Speaker 1: High Betrayal family. It's Andrea Gunning.
Speaker 2: I want to introduce you to a new weekly true
Speaker 2: crime show that our team at Glass podcast has just launched.
Speaker 2: It's called American Homicide and is hosted and produced by
Speaker 2: my colleague Sloane Glass, who I have here today.
Speaker 1: Hi Sloan, Hi Andrea.
Speaker 2: You guys may not know this, but Sloane worked on
Speaker 2: season two of Betrayals, so she's very close to the
Speaker 2: Betrayal team.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It feels very close to my heart. I mean the
Speaker 1: highlight for me working on Betrayal was interviewing Aveya for
Speaker 1: the show. I'd admired her for a long time as
Speaker 1: a listener and then getting the opportunity to sit down
Speaker 1: with her that felt so special.
Speaker 2: You know, I think you guys did an incredible job
Speaker 2: and they were in great hands with you. And I'm
Speaker 2: so curious what made you want to take on a
Speaker 2: project like American Homicide.
Speaker 1: What I really love about a Man and Homicide is
Speaker 1: how immersive it is. It's not just a retelling. It's
Speaker 1: a re examination of infamous true crime stories through first
Speaker 1: hand accounts. You are hearing from law enforcement, who is
Speaker 1: behind the investigations. You are hearing from lawyers, you are
Speaker 1: hearing from judges, you are hearing from victims and their
Speaker 1: friends and family. And I think what makes it so
Speaker 1: significant and special really plays off of when you are
Speaker 1: covering a story. It can be the same crime in
Speaker 1: a different location and it will have a totally different
Speaker 1: impact depending on the community. I learned this as a
Speaker 1: local news reporter and later as a national news reporter,
Speaker 1: that you are dealing with very different circumstances wherever you
Speaker 1: are in the country. When a crime takes place in
Speaker 1: let's say a small town. What comes to mind for
Speaker 1: me in my personal experience as a journalist, I think
Speaker 1: of in Delphi, Indiana, there was a case that had
Speaker 1: gone cold for six years, two girls had been killed,
Speaker 1: and it was a town of thirteen hundred people. That's
Speaker 1: different from when a crime like that happens in a city.
Speaker 1: The first story that we have in American homicide, it
Speaker 1: made me feel that same way.
Speaker 2: So on the feed, we're sharing an episode of American
Speaker 2: homicide called The Father's Day Murders. Can you tell us
Speaker 2: a little bit about what happens?
Speaker 1: The episode is called The Father's Day Murders. Now you
Speaker 1: just have to imagine it's Father's Day. You go to
Speaker 1: your parents' house for dinner, You open the door and
Speaker 1: you find your mom, dad, and brother beat in to death.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened to a woman in the small
Speaker 1: town of l Rancho, New Mexico. The main suspect for
Speaker 1: a substantial amount of time was the daughter who had
Speaker 1: found her family. It just leaves you wondering what was
Speaker 1: going on here. Someone must know something.
Speaker 2: And they're in the community, and they're in.
Speaker 1: The community, and this is a woman who had to
Speaker 1: fight to find answers to what exactly happened to her family,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile everyone is looking at her like she was involved.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited for this series, Loan. You're phenomenal. The
Speaker 2: storytelling is fantastic. The episodes that I have heard, you
Speaker 2: are just at every twist and turn, just on the
Speaker 2: edge of your seat, and I don't doubt that the
Speaker 2: betrayal audience is going to love it. So without further ado,
Speaker 2: here's American Homicide Father's Day Murders, Part one, benefing on ways.
Speaker 1: It was Father's Day twenty eleven when Charie or Tease
Speaker 1: walked into her parents' home and found the bodies of
Speaker 1: her mother and.
Speaker 3: Father, they had been shot in the head, and it
Speaker 3: occurred sometime ear you're in the day I just walked.
Speaker 4: The brutality was unspeakable.
Speaker 1: The hunt to find the killer would tear the community
Speaker 1: apart and devastate cherif.
Speaker 5: I really do have hope this is going to get solved.
Speaker 1: My name is Sloane Glass. I'm a journalist who covered
Speaker 1: the Long Island serial killer, the Delphi, Indiana murders, and
Speaker 1: many other high profile true crime cases. And now I'm
Speaker 1: the host of American Homicide, a podcast where we take
Speaker 1: you across the country to investigate some of America's deadliest crimes.
