A second man has been charged in the 2020 murder of a Warm Springs man in Jefferson County.

David Brian Leclaire Jr., 34, of Warm Springs, has been indicted on charges of first- and- second degree murder in the death of 33-year-old Willyum Jay Hoptowit, Jefferson County District Attorney Steve Leriche confirmed Wednesday in an email to The Bulletin. Leclaire also faces a charge of the unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

Leclaire was already serving time at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla at the time of his arrest on March 29. He was transported to the Jefferson County jail the following day, said Amber Campbell, the prison spokeswoman. He pleaded not guilty in an April 3 arraignment.

Few details about the allegations are available through court records so far. Authorities believe Hoptowit was murdered around Oct 3, 2020, in Jefferson County.

He was killed “in the course of or as a result of intentional torture,” according to allegations in court records in the case against Freddy Eugene Alvarado, 27, of Metolius, who was the first man to be indicted on murder charges on March 14.

Leriche confirmed Hoptowit’s body was discovered but declined to disclose when and where, saying “those details are needed to gauge the accuracy of potential witnesses.”

Leriche and Jefferson County Sheriff Jason Pollock did not comment further on the allegations against Leclaire.

“I just can’t wrap my head around it,” Aurel Kalama-Surface, Hoptowit’s first cousin, said of Hoptowit’s death.

Kalama-Surface said Wednesday that Leclaire previously had a relationship with one of her cousins. “The family was relieved when they finally broke up,” she said, but she had rarely seen Leclaire around Hoptowit.

The Warm Springs Police Department announced on Facebook on Oct. 5, 2020, that Hoptowit had been missing from Warm Springs since Sept. 21. More than two years later, Kalama-Surface said, she knows little about what happened to Hoptowit. He’s the second of Kalama-Surface’s immediate family members to be murdered, she said.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get the answers that we want,” said Kalama-Surface, 54, who previously worked with Warm Springs Victims of Crime Services.

A grand jury handed down a secret indictment in the case on March 23. Leriche promptly asked the court to make the charging document confidential “because disclosure of witness names to the public can jeopardize their safety,” court records show.

Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Daina Vitolins granted Leriche’s request on March 28, court records show.

Leriche said in an email to The Bulletin that several witnesses in the case are “in positions where they could (be) potentially endangered by their cooperation.”

David Glenn, Leclaire’s defense attorney, said in response to an email from The Bulletin requesting comment: “No reply on this pending case.”

Alvarado was the first to be indicted by a Jefferson County grand jury in the death of Hoptowit. He is serving a 45-month sentence at the Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario for committing first-degree burglary in Madras in 2020. His earliest release date is Oct. 16, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections website.

Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Wade Whiting ordered on April 5 that Alvarado be transported from the prison to the Jefferson County jail, according to court records.

Alvarado appeared in court remotely from the jail for an arraignment in Jefferson County Circuit Court on Monday. He had not received a court-appointed defense attorney, so Whiting ordered that he would automatically plead not guilty to preserve his legal rights to an attorney. Alvarado’s next court hearing is scheduled for April 21.

In court on Monday, Leriche declined to elaborate on the state’s case against Alvarado.

Like Alvarado, Leclaire has a history in Oregon’s criminal justice system, including a 2018 conviction for felony fleeing a police officer and misdemeanor reckless driving; a 2019 felony conviction for the unauthorized use of a vehicle; and a 2021 conviction for attempting to commit a Class B felony, which stemmed from a case where he was accused of throwing a metal bar at a man’s face, court records show.

Leclaire was sentenced to 30 months in prison for the 2021 conviction. His maximum sentence ends Sept. 8, 2023, said Campbell, the prison spokeswoman.

Kalama-Surface said she was long aware of Leclaire’s previous criminal history. When she learned Wednesday that he had been charged for allegedly murdering her cousin, she said: “I am not shocked at all.”

Ashley Kalama, 28, compared her uncle’s case to those involving many other Indigenous people who go missing and are murdered on tribal land.

She said that includes Lee Johnson, a 67-year-old Warm Springs man who went missing on March 4 and whose body was found by a drone on Monday, according to a post on the Warm Springs Police Department Facebook page.

Another man, Lewis Selam, 71, also went missing from Warm Springs on March 4, 2022. Authorities found his car stuck in the snow near Mount Jefferson about 20 miles west of Warm Springs. Police called off a search for him on March 31, according to news reports.

“It’s sad and frustrating because, honestly, it feels like when Native Americans go missing, they don’t take the next step,” said Kalama, who grew up on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation and now lives in Milwaukie. “Native Americans get pushed to the back burner.”

Kalama-Surface said Hoptowit would often visit her at her home on the outskirts of town. She watched him grow from a baby to a young man. She remembers him as a quiet man and said he worked on a local hotshot firefighting crew, played baseball as a young boy, and that they enjoyed board games and video games and movies together. Family was a priority for him, and he was always showing up at family functions, cracking jokes and making people laugh.

“None of us are perfect,” she said. “But Willyum didn’t deserve this.”