Another South Carolina millionaire murder mystery

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There are falls from grace, and then there’s the story of Gregorio Leon.

The Mexican immigrant became a multimillionaire through San Jose, a Mexican restaurant chain with nine locations around the Midlands area of South Carolina, the type of spots where encyclopedic menus offer massive margaritas and combo plates inundated with cheese sauce. He went by “Greg,” and became a regional icon for Latinos, a regular at South Carolina Gamecocks football games, and a hero in his hometown of San Jose de la Paz, a pueblo in the state of Jalisco whose townspeople run over 700 Mexican restaurants across the American South and defined what Mexican food was in the region for decades.

But Leon’s rise was hardly a feel-good story. And now, Leon is dead — found hanging in his prison cell after a jury found him guilty just a week earlier of murdering his wife’s lover after catching the two of them in the backseat of a truck the night of Valentine’s Day 2016.

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