November 5, 2024 • 33 mins
Introducing American Homicide. Betrayal host Andrea Gunning, speaks with American Homicide host Sloane Glass about the brand-new podcast.
American Homicide explores mysterious and iconic murder cases from across America. Whether it’s the spacious skies and vast deserts of New Mexico or the backwaters of the Louisiana Bayou, these murders are connected to their settings. Journalist Sloane Glass leads you through each crime with interviews from the victim's family and investigators.
Please take a moment to listen and subscribe to American Homicide by clicking here. You will find American Homicide on the iHeartApp, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad-free, you can sign up for iHeartTrueCrime+, exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Thank you for listening!
American Homicide
S1: E1 – The Father’s Day Murders, Part 1
On Father’s Day 2011, Cherie Ortiz discovered her parents and brother brutally murdered in their home in the quiet village of El Rancho, New Mexico. In the first episode of American Homicide, journalist Sloane Glass unravels the shocking crime that devastated a close-knit community and ignited a search for answers.
To reach out to the American Homicide team, please email us at AmericanHomicidePod@gmail.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
High Betrayal family. It's Andrea Gunning.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I want to introduce you to a new weekly true
crime show that our team at Glass podcast has just launched.
It's called American Homicide and is hosted and produced by
my colleague Sloane Glass, who I have here today.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi Sloan, Hi Andrea.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
You guys may not know this, but Sloane worked on
season two of Betrayals, so she's very close to the
Betrayal team.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It feels very close to my heart. I mean the
highlight for me working on Betrayal was interviewing Aveya for
the show. I'd admired her for a long time as
a listener and then getting the opportunity to sit down
with her that felt so special.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
You know, I think you guys did an incredible job
and they were in great hands with you. And I'm
so curious what made you want to take on a
project like American Homicide.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
What I really love about a Man and Homicide is
how immersive it is. It's not just a retelling. It's
a re examination of infamous true crime stories through first
hand accounts. You are hearing from law enforcement, who is
behind the investigations. You are hearing from lawyers, you are
(01:18):
hearing from judges, you are hearing from victims and their
friends and family. And I think what makes it so
significant and special really plays off of when you are
covering a story. It can be the same crime in
a different location and it will have a totally different
impact depending on the community. I learned this as a
(01:41):
local news reporter and later as a national news reporter,
that you are dealing with very different circumstances wherever you
are in the country. When a crime takes place in
let's say a small town. What comes to mind for
me in my personal experience as a journalist, I think
of in Delphi, Indiana, there was a case that had
(02:02):
gone cold for six years, two girls had been killed,
and it was a town of thirteen hundred people. That's
different from when a crime like that happens in a city.
The first story that we have in American homicide, it
made me feel that same way.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So on the feed, we're sharing an episode of American
homicide called The Father's Day Murders. Can you tell us
a little bit about what happens?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
The episode is called The Father's Day Murders. Now you
just have to imagine it's Father's Day. You go to
your parents' house for dinner, You open the door and
you find your mom, dad, and brother beat in to death.
And that's what happened to a woman in the small
town of l Rancho, New Mexico. The main suspect for
a substantial amount of time was the daughter who had
(02:48):
found her family. It just leaves you wondering what was
going on here. Someone must know something.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
And they're in the community, and they're in.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
The community, and this is a woman who had to
fight to find answers to what exactly happened to her family,
and meanwhile everyone is looking at her like she was involved.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I'm so excited for this series, Loan. You're phenomenal. The
storytelling is fantastic. The episodes that I have heard, you
are just at every twist and turn, just on the
edge of your seat, and I don't doubt that the
betrayal audience is going to love it. So without further ado,
here's American Homicide Father's Day Murders, Part one, benefing on ways.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It was Father's Day twenty eleven when Charie or Tease
walked into her parents' home and found the bodies of
her mother and.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Father, they had been shot in the head, and it
occurred sometime ear you're in the day I just walked.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
The brutality was unspeakable.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
The hunt to find the killer would tear the community
apart and devastate cherif.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
I really do have hope this is going to get solved.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
My name is Sloane Glass. I'm a journalist who covered
the Long Island serial killer, the Delphi, Indiana murders, and
many other high profile true crime cases. And now I'm
the host of American Homicide, a podcast where we take
you across the country to investigate some of America's deadliest crimes.
(04:29):
We'll explore how these murders are shaped by their unique landscapes,
and how these tragedies have shaped the fabric of these
American communities forever. Today we're in the tiny village of
al Rancho, New Mexico, for part one of the Father's
Day Murders on American Homicide. As a note, this podcast
(04:51):
contains subject matter which may not be suitable for all audiences.
Discretion is advised. I had a picture for you. Santa Fe,
New Mexico, is called the city Different for its rich
culture and diverse community. Native American ancestries blend with Spanish
culture in a state with one of America's richest landscapes.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
Northern New Mexico in particular, it's a very unique place.