Speaker 1: We'll explore how these murders are shaped by their unique landscapes,
Speaker 1: and how these tragedies have shaped the fabric of these
Speaker 1: American communities forever. Today we're in the tiny village of
Speaker 1: al Rancho, New Mexico, for part one of the Father's
Speaker 1: Day Murders on American Homicide. As a note, this podcast
Speaker 1: contains subject matter which may not be suitable for all audiences.
Speaker 1: Discretion is advised. I had a picture for you. Santa Fe,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, is called the city Different for its rich
Speaker 1: culture and diverse community. Native American ancestries blend with Spanish
Speaker 1: culture in a state with one of America's richest landscapes.
Speaker 6: Northern New Mexico in particular, it's a very unique place.
Speaker 6: It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Alex Tomlin was a local TV news reporter who lives
Speaker 1: in the area.
Speaker 6: It has impeccable weather and the mountains are incredible.
Speaker 1: The region is home to natural hot springs and wild rivers.
Speaker 6: You can drive an hour north and go whitewater rafting,
Speaker 6: or you can go down to white Sands and enjoy that.
Speaker 6: But kind of on the outskirts of Santa Fe, you
Speaker 6: get a lot of the smaller communities.
Speaker 1: And one such place is the tiny village of El Rancho.
Speaker 1: The predominantly Hispanic community is about twenty miles from Santa
Speaker 1: Fe and is built around co op farming and churches.
Speaker 6: It's a lot of people who have kind of grown there,
Speaker 6: have families there, kind of all know each other.
Speaker 1: But it's also a desolate place.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 6: One of the things about New Mexico is it's so open.
Speaker 6: When you go to someone's home, often they have a
Speaker 6: significant sized property. There's not neighbors very close.
Speaker 1: And even though the homes are all spread out across
Speaker 1: the desert.
Speaker 6: Everyone kind of knows each other that there is an
Speaker 6: interesting dynamic here. As much as it's known for its beauty,
Speaker 6: is also known for the crime.
Speaker 1: The tragic murders on Father's Day twenty eleven would stretch
Speaker 1: the fabric of l Rancho to its limits.
Speaker 6: So June eighteen, twenty eleven, seemed like any normal night.
Speaker 1: Shari or Ties had dinner plants with her parents, Lloyd
Speaker 1: and Dixie.
Speaker 6: Shari or Tees. She lived on the property with the Ortizes.
Speaker 1: Her parents and brother lived in a large one story house,
Speaker 1: and Schari and her husband lived in an RV next door.
Speaker 1: Even though there's a fence around their spacious property, the
Speaker 1: family had an open door policy.
Speaker 6: Anyone could come in, have dinner at their table or
Speaker 6: in time with them. They were just kind of a
Speaker 6: good family in this community that was very tight knit.
Speaker 1: Lloyd Ortiz was a man who loved to use his hands.
Speaker 1: He owned his own ceramic tile business. His craftsmanship turned
Speaker 1: up in homes and even luxury hotels all over northern
Speaker 1: New Mexico.
Speaker 6: He was an incredibly loving father, a hard working man
Speaker 6: who provided for his family. His wife, Dixie.
Speaker 1: They sound like a perfect pair. Dixie was passionate about
Speaker 1: working with the elderly and the disabled. She was an
Speaker 1: activities director at a local retirement home, and she fostered
Speaker 1: children with special needs.
Speaker 6: They took in a child who had chicken baby syndrome
Speaker 6: and adopted him as their own raise That child. Loved
Speaker 6: that child.
Speaker 1: That child's name was Stephen. Steven had special needs from
Speaker 1: his early life injuries. His brain never developed beyond that
Speaker 1: of a nine year old, but he matured into a
Speaker 1: young man that his family called the gentle Giant. He
Speaker 1: loved to play drums, ride his ATV, and fish with Lloyd.
Speaker 6: They were just really giving, loving people, burying northern New Mexico,
Speaker 6: hard working, you know, love the land, love the culture
Speaker 6: kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Since it was Father's Day, Charie or Tease, whipped up
Speaker 1: a plate of homemade enchiladas for dinner. It was her gift.
