On a tragic Sunday evening, May 19, 2002, in Mesa, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, the life of 30-year-old Hispanic male Fausto Jimenez was violently cut short in a senseless act of violence. Jimenez was working at a Jack in the Box restaurant on Main Street and Lindsay Road, alongside his colleagues Beatriz Alvarado, 31, and Kenneth Brown, 27. The restaurant, which operated 24 hours a day, had locked its doors to the public after 10 p.m., leaving only the drive-thru window open for service.
This, however, did not deter the two men who had planned a robbery that would soon escalate to a triple homicide.
The perpetrators were identified as Steve Alan Boggs and Christopher Hargrave, members of a white supremacist group called the Imperial Royal Guard. Hargrave, a former employee of the same Jack in the Box, had been fired just days earlier on May 15 for stealing. Seeking revenge and money, Hargrave and Boggs devised a plan to rob the establishment. Dressed in his old work uniform, Hargrave was able to gain entry to the restaurant under the guise of being called in to work. Once inside, he distracted his former coworkers, allowing Boggs to enter through a back door.
The two men then forced Jimenez, Alvarado, and Brown into the restaurant's walk-in freezer. Inside the confined space, the three employees were shot multiple times in the back. After a struggle for his life, Jimenez, along with Brown, succumbed to his injuries inside the freezer. Alvarado managed to escape the freezer and crawl to a phone to dial 911, and then made her way to the back door where she was found by police with a gunshot wound to her torso. She was transported to a hospital but tragically died from her injuries the following morning. The robbers made off with approximately $280, a far cry from the $14,000 they had reportedly expected to find. They also stole from the victims and later used one of their credit cards at a nearby bank.
The investigation quickly led to the suspects. Two days after the murders, Boggs traded the murder weapon at a local pawn shop. The owners of the pawn shop, who were the parents of a woman Hargrave was dating, became suspicious and contacted the police. Ballistics tests confirmed it was the weapon used in the killings, and Boggs was arrested on June 5, 2002. His accomplice, Christopher Hargrave, was also taken into custody.
Following their arrests, both men faced justice for their brutal crimes. In 2005, Steve Alan Boggs was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder. The jury found three aggravating factors for each murder: the expectation of pecuniary gain, the commission of the crime in an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner, and the fact that the murders were committed to eliminate witnesses. On February 21, 2006, Steve Alan Boggs was sentenced to death for his role in the deaths of Fausto Jimenez, Beatriz Alvarado, and Kenneth Brown. Christopher Hargrave was also convicted for his involvement in the triple homicide.