It's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Alex Tomlin was a local TV news reporter who lives
in the area.
Speaker 6 (05:23):
It has impeccable weather and the mountains are incredible.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
The region is home to natural hot springs and wild rivers.
Speaker 6 (05:30):
You can drive an hour north and go whitewater rafting,
or you can go down to white Sands and enjoy that.
But kind of on the outskirts of Santa Fe, you
get a lot of the smaller communities.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And one such place is the tiny village of El Rancho.
The predominantly Hispanic community is about twenty miles from Santa
Fe and is built around co op farming and churches.
Speaker 6 (05:54):
It's a lot of people who have kind of grown there,
have families there, kind of all know each other.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
But it's also a desolate place.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
Well.
Speaker 6 (06:01):
One of the things about New Mexico is it's so open.
When you go to someone's home, often they have a
significant sized property. There's not neighbors very close.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And even though the homes are all spread out across
the desert.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
Everyone kind of knows each other that there is an
interesting dynamic here. As much as it's known for its beauty,
is also known for the crime.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
The tragic murders on Father's Day twenty eleven would stretch
the fabric of l Rancho to its limits.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
So June eighteen, twenty eleven, seemed like any normal night.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Shari or Ties had dinner plants with her parents, Lloyd
and Dixie.
Speaker 6 (06:39):
Shari or Tees. She lived on the property with the Ortizes.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Her parents and brother lived in a large one story house,
and Schari and her husband lived in an RV next door.
Even though there's a fence around their spacious property, the
family had an open door policy.
Speaker 6 (06:57):
Anyone could come in, have dinner at their table or
in time with them. They were just kind of a
good family in this community that was very tight knit.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Lloyd Ortiz was a man who loved to use his hands.
He owned his own ceramic tile business. His craftsmanship turned
up in homes and even luxury hotels all over northern
New Mexico.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
He was an incredibly loving father, a hard working man
who provided for his family. His wife, Dixie.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
They sound like a perfect pair. Dixie was passionate about
working with the elderly and the disabled. She was an
activities director at a local retirement home, and she fostered
children with special needs.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
They took in a child who had chicken baby syndrome
and adopted him as their own raise That child. Loved
that child.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
That child's name was Stephen. Steven had special needs from
his early life injuries. His brain never developed beyond that
of a nine year old, but he matured into a
young man that his family called the gentle Giant. He
loved to play drums, ride his ATV, and fish with Lloyd.
Speaker 6 (08:04):
They were just really giving, loving people, burying northern New Mexico,
hard working, you know, love the land, love the culture
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Since it was Father's Day, Charie or Tease, whipped up
a plate of homemade enchiladas for dinner. It was her gift.
Just before seven o'clock that evening, she took them and
walked next door to her parents. Even though it was June,
white Christmas icicle lights still hung on the gutters of
her parents' home. Inside, the walls were adorned with crucifixes
(08:35):
and some of Lloyd's handmade tiles.
Speaker 6 (08:39):
Cherie said she walks in and realizes something's very wrong.
She found her mother in bed. Her mother's head was
pretty damaged, thought someone maybe had shot her. She then
went into the kitchen area and found what she thought
was her father on the kitchen floor. He was just
(09:00):
so impacted by what was used against them. There's these
two bodies, there's blood everywhere. She goes screaming out of
the house and for her husband. Again, they lived on
the property, so it was pretty close.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Sarie's husband, Jesse, ran right over to investigate.
Speaker 6 (09:19):
Her husband then comes in the house and he realizes
it's not her father on the kitchen floor, it's actually
her brother, and that's when he starts searching around and
finds her father outside right outside the back door, kind
of in the field there.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Lloyd's Bonnie was found on a cinderblock path that connected
the Ortis back porch to their fence in York. He
was face down, wearing only his underwear. His eyeglasses sat
just inches away. Covering his head was some green shrubbery.
By now.
Speaker 7 (09:51):
Shari was on the phone then onwards, Oh.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
What Cheri frantically told the nine on one operator that
her mother, father, and brother were shot to death.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
I just everybody shot. My god, and my mom's still.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
This was Scherie's second attempt at a nine on one call,
since Uri and her parents' homes were out in the
middle of the desert. Her soele reception was body. Imagine
the panic, the fear that your call would drop again
when you're trying to get emergency help for your family.
And she didn't know where the perpetrator was or if
(10:42):
they were still on the property.
Speaker 8 (10:44):
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I
am freaking out. I can't even walk over there because
I don't service.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And then there's another problem. Al Rancho is way off
the beaten path, which delays the response time forlaw enforcement.
Speaker 8 (11:01):
Oh my god, you have to hurry.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
With no local police force of their own, the New
Mexico State Police were dispatched to investigate.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
The already dead. I can't believe I didn't come checker
here this morning. Oh my god, Oh my god, oh
my god. Why you know, because I didn't have money
for a father's sacred but I didn't want to go
into I finished for him. Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Charise stayed on the phone for nearly twenty minutes before officers.