Speaker 1: Just before seven o'clock that evening, she took them and
Speaker 1: walked next door to her parents. Even though it was June,
Speaker 1: white Christmas icicle lights still hung on the gutters of
Speaker 1: her parents' home. Inside, the walls were adorned with crucifixes
Speaker 1: and some of Lloyd's handmade tiles.
Speaker 6: Cherie said she walks in and realizes something's very wrong.
Speaker 6: She found her mother in bed. Her mother's head was
Speaker 6: pretty damaged, thought someone maybe had shot her. She then
Speaker 6: went into the kitchen area and found what she thought
Speaker 6: was her father on the kitchen floor. He was just
Speaker 6: so impacted by what was used against them. There's these
Speaker 6: two bodies, there's blood everywhere. She goes screaming out of
Speaker 6: the house and for her husband. Again, they lived on
Speaker 6: the property, so it was pretty close.
Speaker 1: Sarie's husband, Jesse, ran right over to investigate.
Speaker 6: Her husband then comes in the house and he realizes
Speaker 6: it's not her father on the kitchen floor, it's actually
Speaker 6: her brother, and that's when he starts searching around and
Speaker 6: finds her father outside right outside the back door, kind
Speaker 6: of in the field there.
Speaker 1: Lloyd's Bonnie was found on a cinderblock path that connected
Speaker 1: the Ortis back porch to their fence in York. He
Speaker 1: was face down, wearing only his underwear. His eyeglasses sat
Speaker 1: just inches away. Covering his head was some green shrubbery.
Speaker 1: By now.
Speaker 7: Shari was on the phone then onwards, Oh.
Speaker 1: What Cheri frantically told the nine on one operator that
Speaker 1: her mother, father, and brother were shot to death.
Speaker 8: I just everybody shot. My god, and my mom's still.
Speaker 1: This was Scherie's second attempt at a nine on one call,
Speaker 1: since Uri and her parents' homes were out in the
Speaker 1: middle of the desert. Her soele reception was body. Imagine
Speaker 1: the panic, the fear that your call would drop again
Speaker 1: when you're trying to get emergency help for your family.
Speaker 1: And she didn't know where the perpetrator was or if
Speaker 1: they were still on the property.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I
Speaker 8: am freaking out. I can't even walk over there because
Speaker 8: I don't service.
Speaker 1: And then there's another problem. Al Rancho is way off
Speaker 1: the beaten path, which delays the response time forlaw enforcement.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, you have to hurry.
Speaker 1: With no local police force of their own, the New
Speaker 1: Mexico State Police were dispatched to investigate.
Speaker 8: The already dead. I can't believe I didn't come checker
Speaker 8: here this morning. Oh my god, Oh my god, oh
Speaker 8: my god. Why you know, because I didn't have money
Speaker 8: for a father's sacred but I didn't want to go
Speaker 8: into I finished for him. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Charise stayed on the phone for nearly twenty minutes before officers.
Speaker 8: Arrived, so I kind of get I'm going to walk
Speaker 8: to the gate and way to them. I'm my two
Speaker 8: nervous just sitting in my yard.
Speaker 4: My name is Paul Chavis.
Speaker 3: I was a member of the full Time Crimes Unit
Speaker 3: as an agent with the New Mexico State Police.
Speaker 1: The two hundred homicide cases Officer Chavez worked in his
Speaker 1: career didn't prepare him for what he saw inside the
Speaker 1: Ortisa house.
Speaker 3: In this case, the magnitude of the violence evolved was
Speaker 3: the worst that I had seen in my career.
Speaker 4: The brutality was unspeakable.
Speaker 3: Chariotise had found her parents and her adopted stepbrother.
Speaker 4: Dead within the residence.
Speaker 3: She reported that they had been shot in the head,
Speaker 3: and it occurred sometime earlier in the day.
Speaker 1: It turns out that although chari said she didn't see
Speaker 1: who committed these murders, she did hear something that there was.
Speaker 3: Reportedly gunshots heard the previous night in the area.
Speaker 1: Now, hearing gunshots isn't entirely unusual in New Mexico, but
Speaker 1: Cheri and her parents' homes sit on a dead end
Speaker 1: street in the rural New Mexico Desert. It's a remote
Speaker 1: area with unpaved roads and no nearby street lights. Their
Speaker 1: nearest neighbor is about fifty yards up the road. Inside
Speaker 1: the Orties' home, Officer Chavez and his team assess the situation.
