Suspect in Santa Fe area murder arrested in Las Cruces

State police officers arrested Robert Mondrian-Powell, 57, of Nambe, New Mexico, and charged him with an open count of murder in connection with the killing of 67-year-old Elvira Segura.

The Office of the Medical Investigator identified Segura as the woman found dead at 25A Arroyo Nambe Street in Nambe, New Mexico, a community north of Santa Fe.

Last month, investigators said Mondrian-Powell may have been living in a house with the woman’s dead body for several weeks.

Mondrian-Powell, a.k.a Robert Boykin, has ties in the El Paso-Las Cruces area and was arreted in Las Cruces October 14, 2016. He was booked into the Dona Ana County Detention Center.

Segura’s body was found in a blood-spattered bathroom of her Nambe home on Sept. 27, according to New Mexico State Police.

Court documents state Mondrian-Powell had lived with Segura, a former Santa Fe librarian.

A car registered to Segura was found abandoned in Las Cruces on Sept. 24, with the windows rolled down and the keys still inside, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in Santa Fe District Court.

While performing a welfare check at Segura’s home three days later, officers noticed a bad smell and saw flies in the house, according to the affidavit. They crawled through an open window and found Segura’s body as well as a dead dog in a bedroom, the documents said.

According to an autopsy, the level of decomposition revealed the woman had been dead for weeks.

Two different neighbors told police that they heard gunshots at the house about three weeks before the welfare check. Officers also found what appeared to be blood between a greenhouse and the kitchen, according to the affidavit.

Police have not released a cause of death.