Tai Chan’s wife testifies, says husband claimed he was being framed for murder

Thursday, the jury presiding over the Tai Chan murder trial heard from the former deputy’s wife.

The woman was on the phone with Chan the night he allegedly shot and killed his partner inside a Las Cruces hotel.

Chan is charged with first degree murder. The former Santa Fe deputy is accused of shooting and killing Jeremy Martin in 2014 at the Hotel Encanto. The two were staying in Las Cruces after transporting a prisoner to Arizona.

Leah Tafoya was pregnant and dating Chan at the time. She said Chan called her multiple times that night. In the first phone call, Tafoya says Chan told her “they’re framing me for murder.”

In another phone call, Tafoya recalls hearing a man’s voice say “nobody is going to jail, we’re not getting arrested.”

She then heard a man say, “Open the door, you’re not (expletive) going anywhere.”

At that point, Tafoya recalls Chan picking back up the phone and telling her a man punched him in the face and kicked him in his groin.

Tafoya said she heard Chan shout “sit down!” Then she heard a pounding sound.

“After that I heard what I thought was Tai saying please no, please no, then I heard two shots,” Tafoya said.

“Your first thought was what?” Defense Attorney Thomas Clark said.

“That Tai was dead,” Tafoya said.

Tafoya said as she was frantically driving to Las Cruces, a New Mexico State Police agent called her.

“I was saying where’s Tai? What hospital is he at? Where should I go, where am I going?” Tafoya said. “Then he laughed at me and he said, ‘he’s not at the hospital’ and so at that point I knew it wasn’t Tai.”

The prosecution says Chan deliberately and willfully killed Martin. The defense argues Chan was acting in self-defense.