Speaker 4: Once I enter into the residence.
Speaker 3: There is a master bedroom immediately to the left as
Speaker 3: you walk in, and that is where the first victim,
Speaker 3: identified is Dixie. Your teas is in her bed and
Speaker 3: her nightgown under the blankets.
Speaker 1: Dixie was found clutching her pillow.
Speaker 3: Her upper extremities and her head is completely saturated in
Speaker 3: blood where she had sustained a parent trauma. From that bedroom,
Speaker 3: there is a drip trail which extends to the kitchen
Speaker 3: area where we have a second victim, a young man
Speaker 3: identified as Stephen Ortiz.
Speaker 1: Stephen, her adopted brother, lay face down in a pool
Speaker 1: of blood, wearing only his underwear. Police noted that he
Speaker 1: took the brunt of the attack.
Speaker 4: This scene was absolutely brutal.
Speaker 1: Stephen was twenty one years old at the time of
Speaker 1: his murder, and based on his injuries, police believed that
Speaker 1: he tried to fight off the killer before ultimately losing
Speaker 1: that battle.
Speaker 3: The blood continued from that area out the back door,
Speaker 3: where the third victim, Loitertise, was found outside the back porch.
Speaker 3: There was a significant amount of bloodshed, indicating that he
Speaker 3: did sustained some massive trauma. And there was also shrubbery
Speaker 3: from a nearby bush that was covering his head.
Speaker 1: That's two bloodied bodies inside the home and one outside.
Speaker 1: And then something else stood out to law enforcement.
Speaker 3: There was a small marijuana grow on the property. It
Speaker 3: was fenced off and pad locked. They did have a
Speaker 3: medical marijuana card for Stephen for some of the medical
Speaker 3: conditions he.
Speaker 1: Had, but none of the seventeen marijuana plants appeared to
Speaker 1: be disturbed. In fact, nothing seemed to be stolen or
Speaker 1: even out of place. On the kitchen table and plain
Speaker 1: view sat Lloyd's wallet containing hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 4: This did not look like a robbery.
Speaker 3: It looked like a case of anger, a lot of
Speaker 3: anger based on the brutality that occurred.
Speaker 1: It was a father's stay too for get for residents
Speaker 1: in this tiny suburb of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lloyd
Speaker 1: and Dixie Ortiz were pillars of the tight knit l
Speaker 1: rancho community. They were quick to lend a helping hand
Speaker 1: to others in need. So who was angry enough to
Speaker 1: harm them and why Shuri Orties lived in an RV
Speaker 1: right next door to her parents house on the same property.
Speaker 1: Both home sat on a sprawling lot surrounded by hills
Speaker 1: in the dusty l Rancho, New Mexico Desert. On the
Speaker 1: evening of Father's Day twenty eleven, Shuri walked into her
Speaker 1: parents house and found her mother, father, and brother savagely murdered.
Speaker 1: Like many others in the community, Pastor John Trujillo was
Speaker 1: in shock.
Speaker 5: I get a phone call. They call me PJ. Pastor
Speaker 5: John says, PJ. They found Stephen, Lloyd and Dixie dead.
Speaker 5: And I said, what are you talking about? Was a
Speaker 5: car accident? What happened? He says, no, they're it seems
Speaker 5: like they were murdered in their home. You need to
Speaker 5: get down here right away. And as I drive up,
Speaker 5: the community is already showing up. The state police are there.
Speaker 5: And about that time, Shari made her way out and
Speaker 5: she was just in tears, in tears and tears, and
Speaker 5: she's Pastor John, my family's dead, my family's dead. Somebody
Speaker 5: murdered my family, somebody killed my family. How do you
Speaker 5: handle that? What do you do? I mean, can you
Speaker 5: imagine the emotional and physical and just spiritual distraught that
Speaker 5: you would face. Nobody can't prepare for that. I don't care.
Speaker 5: Nobody's prepared to walk into a scene like that, especially
Speaker 5: the daughter. The family was grieving and they were mourning.
