A Sacramento man has pleaded no contest to the January 2023 murder of Julio Chavez-Montoya, a 63-year-old building maintenance man who lived in a downtown Oakland office tower.

Chavez-Montoya was known to live a quiet life that consisted of working in the basement of an Oakland highrise, on the 400 block of 14th Street, and commuting by elevator home to a one-room flat on the building's 10th floor — as well as bicycling six miles to church on Sundays.

Church appears to be where he was last seen alive by acquaintances — the United Methodist Church at 980 Stannage Avenue in Albany seems to be the location described in a missing persons notice from February 2023, posted by the City of Oakland. Chavez-Montoya was reportedly seen on Sunday, January 29 by other churchgoers before disappearing. (This sighting turns out to be false, and was probably confused with a sighting of Chavez-Montoya from the previous Sunday, because of details that later emerged.) After Chavez-Montoya's birthday passed on February 12, without a traditional phone call to his parents in Guatemala, his sister-in-law reported him missing to Berkeley police.

As Bay Area News Group now reports, a story has emerged about what allegedly happened to Chavez-Montoya and why, and one of the two suspects arrested for his killing confessed earlier this year and has now pleaded no contest to the murder and disposal of Chavez-Montoya's body.

38-year-old Nai Saechao of Sacramento says that he and a friend, 35-year-old Matias Simi of San Leandro, killed Chavez-Montoya after the maintenance man confronted them over their illegal entry into his building. Simi had been a security guard in the same building but was fired a month earlier, in December 2022, for improperly letting Saechao in, and for stealing a set of master keys.

As Bay Area News Group reports from court proceedings, investigators obtained surveillance footgae showing Chavez-Montoya walking outside and entering the building on January 27, 2023, but never leaving. Later that same evening, there is footage of Saechao and Simi entering, and not leaving until the next morning, when they left wheeling a garbage bin on wheels.

Later on the evening of January 28, they were allegedly seen entering the building again, and leaving with a garbage bin and a suitcase.

The boiler room where Chavez-Montoya worked appeared to have been recently cleaned, investigators say, and they also uncovered a journal belonging to him that described having recent trouble with "Matias." Friends and family say that Simi had had threatened Chavez-Montoya in the past.

Saechao has implicated Simi in the actual beating death of Chavez-Montoya, and says that they both then transported the body to the hills near the Oakland Zoo. The body was then pushed into a ravine near a creek bed off Elysian Fields Drive and Golf Links Road, where it was discovered five months later.

To make matters worse, during the time before the body was discovered, Simi allegedly made phone calls to Chavez-Montoya's family demanding an $8,000 ransom, saying that if it wasn't received, the kidnappers would "cut him to pieces." Per Bay Area News Group, these calls were made from Chavez-Montoya's cellphone, and pinged off a cell tower near where Simi lived.

Simi is expected to stand trial for the murder, and his wife has also been charged as an accessory to the crime. With the plea deal in place, Saechao is now likely to testify against him. He pleaded no contest and it's not clear what his sentence will be.

Simi remains in Santa Rita Jail pending trial.

Top image: Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images