APD: Accused killer attacked before

ALBUQUERQUE - When Ralph Montoya allegedly killed University of New Mexico professor Hector Torres and teacher Stefania Gray Sunday, he was out on bond for an earlier attack on the couple in the same house where they died.

In the report Gray filed with the Albuquerque Police Department after the incident in late January, she said she was afraid Montoya, her former boyfriend, would hurt her again.

Montoya, 37, was charged a month ago for aggravated burglary, kidnapping and aggravated assault after police said he forced his way into Torres’s southeast Albuquerque home on Jan. 28.

Gray, a 9th-grade English teacher, told investigators she believed Montoya followed her there from Bernalillo High School after she got off work. She told police Montoya had a knife, pushed her to the ground, kicked her in the ribs and pulled her hair.

Torres eventually managed to calm Montoya down and he left.

In the handwritten police report, Gray said Montoya had stalked her and said he couldn’t accept that she was not his girlfriend anymore.

The couple had lived together, Gray wrote in the report adding she moved out in November 2009.  Montoya was arrested in early February for the alleged attack and posted his $100,000 cash or surety bond on Feb. 17; he only had to raise 10% of the $100,000 bond to get out of jail.

Police believe the couple was murdered by Montoya sometime Sunday.

Montoya’s neighbors described him as a nice guy who lived quietly at his home on Crosscut Drive in northwest Albuquerque.

“I'm shocked; I would have never suspected someone like Ralph,” neighbor David Nelson told KRQE News 13.

In Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court Tuesday a courth background investigator told Judge Judith Nakamura in Metropolitan that Montoya was convicted of stalking in 1994.

The investigator made a suggestion to the judge to raise his bond to $1 million cash given his criminal history. Instead Nakamura kept it at a price Montoya said he couldn’t afford anyhow.

“I'm going to keep it as a cash-only bond of quarter of a million dollars as set by the
District Court,” Nakamura said.

News 13 also learned Montoya worked for the City of Rio Rancho as a public works engineer from 2003 to 2008. He left that job to work for the Southern Sandoval County Arroyo Flood Control Authority as a project engineer.

Montoya has a court hearing Friday afternoon for violating his conditions of release in the January case.