Speaker 5: It's all Rancho. This isn't supposed to happen in a
Speaker 5: community like this. People are speculating that could this happened
Speaker 5: from the community. Did somebody come here from somewhere else?
Speaker 5: Was it a family member, was it a friend? Was
Speaker 5: it a robbery that went wrong? You know why? Why?
Speaker 5: It was like, okay, we need some answers.
Speaker 1: Since al Rancho didn't have a police force of their own,
Speaker 1: the New Mexico State Police handled the investigation by mourning.
Speaker 1: The police still didn't know much.
Speaker 4: We're still insure as to what happened out there. The
Speaker 4: guys are still working. Its working very.
Speaker 3: Hard to determine what exactly happened, but at this point
Speaker 3: we still don't know.
Speaker 5: Well, how in the world could something like this happened?
Speaker 5: You know, one person dead, okay, but when there's three,
Speaker 5: it raises a lot a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: Police believe that three victims were shot to death inside
Speaker 1: their home, but nothing appeared to be missing. Investigators wondered,
Speaker 1: if it was a murder, you were a murder. Suicide.
Speaker 1: Officer Paul Chavez was one of the first responders.
Speaker 3: My role primarily is to process and document the crime
Speaker 3: scene to try and make sense of what occurred there.
Speaker 1: But the severity of the crime scene limited what he
Speaker 1: was able to do.
Speaker 3: You can't disturb the body mutch, and with the amount
Speaker 3: of bloodshed that was present, we weren't able to assess
Speaker 3: the wounds as well as we would like to have
Speaker 3: been able to.
Speaker 1: So Originally the police believed all three victims were shot
Speaker 1: to death, but the results of the autopsies for each
Speaker 1: victim revealed something far more personal.
Speaker 3: That these were, in fact not gunshot wounds. There were
Speaker 3: actually lacerations that were penetrating with a blood object.
Speaker 1: Clearly something was missing. When the police returned to the
Speaker 1: scene of the crime, they found a five pound pick
Speaker 1: axe lying on the ground just over the fence of
Speaker 1: the adjacent property, and the pick axe contained bloodstains.
Speaker 3: What the pick axe did provide us was DNA from
Speaker 3: all three victims, so we unequivocally had our murder weapon.
Speaker 4: However, we were unable to forensically link a suspect to
Speaker 4: the pickaxe.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean? A murder weapon with DNA
Speaker 1: of the victims but nothing to indicate a suspect.
Speaker 3: It could mean a number of things that maybe they
Speaker 3: were wearing gloves, or they covered their handiness some way
Speaker 3: or shape or form, and just sometimes the lab just
Speaker 3: can't find it. It's not one hundred percent certainty that
Speaker 3: they're going to be able to find DNA when something
Speaker 3: is touched. There's a chance that we will, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't always work out that way.
Speaker 6: So the one thing about the Ortz murder was really
Speaker 6: the pressure on the police.
Speaker 1: Reporter Alex Tomlin covered the story for a local TV station.
Speaker 6: There was an incredible amount of pressure from that small
Speaker 6: knit community, but also the surrounding communities, and so there
Speaker 6: was a lot of pressure on them to get who
Speaker 6: did it, make it a clean investigation, and let's get
Speaker 6: this person behind bars. And I'm sure at times that
Speaker 6: pressure was overwhelming.
Speaker 1: The people of l Rancho couldn't shake the fear that
Speaker 1: they could be next.
Speaker 6: Nobody wants to think that they're going to go to
Speaker 6: sleep and somebody who's pick axed a couple and their
Speaker 6: son to death is going to come into their home next.
Speaker 1: They even refuse to talk to TV reporters, not because
Speaker 1: they felt pastored, but they were fearful of their own safety.
Speaker 6: And that's the other terrifying thing. Think about the strength
Speaker 6: it takes to push that pick axe back multiple times
Speaker 6: and pick act someone to death. That is cold blooded,
Speaker 6: that is calculated. That is incredibly scary for a community
Speaker 6: because that person is dangerous. You know, when you can't
Speaker 6: easily tie up a case like this, when you can't say, oh, it's,
Speaker 6: you know, a scorned lover, or it's, you know, a
Speaker 6: drug deal gone wrong, or different things like that, then
Speaker 6: it becomes a well, in my next you want to
Speaker 6: find who did this because you don't want the community
Speaker 6: looking at you and saying, what are you doing? Why
Speaker 6: aren't you protecting us? Why don't you have the answers?