Speaker 8 (11:36):
Arrived, so I kind of get I'm going to walk
to the gate and way to them. I'm my two
nervous just sitting in my yard.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
My name is Paul Chavis.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I was a member of the full Time Crimes Unit
as an agent with the New Mexico State Police.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
The two hundred homicide cases Officer Chavez worked in his
career didn't prepare him for what he saw inside the
Ortisa house.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
In this case, the magnitude of the violence evolved was
the worst that I had seen in my career.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
The brutality was unspeakable.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Chariotise had found her parents and her adopted stepbrother.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Dead within the residence.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
She reported that they had been shot in the head,
and it occurred sometime earlier in the day.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
It turns out that although chari said she didn't see
who committed these murders, she did hear something that there was.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Reportedly gunshots heard the previous night in the area.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Now, hearing gunshots isn't entirely unusual in New Mexico, but
Cheri and her parents' homes sit on a dead end
street in the rural New Mexico Desert. It's a remote
area with unpaved roads and no nearby street lights. Their
nearest neighbor is about fifty yards up the road. Inside
(12:56):
the Orties' home, Officer Chavez and his team assess the situation.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Once I enter into the residence.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
There is a master bedroom immediately to the left as
you walk in, and that is where the first victim,
identified is Dixie. Your teas is in her bed and
her nightgown under the blankets.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Dixie was found clutching her pillow.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Her upper extremities and her head is completely saturated in
blood where she had sustained a parent trauma. From that bedroom,
there is a drip trail which extends to the kitchen
area where we have a second victim, a young man
identified as Stephen Ortiz.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Stephen, her adopted brother, lay face down in a pool
of blood, wearing only his underwear. Police noted that he
took the brunt of the attack.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
This scene was absolutely brutal.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Stephen was twenty one years old at the time of
his murder, and based on his injuries, police believed that
he tried to fight off the killer before ultimately losing
that battle.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
The blood continued from that area out the back door,
where the third victim, Loitertise, was found outside the back porch.
There was a significant amount of bloodshed, indicating that he
did sustained some massive trauma. And there was also shrubbery
from a nearby bush that was covering his head.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
That's two bloodied bodies inside the home and one outside.
And then something else stood out to law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
There was a small marijuana grow on the property. It
was fenced off and pad locked. They did have a
medical marijuana card for Stephen for some of the medical
conditions he.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Had, but none of the seventeen marijuana plants appeared to
be disturbed. In fact, nothing seemed to be stolen or
even out of place. On the kitchen table and plain
view sat Lloyd's wallet containing hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
This did not look like a robbery.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
It looked like a case of anger, a lot of
anger based on the brutality that occurred.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
It was a father's stay too for get for residents
in this tiny suburb of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lloyd
and Dixie Ortiz were pillars of the tight knit l
rancho community. They were quick to lend a helping hand
to others in need. So who was angry enough to
harm them and why Shuri Orties lived in an RV
(15:33):
right next door to her parents house on the same property.
Both home sat on a sprawling lot surrounded by hills
in the dusty l Rancho, New Mexico Desert. On the
evening of Father's Day twenty eleven, Shuri walked into her
parents house and found her mother, father, and brother savagely murdered.
Like many others in the community, Pastor John Trujillo was
(15:57):
in shock.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
I get a phone call. They call me PJ. Pastor
John says, PJ. They found Stephen, Lloyd and Dixie dead.
And I said, what are you talking about? Was a
car accident? What happened? He says, no, they're it seems
like they were murdered in their home. You need to
(16:18):
get down here right away. And as I drive up,
the community is already showing up. The state police are there.
And about that time, Shari made her way out and
she was just in tears, in tears and tears, and
she's Pastor John, my family's dead, my family's dead. Somebody
murdered my family, somebody killed my family. How do you
(16:40):
handle that? What do you do? I mean, can you
imagine the emotional and physical and just spiritual distraught that
you would face. Nobody can't prepare for that. I don't care.
Nobody's prepared to walk into a scene like that, especially
the daughter. The family was grieving and they were mourning.
(17:03):
It's all Rancho. This isn't supposed to happen in a
community like this. People are speculating that could this happened
from the community. Did somebody come here from somewhere else?
Was it a family member, was it a friend? Was
it a robbery that went wrong? You know why? Why?
It was like, okay, we need some answers.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Since al Rancho didn't have a police force of their own,
the New Mexico State Police handled the investigation by mourning.
The police still didn't know much.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
We're still insure as to what happened out there. The
guys are still working. Its working very.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Hard to determine what exactly happened, but at this point
we still don't know.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Well, how in the world could something like this happened?
You know, one person dead, okay, but when there's three,
it raises a lot a lot of questions.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Police believe that three victims were shot to death inside
their home, but nothing appeared to be missing. Investigators wondered,
if it was a murder, you were a murder. Suicide.
