He walked in on his own
On the morning of April 29, Michael Moody walked into the police station by himself. He would later say he had slept outside the building until the doors opened.
He thought he was in trouble for running away.
At 10:22 a.m. he sat down in an interview room at the Luna County Sheriff’s Office across from Detective Valerie Tyler and Detective Fetrow. Because he was 16, Tyler went through his rights slowly, making him explain each one back to her. He understood them, he said. He signed the waiver at 10:33 a.m.
For a long time, he talked about running away. He talked about a “mental breakdown,” about hitchhiking from Arizona and hiding in abandoned buildings and in the mesquite. He talked about a friend named Ruben Chavez, who had died of a fentanyl overdose that February.
He also mentioned a friend in Deming who had been holding his suitcase for him: Rafael Camacho.
“I have everything”
His mother arrived, and she sat down next to him. Then Detective Fetrow stopped pretending this was about running away.
“I know you did it,” he told Moody. “You and your buddy. I have Snapchat video of him shooting out there too. I have everything.”
Moody broke down. He told the detectives that he and Camacho had lured Ashton out to Keeler Road by telling him they were going target shooting. The real plan, he said, was to take Ashton’s handgun, a purple 9mm pistol.
And it wasn’t only about the gun. Moody blamed Ashton for Ruben’s overdose.
In his account, Ashton pointed the AR-15 at Camacho, and Moody shot Ashton with Ashton’s own pistol. Then, he said, both of them stabbed him. He told the detectives he could still hear Ashton screaming, and that he hadn’t been able to sleep since.
Later in the same interview, with his mother beside him, he went further. He admitted taking Ashton’s phone, his vape and his lighter. He said they had planned it as “vengeance” for Ruben.
Wicked Crime obtained the recording of that last part of the interview directly from law enforcement. You can watch Michael Moody’s interrogation, uncut, here.
Earlier that day he had even drawn the knife for the detectives on a sheet of paper. At 6:57 that evening, a detective bought a 16-piece meal from the KFC on East Cedar Street. The receipt is still in the evidence file, with a handwritten note on it: “Food for Moody, others.”
The gun behind the dresser
Moody had named Rafael Camacho as the one who drove, and the one who took part in the killing.
That night, deputies went back to Camacho’s home on South Tin Street. Hidden behind a dresser in his bedroom, they found Ashton’s purple and silver Taurus 9mm.
Camacho was taken to the sheriff’s office. A little before midnight, he sat down across from Detective Tyler. This time he was going to talk.
At first, he said Moody had simply brought the gun to his house. Then, piece by piece, the story came out.
Moody had used Camacho’s phone to message Ashton and set up the meeting. The AR-15 was Camacho’s; he kept it in his bedroom. He drove the three of them out to Keeler Road in his brother’s 1990 Mercury Cougar, about 25 minutes from town. And, he admitted, going to Keeler Road had been his idea.
He said Moody shot Ashton three times while he was looking away at the city lights. Detective Tyler pointed out that the paperwork he said he had read never mentioned how many times Ashton was shot. His story shifted. He admitted he had been standing “right there,” holding the AR-15.
Then she asked whether his fingerprints would be on the knife.
They would, he said. He confessed that he had stabbed Ashton too. Moody had handed him the knife, he claimed, and told him to do it.
Afterwards, he said, he took the rifle home, washed it, and asked a friend to get rid of it.
Two guns, one desert
The state crime lab later confirmed that the Taurus found behind Camacho’s dresser had fired the 9mm cartridge cases and a bullet collected as evidence in the case.
The AR-15 took much longer to surface. It was finally photographed at the Luna County Sheriff’s Office on November 25, 2024, more than two and a half years after Ashton was killed.
Where they are now
Michael Moody was prosecuted as a serious youthful offender. In 2023 he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, conspiracy and robbery. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
Rafael Camacho took his case to trial. In September 2025, a Luna County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, tampering with evidence, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, larceny of a firearm and conspiracy to commit larceny of a firearm.
He was sentenced to life in prison plus another 19 and a half years, a total of 49 and a half years.
Ashton Remondini was 14. He went out that night believing he was going shooting with his friends.