Speaker 1: With no suspects a weapon and murder seeing free of
Speaker 1: any DNA, investigators started to look at the person who
Speaker 1: first discovered the bodies. That person was Shuri or Tease.
Speaker 6: When something this horrific happens, the community wants answers and
Speaker 6: they want them quickly, right, So you want to be
Speaker 6: able to tie a nice bow on this thing and
Speaker 6: be done with it and Sharien her husband seemed like
Speaker 6: that nice bow. They lived on the property. You could
Speaker 6: come up with a motive.
Speaker 1: The police wondered if Shari and her husband, Jesse knew
Speaker 1: more than they were saying, especially after they listened back
Speaker 1: to Shari's original LIMO one call.
Speaker 6: She's very frantic in that nine one one call. As
Speaker 6: you can hear. She made some comments on that nine
Speaker 6: one one call about you know, they must have been
Speaker 6: shot because of how they looked.
Speaker 2: I just talked.
Speaker 8: Shot.
Speaker 6: It wasn't later until the Office of the Medical Investigator
Speaker 6: determined that actually they had been pick axed to death.
Speaker 5: And you have no idea who would have done that,
Speaker 5: anybody around them.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, they were such good people. Oh my god,
Speaker 8: my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god,
Speaker 8: oh my god. We have to get hurry.
Speaker 1: Desperate and upset. Schari spent seventeen minutes on that nine
Speaker 1: on one call, but as investigators listened back, they zeroed
Speaker 1: in on a comment Chari said, now listen closely to
Speaker 1: what CHERI told the operator. So Chari said her parents
Speaker 1: had been dead since that morning. How did she know
Speaker 1: that and why didn't she call nine one one till
Speaker 1: seven that evening.
Speaker 8: I can't believe I didn't come check earlier this morning.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, Oh my god, oh my god. Why
Speaker 8: you know, because I didn't have money for a father's sake,
Speaker 8: I didn't want to go into I finished and up
Speaker 8: for him.
Speaker 6: They one hundred percent thought she was a main suspect.
Speaker 8: I can't believe this is happening.
Speaker 1: When Lloyd Dixie and Stephen Ortiz were brutally murdered in
Speaker 1: their l Rancho home, their daughter Sharie and her husband
Speaker 1: Jesse appeared to investigators to be the only people with
Speaker 1: motive and the access to execute such a violent crime.
Speaker 1: For months, Shari and Jesse felt the stairs and heard
Speaker 1: the whispers. Their pastor, John Truhillo, tried to be the
Speaker 1: voice of reason.
Speaker 5: I think when you have to go through that like
Speaker 5: Jesse and Sharie did, I think it was just a
Speaker 5: reassurance that said, listen, you know you need to do this,
Speaker 5: You need to go through this. Just cooperate with the
Speaker 5: state police investigators, whatever you need to do, because it's
Speaker 5: just a process of elimination. They're looking for answers just
Speaker 5: as much as everybody else's, and they need a starting
Speaker 5: point somewhere, just go through the process, answer the questions,
Speaker 5: be honest, be truthful, and let them eliminate you, and
Speaker 5: then they can move forward from there.
Speaker 3: So there were a number of red flags that required
Speaker 3: us to investigate Sherry and just to the fullest.
Speaker 1: State Police Agent Paul Chavez told the difficult line of
Speaker 1: questioning a mourning Shari.
Speaker 3: Could family gain from the death of the victim? Sure,
Speaker 3: they kind of there is insurance insurance policies in place,
Speaker 3: or is there property a place? Is there something to
Speaker 3: be gained? That's definitely something that was going to be
Speaker 3: looked at.
Speaker 1: Investigators asked about Shari's credit card debt and the fact
Speaker 1: that she didn't pay her car loans or even the
Speaker 1: rent on her RV, and then there was this. Suri
Speaker 1: also told the investigators that she had removed eighty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in cash from her parents' home, but she didn't
Speaker 1: tell this to police until three days after the murders.
Speaker 3: Jesse and Sherrie involvement couldn't be ruled out.
Speaker 1: Jesse and Suri told detectives that they were at a
Speaker 1: local casino on the night of the murders.
