As a child, he enjoyed visiting his grandparents in Flat Rock, North Carolina, and came to live there in his late childhood.
He would lure boys aged 10 to 14 years to the back roads of Henderson County, North Carolina, with the promise of teaching them how to drive, but instead perform oral sex on them, calling it "God's special way for his people to love each other.
Leyva's life as an evangelist and molester are recorded in Mike Echols' book Brother Tony's Boys: The Largest Case of Child Prostitution in U.S. History: The True Story.
Along with several other known pederasts, Leyva was arrested several times in 1988 on child molestation, sodomy, and interstate transport of minors charges.
The state medical examiner's office determined he had metastatic melanoma, a form of skin cancer.