong people into the family's lives, and someone he knew could have been responsible for a myriad of reasons. Now, it would take about six months, but around August of 2001, investigators finally got their chance to really question Raymond again, this time from behind bars. He'd been arrested for possession of drugs and misconduct with weapons.

And during this sit-down, a detective asked Raymond to recount the day that he stopped by the house and discovered his mom and Alfonso's bodies. And while some of it did match up to what he initially said, there weren't too big differences this time. Now, he admitted that he did, in fact, have a gun at the time. He said that initially he'd lied because he was on probation and he didn't want to get in trouble. And he also admitted to being at the house earlier, too. But not inside of it, he said. I think they were going over again everything that he did that day.

They were trying to clarify that. And he actually did tell them, look, I wasn't completely honest because I did a drug deal during the day and I met with somebody right near, like basically in front of the house. And at that time, yeah, both of those cars were parked in the driveway, but I never went in, I never did anything, I just did this little drug deal and left." As the detective pushed him, he became increasingly frustrated, so much so that he decided to shut the whole conversation down. So that was it. In 2003, detectives did end up trying to talk to Victor, the guy who ended up being responsible for that separate fatal shooting, the one Debbie seemed to have tipped law enforcement off to.

he seemed to have tipped law enforcement off to. He was actually in prison on another case, on a, I think it was an aggravated assault or some other charge. He was being questioned about that initial homicide and then about knowing Raymond and having anything to do with that. And before they can get in depth with this interview, he says, I'm done with this interview

and I'm not going to tell you anything else. So they don't really get anything good from Victor during that interview. At a standstill and still feeling like they needed more from Raymond, they started going through his recorded phone conversations from jail in 2004, hoping that he might just slip up and drop them, even the slightest hint. But he didn't say anything that would help them. And so far, they've gotten no hits on anything from the crime scene either that they'd previously submitted for testing. So a detective giving the case files some face time resubmitted some of the evidence

to see if new technology could shake something loose from their old evidence. Some results came back in 2010 from DNA on that wooden stick. But at that time, in 2010, the technology wasn't good enough to separate the DNA samples because there was multiple samples, multiple profiles. Other detectives came along over the years and did the same thing, tried to give the case fresh eyes and attention,

tried seeing what could be done. But for 15 more years, there was nothing to push things ahead. Well, flash forward to present day, our reporting team came along asking about this case, because we'd noticed that it was one that hadn't got much media attention in a really long time. Detective Nunley picked up the case to conduct a review of his own prior to our trip out to Phoenix. He's already started knocking out things like entering the casings into Nibin,

rerunning prints through NGI, and re-interviewing several people close to this case. And maybe most importantly, he is going to work on getting some items retested, including that wooden dowel from the broken window, which, by the way, seems probative. We don't think it was part of the window that was frequently touched, so to find it that day and on the ground outside of the home really seems promising. Definitely looking at like mVac. We have new technology that can separate multiple profiles on one item. Just a few years ago that wasn't a possibility. You'd get multiple profiles and it

was like good luck this is mixed. Nowadays we're able to separate some of those profiles depending on this type of sample. Our reporting team tried reaching out to both of Debbie's adult children, Jenna and Raymond. And while they both were responsive at first and seemed open to participating in this podcast, ultimately they stopped responding to us and didn't end up following through. It's hard to imagine that they don't want to be part of helping us figure this thing out, of finding answers these other loved ones won't ever stop searching for. Here is Debbie's niece, Becca, again.

She would always tell me, like, I can't wait for you to graduate, I can't wait for you to have babies. So I have four babies. Then I lost my husband and my daughter. But the daughter that I lost, she was my third and she came out, she was tiny like me, but she was very dark-skinned and straight black hair, and we always used to say like, she had to be apart from Thea. Yeah.

And her middle name was, her name was Amelia Joy, and my Thea was Deborah Joy. So I gave her my thea's middle name. Alfonso's mom and sister carried the weight of what happened to their son and brother every single day. I mean, literally they wear Alfonso's ashes on chains around their wrists and neck as a constant reminder. We're siblings.

You can't, it's not like you can just forget about it. I mean, it's a part of you. It's like somebody cutting off your arm. You always remember you had an arm no matter what. You learn to live, but you still, you miss it. You know, sorry for your loss. Anytime I hear that, it doesn't mean anything. And I mean nothing.

Why? Because there's no words you can possibly say, there's nothing anyone can do. The void from that minute that you hear it is the blackest, darkest, deepest void, if you were close to them, that you will ever have. If you know anything about the murders of Alfonso McCoy Jr. and Debra Debbie Gomez in February 2001 in Phoenix, Arizona, you can anonymously contact Silent Witness at 480-948-6377 or toll-free at 1-800-343-TIPS. They also have a website, silentwitness.org. And if you're comfortable reaching out to Detective Nunley directly

so they know who is coming forward with the information, we're going to have his information in the show notes. The Deck is an AudioChuck production with eMusic by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Woo!