Speaker 3: But thought there was some conflicting statements between Shari and Jesse.
Speaker 1: The triple murder that rocked the close knit village of
Speaker 1: El Rancho turned friends into enemies, families into suspects.
Speaker 6: At the time, there was a lot of speculation about
Speaker 6: her and her husband and whether or not they had
Speaker 6: been involved in this crime.
Speaker 1: Alex Tomlin worked as a reporter for a local TV station.
Speaker 6: The case was a little bit cold at this time,
Speaker 6: and we got a call saying, she's willing to talk
Speaker 6: to you.
Speaker 1: Shari was on the defensive and wanting to publicly clear
Speaker 1: her name, so she scheduled an interview with Alex.
Speaker 6: Cheri offered to show me the home where her parents
Speaker 6: had lived and had been murdered.
Speaker 1: Alex met Shari at her home and interviewed her just
Speaker 1: steps away from where Lloyd, Dixie and Stephen were murdered.
Speaker 6: I remember distinctly being in the kitchen and we were
Speaker 6: talking about her brother, Stephen, and you know, when the
Speaker 6: autopsy came out, he had held about a dozen or
Speaker 6: so blows. I think about maybe seventeen blows. And I
Speaker 6: remember her talking to me about how he was such
Speaker 6: a big guy, that he was kind of a teddy bear,
Speaker 6: but he was such a big guy, and it's such
Speaker 6: a weird sensation. We were standing in someone's kitchen and
Speaker 6: you're seeing marks on the floor and you know their
Speaker 6: body had been there. And you know, she cried a
Speaker 6: lot during that interview, understandably, but really thinking about this
Speaker 6: young man coming out who didn't really have the cognitive
Speaker 6: ability to understand what was happening, you know, very much
Speaker 6: still a child kind of in a man's body, and
Speaker 6: to have that many blows to him. My only thought
Speaker 6: in that moment was he must have been trying to
Speaker 6: protect his parents. He must have been really scared, he
Speaker 6: must have really fought back, and that was just so sad.
Speaker 6: It was so sad to think about those final moments
Speaker 6: and what that must have been like for him, either
Speaker 6: knowing that he was dying or knowing that something had
Speaker 6: happened to his parents. It was just really traumatic standing
Speaker 6: there and knowing this is where he died, and he
Speaker 6: died in such a violent way.
Speaker 1: With the cameras rolling. Alex asked Shari about the investigation.
Speaker 1: I believe they're going through it with tunnel vision, just
Speaker 1: specifically focusing on us in instead of the real people.
Speaker 5: Or I know it had to be people. How could
Speaker 5: one person do.
Speaker 6: That, So it left this very weird sensation in the
Speaker 6: community where some people were still speculating other people really
Speaker 6: believed them. Why would they do this?
Speaker 1: Shari said her parents had life insurance, but she could
Speaker 1: not collect that money since she and her husband were
Speaker 1: considered suspects and without that money, Shuri said they couldn't
Speaker 1: pay their bills and worried their homes would be foreclosed.
Speaker 6: So it was really this sense from her of trying
Speaker 6: to advocate for herself but advocate for her parents and
Speaker 6: her brother to say, I need to know who killed them,
Speaker 6: and at the same time, I need people to know
Speaker 6: it wasn't me. And so that was really what this
Speaker 6: conversation centered around.
Speaker 1: We could lose everything my dad worked so hard for.
Speaker 6: I actually saw like marks on the floor in different
Speaker 6: things like that where this had happened. It was a
Speaker 6: really horrific experience.
Speaker 5: Something has to give. I really do have hope. I
Speaker 5: know this is going to get solved.
Speaker 1: With tears in her eyes, tre then looked into the
Speaker 1: camera to try to clear her name and her husband
Speaker 1: Jesse's as well.
Speaker 6: We had nothing to do with it. My God, that
Speaker 6: was my mom, and my added.
Speaker 4: My little brother.
Speaker 1: It was no secret that the two were being looked
Speaker 1: at in the triple murder, but were they that desperate
Speaker 1: for money that they would murder their own family. Paul
Speaker 1: Shabaz investigated, if you.
Speaker 3: Don't investigate Justsin and Shirby to the fullest, you make
Speaker 3: a very easy argument for a deference attorney to create
Speaker 3: dowder in jury's mind.