Officer Paul Chavez was one of the first responders.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
My role primarily is to process and document the crime
scene to try and make sense of what occurred there.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
But the severity of the crime scene limited what he
was able to do.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
You can't disturb the body mutch, and with the amount
of bloodshed that was present, we weren't able to assess
the wounds as well as we would like to have
been able to.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
So Originally the police believed all three victims were shot
to death, but the results of the autopsies for each
victim revealed something far more personal.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
That these were, in fact not gunshot wounds. There were
actually lacerations that were penetrating with a blood object.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Clearly something was missing. When the police returned to the
scene of the crime, they found a five pound pick
axe lying on the ground just over the fence of
the adjacent property, and the pick axe contained bloodstains.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
What the pick axe did provide us was DNA from
all three victims, so we unequivocally had our murder weapon.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
However, we were unable to forensically link a suspect to
the pickaxe.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
So what does that mean? A murder weapon with DNA
of the victims but nothing to indicate a suspect.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
It could mean a number of things that maybe they
were wearing gloves, or they covered their handiness some way
or shape or form, and just sometimes the lab just
can't find it. It's not one hundred percent certainty that
they're going to be able to find DNA when something
is touched. There's a chance that we will, but it
doesn't always work out that way.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
So the one thing about the Ortz murder was really
the pressure on the police.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Reporter Alex Tomlin covered the story for a local TV station.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
There was an incredible amount of pressure from that small
knit community, but also the surrounding communities, and so there
was a lot of pressure on them to get who
did it, make it a clean investigation, and let's get
this person behind bars. And I'm sure at times that
pressure was overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
The people of l Rancho couldn't shake the fear that
they could be next.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
Nobody wants to think that they're going to go to
sleep and somebody who's pick axed a couple and their
son to death is going to come into their home next.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
They even refuse to talk to TV reporters, not because
they felt pastored, but they were fearful of their own safety.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
And that's the other terrifying thing. Think about the strength
it takes to push that pick axe back multiple times
and pick act someone to death. That is cold blooded,
that is calculated. That is incredibly scary for a community
because that person is dangerous. You know, when you can't
(20:37):
easily tie up a case like this, when you can't say, oh, it's,
you know, a scorned lover, or it's, you know, a
drug deal gone wrong, or different things like that, then
it becomes a well, in my next you want to
find who did this because you don't want the community
looking at you and saying, what are you doing? Why
aren't you protecting us? Why don't you have the answers?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
With no suspects a weapon and murder seeing free of
any DNA, investigators started to look at the person who
first discovered the bodies. That person was Shuri or Tease.
Speaker 6 (21:09):
When something this horrific happens, the community wants answers and
they want them quickly, right, So you want to be
able to tie a nice bow on this thing and
be done with it and Sharien her husband seemed like
that nice bow. They lived on the property. You could
come up with a motive.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
The police wondered if Shari and her husband, Jesse knew
more than they were saying, especially after they listened back
to Shari's original LIMO one call.
Speaker 6 (21:33):
She's very frantic in that nine one one call. As
you can hear. She made some comments on that nine
one one call about you know, they must have been
shot because of how they looked.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
I just talked.
Speaker 8 (21:51):
Shot.
Speaker 6 (21:56):
It wasn't later until the Office of the Medical Investigator
determined that actually they had been pick axed to death.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
And you have no idea who would have done that,
anybody around them.
Speaker 8 (22:13):
Oh my god, they were such good people. Oh my god,
my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god,
oh my god. We have to get hurry.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Desperate and upset. Schari spent seventeen minutes on that nine
on one call, but as investigators listened back, they zeroed
in on a comment Chari said, now listen closely to
what CHERI told the operator. So Chari said her parents
had been dead since that morning. How did she know
(22:42):
that and why didn't she call nine one one till
seven that evening.
Speaker 8 (22:48):
I can't believe I didn't come check earlier this morning.
Oh my god, Oh my god, oh my god. Why
you know, because I didn't have money for a father's sake,
I didn't want to go into I finished and up
for him.
Speaker 6 (23:03):
They one hundred percent thought she was a main suspect.
Speaker 8 (23:07):
I can't believe this is happening.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
When Lloyd Dixie and Stephen Ortiz were brutally murdered in
their l Rancho home, their daughter Sharie and her husband
Jesse appeared to investigators to be the only people with
motive and the access to execute such a violent crime.
