Man Held In Wife’s Strangulation

A Tacoma man has been arrested in the death of his wife, who was found strangled in the couple’s apartment, Tacoma police say.

Ramone Garzia-Gonzales, 24, was booked into the Pierce County Jail on Saturday. Police had been summoned to the apartment the night before, where they found the body of his wife, Leslie A. LaClair, 22.

“She was strangled with what appears to be an electrical cord,” police spokesman Jim Mattheis said. An autopsy was scheduled for Monday.

Mattheis said when Garzia-Gonzales was interviewed Friday night, he told officers that two men wearing hats and masks had entered the apartment and knocked him unconscious. He told detectives that when he awoke, he found a wire around his neck and discovered his wife in the bedroom, hanging from a doorknob by an electric cord, Mattheis said.

When Garzia-Gonzales was interviewed by detectives later, he admitted his original story was not true and that he had killed his wife, Mattheis said.