In June of 2014, concerns grew for 53-year-old Caucasian female Dannette Webb when she failed to appear for her volunteer position at Noonday Ministries in Albuquerque, New Mexico. On June 27, 2014, her coworkers' fears were realized when Webb was discovered deceased inside her home located at 415 Mayfair Pl., S.W. The scene that awaited investigators was unsettling; Webb was found naked and bound with duct tape in her living room.
Despite the disturbing nature of the discovery, there was reportedly no blood at the scene, and an initial autopsy deemed her cause of death as "undetermined," with no clear signs of a struggle. A lock box containing $3,000 was found beside her.
For nearly a decade, the investigation into Dannette Webb's death languished, becoming a cold case with few leads for detectives to pursue. The years passed without any significant developments, leaving her friends and community without answers. Friends remembered Webb as a kind and warm person, with one recalling how she "hugged me like we were old friends" upon their second meeting. The lack of progress in the case left a lingering sense of injustice over her perplexing death.
A breakthrough finally came in December 2023, almost ten years after Webb's body was found. Cold case detectives identified a new lead that pointed them toward a former coworker of Webb's from Noonday Ministries, a man named Lance Beaton. Investigators, including an APD detective and an FBI agent, interviewed Beaton and subsequently executed a search warrant to obtain his DNA. The sample proved to be a match to DNA evidence collected from the original crime scene in 2014. Following this crucial match, Lance Beaton, then 59 years old, was arrested and charged with an open count of murder in connection with Webb's death. Police now theorize that Beaton may have been stalking Webb and that he killed her after she caught him breaking into her home. Following his arrest, Beaton was booked into the Metro Detention Center and was ordered to be held on a no-bond hold pending trial.