For months, Shari and Jesse felt the stairs and heard
the whispers. Their pastor, John Truhillo, tried to be the
(23:44):
voice of reason.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
I think when you have to go through that like
Jesse and Sharie did, I think it was just a
reassurance that said, listen, you know you need to do this,
You need to go through this. Just cooperate with the
state police investigators, whatever you need to do, because it's
just a process of elimination. They're looking for answers just
as much as everybody else's, and they need a starting
point somewhere, just go through the process, answer the questions,
(24:09):
be honest, be truthful, and let them eliminate you, and
then they can move forward from there.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
So there were a number of red flags that required
us to investigate Sherry and just to the fullest.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
State Police Agent Paul Chavez told the difficult line of
questioning a mourning Shari.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Could family gain from the death of the victim? Sure,
they kind of there is insurance insurance policies in place,
or is there property a place? Is there something to
be gained? That's definitely something that was going to be
looked at.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Investigators asked about Shari's credit card debt and the fact
that she didn't pay her car loans or even the
rent on her RV, and then there was this. Suri
also told the investigators that she had removed eighty thousand
dollars in cash from her parents' home, but she didn't
tell this to police until three days after the murders.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Jesse and Sherrie involvement couldn't be ruled out.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Jesse and Suri told detectives that they were at a
local casino on the night of the murders.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
But thought there was some conflicting statements between Shari and Jesse.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
The triple murder that rocked the close knit village of
El Rancho turned friends into enemies, families into suspects.
Speaker 6 (25:25):
At the time, there was a lot of speculation about
her and her husband and whether or not they had
been involved in this crime.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Alex Tomlin worked as a reporter for a local TV station.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
The case was a little bit cold at this time,
and we got a call saying, she's willing to talk
to you.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Shari was on the defensive and wanting to publicly clear
her name, so she scheduled an interview with Alex.
Speaker 6 (25:48):
Cheri offered to show me the home where her parents
had lived and had been murdered.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Alex met Shari at her home and interviewed her just
steps away from where Lloyd, Dixie and Stephen were murdered.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
I remember distinctly being in the kitchen and we were
talking about her brother, Stephen, and you know, when the
autopsy came out, he had held about a dozen or
so blows. I think about maybe seventeen blows. And I
remember her talking to me about how he was such
a big guy, that he was kind of a teddy bear,
but he was such a big guy, and it's such
(26:22):
a weird sensation. We were standing in someone's kitchen and
you're seeing marks on the floor and you know their
body had been there. And you know, she cried a
lot during that interview, understandably, but really thinking about this
young man coming out who didn't really have the cognitive
ability to understand what was happening, you know, very much
still a child kind of in a man's body, and
(26:43):
to have that many blows to him. My only thought
in that moment was he must have been trying to
protect his parents. He must have been really scared, he
must have really fought back, and that was just so sad.
It was so sad to think about those final moments
and what that must have been like for him, either
(27:06):
knowing that he was dying or knowing that something had
happened to his parents. It was just really traumatic standing
there and knowing this is where he died, and he
died in such a violent way.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
With the cameras rolling. Alex asked Shari about the investigation.
I believe they're going through it with tunnel vision, just
specifically focusing on us in instead of the real people.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
Or I know it had to be people. How could
one person do.
Speaker 6 (27:32):
That, So it left this very weird sensation in the
community where some people were still speculating other people really
believed them. Why would they do this?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Shari said her parents had life insurance, but she could
not collect that money since she and her husband were
considered suspects and without that money, Shuri said they couldn't
pay their bills and worried their homes would be foreclosed.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
So it was really this sense from her of trying
to advocate for herself but advocate for her parents and
her brother to say, I need to know who killed them,
and at the same time, I need people to know
it wasn't me. And so that was really what this
conversation centered around.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
We could lose everything my dad worked so hard for.
Speaker 6 (28:15):
I actually saw like marks on the floor in different
things like that where this had happened. It was a
really horrific experience.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Something has to give. I really do have hope. I
know this is going to get solved.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
With tears in her eyes, tre then looked into the
camera to try to clear her name and her husband
Jesse's as well.
Speaker 6 (28:35):
We had nothing to do with it. My God, that
was my mom, and my added.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
My little brother.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
It was no secret that the two were being looked
at in the triple murder, but were they that desperate
for money that they would murder their own family. Paul
Shabaz investigated, if you.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Don't investigate Justsin and Shirby to the fullest, you make
a very easy argument for a deference attorney to create
dowder in jury's mind.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
And that's exactly what.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Have happened if we had not followed up on all
of the red flags that came up during the course
of the investigation.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
But as the investigation dragged on, Shari shifted the blame
back on the state police. She claimed that they botched
the investigation and said casino security guards or even children
could have done a better job. Against the advice of
law enforcement, Shari even set up a po box where
people could anonymously submit information about who might be responsible.