Speaker 4: And that's exactly what.
Speaker 3: Have happened if we had not followed up on all
Speaker 3: of the red flags that came up during the course
Speaker 3: of the investigation.
Speaker 1: But as the investigation dragged on, Shari shifted the blame
Speaker 1: back on the state police. She claimed that they botched
Speaker 1: the investigation and said casino security guards or even children
Speaker 1: could have done a better job. Against the advice of
Speaker 1: law enforcement, Shari even set up a po box where
Speaker 1: people could anonymously submit information about who might be responsible.
Speaker 1: A year after the murders, the police promised a press
Speaker 1: conference to share some breaking news on the case, but
Speaker 1: that press conference never happened.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of leads that came in that
Speaker 3: were followed up on, but none of them pouned out.
Speaker 1: A billboard even went up along a local highway with
Speaker 1: a picture of Lloyd, Dixie, and Stephen then offered a
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars reward for information, but still there were
Speaker 1: no arrests.
Speaker 3: That was the hardest part of this case for me
Speaker 3: was knowing that we have not been able to bring
Speaker 3: justice for this family.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just Shari who was pressuring the New
Speaker 1: Mexico State Police. Here's TV reporter Alex Tomlin.
Speaker 6: There was an incredible amount of pressure from that small
Speaker 6: knit community, but also the surrounding communities and pretty much
Speaker 6: all of the state saying you've got to find who
Speaker 6: did this. You could not take a family who more
Speaker 6: people said nice things about and have a more awful
Speaker 6: thing happen to them. I mean, they are bludgeoned to
Speaker 6: death with a pickaxe.
Speaker 1: Publicly, the police didn't reveal much about other potential suspects,
Speaker 1: but behind the scenes it was a different story. Aside
Speaker 1: from Shari and her husband Jesse, investigators interviewed numerous people. Then,
Speaker 1: sixteen months after the murders, a local twenty three year
Speaker 1: old woman named Ashley Roybald got arrested. While she's in custoge,
Speaker 1: she tells the police something astonishing.
Speaker 5: Is it okay to call you Ashley. All right, I
Speaker 5: understand that you know some details.
Speaker 3: I who did?
Speaker 1: Ashley tells detectives that she knows who killed Lloyd Dixie
Speaker 1: and Stephen Ortiz.
Speaker 6: It isn't until Ashley Roibald gets in trouble that all
Speaker 6: of a sudden she's willing to tell police what happened.
Speaker 5: I'll just let you go ahead and tell me the story.
Speaker 6: It was almost like the answer everyone had been waiting for.
Speaker 7: It.
Speaker 1: Ashley Roibald kept quiet for sixteen months. During that time,
Speaker 1: she re juggled losing her mom, dad, and brother well
Speaker 1: being looked at by everyone as a suspect, all while
Speaker 1: she couldn't collect their life insurance money and was scared
Speaker 1: she'd lose everything. But now, sixteen months later, Ashley was
Speaker 1: finally ready to talk.
Speaker 3: Well, this was the turning point in the investigation.
Speaker 1: But would anyone believe Ashley?
Speaker 6: There's things that kind of don't match up their shifting stories.
Speaker 5: We just want the truth.
Speaker 1: Any of the wheels of justice move very slowly, and
Speaker 1: in this case that would prove to be an understatement.
Speaker 6: And I remember thinking, oh God, here we go again.
Speaker 6: This poor family has been through the ring error.
Speaker 5: I would have never suspected that it was going to
Speaker 5: come down to this.
Speaker 1: Find out what Ashley says really happened that night, Part
Speaker 1: two of the Father's Day Murders. That's next time on
Speaker 1: American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by
Speaker 1: emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide
Speaker 1: is hosted and written by me Sloan Glass and is
Speaker 1: a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
Speaker 1: in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
Speaker 1: by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series is also
Speaker 1: written and produced by Todd Ans, with additional writing by
Speaker 1: Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our associate producer is Kristin Melcurie.
Speaker 1: Our iHeart teap is Ali Perry and Jessica Crimecheck. Audio
Speaker 1: editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, Additional editing support from
Speaker 1: Nico Ruka Tanner, Robbins, brit Roebashow, Dave Seya, and Patrick Walsh.
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