(29:35):
A year after the murders, the police promised a press
conference to share some breaking news on the case, but
that press conference never happened.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
There was a lot of leads that came in that
were followed up on, but none of them pouned out.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
A billboard even went up along a local highway with
a picture of Lloyd, Dixie, and Stephen then offered a
one thousand dollars reward for information, but still there were
no arrests.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
That was the hardest part of this case for me
was knowing that we have not been able to bring
justice for this family.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
And it wasn't just Shari who was pressuring the New
Mexico State Police. Here's TV reporter Alex Tomlin.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
There was an incredible amount of pressure from that small
knit community, but also the surrounding communities and pretty much
all of the state saying you've got to find who
did this. You could not take a family who more
people said nice things about and have a more awful
thing happen to them. I mean, they are bludgeoned to
death with a pickaxe.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Publicly, the police didn't reveal much about other potential suspects,
but behind the scenes it was a different story. Aside
from Shari and her husband Jesse, investigators interviewed numerous people. Then,
sixteen months after the murders, a local twenty three year
old woman named Ashley Roybald got arrested. While she's in custoge,
(31:00):
she tells the police something astonishing.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Is it okay to call you Ashley. All right, I
understand that you know some details.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I who did?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Ashley tells detectives that she knows who killed Lloyd Dixie
and Stephen Ortiz.
Speaker 6 (31:16):
It isn't until Ashley Roibald gets in trouble that all
of a sudden she's willing to tell police what happened.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
I'll just let you go ahead and tell me the story.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
It was almost like the answer everyone had been waiting for.
Speaker 7 (31:26):
It.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Ashley Roibald kept quiet for sixteen months. During that time,
she re juggled losing her mom, dad, and brother well
being looked at by everyone as a suspect, all while
she couldn't collect their life insurance money and was scared
she'd lose everything. But now, sixteen months later, Ashley was
(31:47):
finally ready to talk.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Well, this was the turning point in the investigation.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
But would anyone believe Ashley?
Speaker 6 (31:55):
There's things that kind of don't match up their shifting stories.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
We just want the truth.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Any of the wheels of justice move very slowly, and
in this case that would prove to be an understatement.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
And I remember thinking, oh God, here we go again.
This poor family has been through the ring error.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
I would have never suspected that it was going to
come down to this.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Find out what Ashley says really happened that night, Part
two of the Father's Day Murders. That's next time on
American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by
emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
(32:37):
That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide
is hosted and written by me Sloan Glass and is
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series is also
(32:58):
written and produced by Todd Ans, with additional writing by
Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our associate producer is Kristin Melcurie.
Our iHeart teap is Ali Perry and Jessica Crimecheck. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, Additional editing support from
Nico Ruka Tanner, Robbins, brit Roebashow, Dave Seya, and Patrick Walsh.
(33:22):
American Homicide theme song was composed by Oliver Bains of
Noisier Music Library provided by my Music follow American Homicide
on Apple Podcasts, and please rate and review American Homicide.
Your five star review goes a long way towards helping
others find this show. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit
(33:44):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
High Betrayal family. It's Andrea Gunning.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I want to introduce you to a new weekly true
crime show that our team at Glass podcast has just launched.
It's called American Homicide and is hosted and produced by
my colleague Sloane Glass, who I have here today.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi Sloan, Hi Andrea.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
You guys may not know this, but Sloane worked on
season two of Betrayals, so she's very close to the
Betrayal team.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It feels very close to my heart. I mean the
highlight for me working on Betrayal was interviewing Aveya for
the show. I'd admired her for a long time as
a listener and then getting the opportunity to sit down
with her that felt so special.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
You know, I think you guys did an incredible job
and they were in great hands with you. And I'm
so curious what made you want to take on a
project like American Homicide.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
What I really love about a Man and Homicide is
how immersive it is. It's not just a retelling. It's
a re examination of infamous true crime stories through first
hand accounts. You are hearing from law enforcement, who is
behind the investigations. You are hearing from lawyers, you are
(01:18):
hearing from judges, you are hearing from victims and their
friends and family. And I think what makes it so
significant and special really plays off of when you are
covering a story. It can be the same crime in
a different location and it will have a totally different
impact depending on the community. I learned this as a
(01:41):
local news reporter and later as a national news reporter,
that you are dealing with very different circumstances wherever you
are in the country. When a crime takes place in
let's say a small town. What comes to mind for
me in my personal experience as a journalist, I think
of in Delphi, Indiana, there was a case that had
(02:02):
gone cold for six years, two girls had been killed,
and it was a town of thirteen hundred people. That's
different from when a crime like that happens in a city.
The first story that we have in American homicide, it
made me feel that same way.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So on the feed, we're sharing an episode of American
homicide called The Father's Day Murders. Can you tell us
a little bit about what happens?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
The episode is called The Father's Day Murders. Now you
just have to imagine it's Father's Day. You go to
your parents' house for dinner, You open the door and
you find your mom, dad, and brother beat in to death.
And that's what happened to a woman in the small
town of l Rancho, New Mexico. The main suspect for
a substantial amount of time was the daughter who had
(02:48):
found her family. It just leaves you wondering what was
going on here. Someone must know something.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
And they're in the community, and they're in.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
The community, and this is a woman who had to
fight to find answers to what exactly happened to her family,
and meanwhile everyone is looking at her like she was involved.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I'm so excited for this series, Loan. You're phenomenal. The
storytelling is fantastic. The episodes that I have heard, you
are just at every twist and turn, just on the
edge of your seat, and I don't doubt that the
betrayal audience is going to love it. So without further ado,
here's American Homicide Father's Day Murders, Part one, benefing on ways.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It was Father's Day twenty eleven when Charie or Tease
walked into her parents' home and found the bodies of
her mother and.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Father, they had been shot in the head, and it
occurred sometime ear you're in the day I just walked.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
The brutality was unspeakable.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
The hunt to find the killer would tear the community
apart and devastate cherif.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
I really do have hope this is going to get solved.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
My name is Sloane Glass. I'm a journalist who covered
the Long Island serial killer, the Delphi, Indiana murders, and
many other high profile true crime cases. And now I'm
the host of American Homicide, a podcast where we take
you across the country to investigate some of America's deadliest crimes.
(04:29):
We'll explore how these murders are shaped by their unique landscapes,
and how these tragedies have shaped the fabric of these
American communities forever. Today we're in the tiny village of
al Rancho, New Mexico, for part one of the Father's
Day Murders on American Homicide. As a note, this podcast
(04:51):
contains subject matter which may not be suitable for all audiences.
Discretion is advised. I had a picture for you. Santa Fe,
New Mexico, is called the city Different for its rich
culture and diverse community. Native American ancestries blend with Spanish
culture in a state with one of America's richest landscapes.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
Northern New Mexico in particular, it's a very unique place.
It's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Alex Tomlin was a local TV news reporter who lives
in the area.
Speaker 6 (05:23):
It has impeccable weather and the mountains are incredible.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
The region is home to natural hot springs and wild rivers.
Speaker 6 (05:30):
You can drive an hour north and go whitewater rafting,
or you can go down to white Sands and enjoy that.
But kind of on the outskirts of Santa Fe, you
get a lot of the smaller communities.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And one such place is the tiny village of El Rancho.
The predominantly Hispanic community is about twenty miles from Santa
Fe and is built around co op farming and churches.
Speaker 6 (05:54):
It's a lot of people who have kind of grown there,
have families there, kind of all know each other.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
But it's also a desolate place.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
Well.
Speaker 6 (06:01):
One of the things about New Mexico is it's so open.
When you go to someone's home, often they have a
significant sized property. There's not neighbors very close.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And even though the homes are all spread out across
the desert.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
Everyone kind of knows each other that there is an
interesting dynamic here. As much as it's known for its beauty,
is also known for the crime.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
The tragic murders on Father's Day twenty eleven would stretch
the fabric of l Rancho to its limits.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
So June eighteen, twenty eleven, seemed like any normal night.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Shari or Ties had dinner plants with her parents, Lloyd
and Dixie.
Speaker 6 (06:39):
Shari or Tees. She lived on the property with the Ortizes.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Her parents and brother lived in a large one story house,
and Schari and her husband lived in an RV next door.
Even though there's a fence around their spacious property, the
family had an open door policy.
Speaker 6 (06:57):
Anyone could come in, have dinner at their table or
in time with them. They were just kind of a
good family in this community that was very tight knit.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Lloyd Ortiz was a man who loved to use his hands.
He owned his own ceramic tile business. His craftsmanship turned
up in homes and even luxury hotels all over northern
New Mexico.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
He was an incredibly loving father, a hard working man
who provided for his family. His wife, Dixie.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
They sound like a perfect pair. Dixie was passionate about
working with the elderly and the disabled. She was an
activities director at a local retirement home, and she fostered
children with special needs.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
They took in a child who had chicken baby syndrome
and adopted him as their own raise That child. Loved
that child.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
That child's name was Stephen. Steven had special needs from
his early life injuries. His brain never developed beyond that
of a nine year old, but he matured into a
young man that his family called the gentle Giant. He
loved to play drums, ride his ATV, and fish with Lloyd.
Speaker 6 (08:04):
They were just really giving, loving people, burying northern New Mexico,
hard working, you know, love the land, love the culture
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Since it was Father's Day, Charie or Tease, whipped up
a plate of homemade enchiladas for dinner. It was her gift.
Just before seven o'clock that evening, she took them and
walked next door to her parents. Even though it was June,
white Christmas icicle lights still hung on the gutters of
her parents' home. Inside, the walls were adorned with crucifixes
(08:35):
and some of Lloyd's handmade tiles.
Speaker 6 (08:39):
Cherie said she walks in and realizes something's very wrong.
She found her mother in bed. Her mother's head was
pretty damaged, thought someone maybe had shot her. She then
went into the kitchen area and found what she thought
was her father on the kitchen floor. He was just
(09:00):
so impacted by what was used against them. There's these
two bodies, there's blood everywhere. She goes screaming out of
the house and for her husband. Again, they lived on
the property, so it was pretty close.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Sarie's husband, Jesse, ran right over to investigate.
Speaker 6 (09:19):
Her husband then comes in the house and he realizes
it's not her father on the kitchen floor, it's actually
her brother, and that's when he starts searching around and
finds her father outside right outside the back door, kind
of in the field there.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Lloyd's Bonnie was found on a cinderblock path that connected
the Ortis back porch to their fence in York. He
was face down, wearing only his underwear. His eyeglasses sat
just inches away. Covering his head was some green shrubbery.
By now.
Speaker 7 (09:51):
Shari was on the phone then onwards, Oh.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
What Cheri frantically told the nine on one operator that
her mother, father, and brother were shot to death.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
I just everybody shot. My god, and my mom's still.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
This was Scherie's second attempt at a nine on one call,
since Uri and her parents' homes were out in the
middle of the desert. Her soele reception was body. Imagine
the panic, the fear that your call would drop again
when you're trying to get emergency help for your family.
And she didn't know where the perpetrator was or if
(10:42):
they were still on the property.
Speaker 8 (10:44):
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I
am freaking out. I can't even walk over there because
I don't service.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And then there's another problem. Al Rancho is way off
the beaten path, which delays the response time forlaw enforcement.
Speaker 8 (11:01):
Oh my god, you have to hurry.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
With no local police force of their own, the New
Mexico State Police were dispatched to investigate.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
The already dead. I can't believe I didn't come checker
here this morning. Oh my god, Oh my god, oh
my god. Why you know, because I didn't have money
for a father's sacred but I didn't want to go
into I finished for him. Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Charise stayed on the phone for nearly twenty minutes before officers.
Speaker 8 (11:36):
Arrived, so I kind of get I'm going to walk
to the gate and way to them. I'm my two
nervous just sitting in my yard.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
My name is Paul Chavis.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I was a member of the full Time Crimes Unit
as an agent with the New Mexico State Police.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
The two hundred homicide cases Officer Chavez worked in his
career didn't prepare him for what he saw inside the
Ortisa house.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
In this case, the magnitude of the violence evolved was
the worst that I had seen in my career.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
The brutality was unspeakable.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Chariotise had found her parents and her adopted stepbrother.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Dead within the residence.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
She reported that they had been shot in the head,
and it occurred sometime earlier in the day.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
It turns out that although chari said she didn't see
who committed these murders, she did hear something that there was.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Reportedly gunshots heard the previous night in the area.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Now, hearing gunshots isn't entirely unusual in New Mexico, but
Cheri and her parents' homes sit on a dead end
street in the rural New Mexico Desert. It's a remote
area with unpaved roads and no nearby street lights. Their
nearest neighbor is about fifty yards up the road. Inside
(12:56):
the Orties' home, Officer Chavez and his team assess the situation.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Once I enter into the residence.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
There is a master bedroom immediately to the left as
you walk in, and that is where the first victim,
identified is Dixie. Your teas is in her bed and
her nightgown under the blankets.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Dixie was found clutching her pillow.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Her upper extremities and her head is completely saturated in
blood where she had sustained a parent trauma. From that bedroom,
there is a drip trail which extends to the kitchen
area where we have a second victim, a young man
identified as Stephen Ortiz.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Stephen, her adopted brother, lay face down in a pool
of blood, wearing only his underwear. Police noted that he
took the brunt of the attack.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
This scene was absolutely brutal.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Stephen was twenty one years old at the time of
his murder, and based on his injuries, police believed that
he tried to fight off the killer before ultimately losing
that battle.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
The blood continued from that area out the back door,
where the third victim, Loitertise, was found outside the back porch.
There was a significant amount of bloodshed, indicating that he
did sustained some massive trauma. And there was also shrubbery
from a nearby bush that was covering his head.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
That's two bloodied bodies inside the home and one outside.
And then something else stood out to law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
There was a small marijuana grow on the property. It
was fenced off and pad locked. They did have a
medical marijuana card for Stephen for some of the medical
conditions he.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Had, but none of the seventeen marijuana plants appeared to
be disturbed. In fact, nothing seemed to be stolen or
even out of place. On the kitchen table and plain
view sat Lloyd's wallet containing hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
This did not look like a robbery.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
It looked like a case of anger, a lot of
anger based on the brutality that occurred.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
It was a father's stay too for get for residents
in this tiny suburb of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lloyd
and Dixie Ortiz were pillars of the tight knit l
rancho community. They were quick to lend a helping hand
to others in need. So who was angry enough to
harm them and why Shuri Orties lived in an RV
(15:33):
right next door to her parents house on the same property.
Both home sat on a sprawling lot surrounded by hills
in the dusty l Rancho, New Mexico Desert. On the
evening of Father's Day twenty eleven, Shuri walked into her
parents house and found her mother, father, and brother savagely murdered.
Like many others in the community, Pastor John Trujillo was
(15:57):
in shock.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
I get a phone call. They call me PJ. Pastor
John says, PJ. They found Stephen, Lloyd and Dixie dead.
And I said, what are you talking about? Was a
car accident? What happened? He says, no, they're it seems
like they were murdered in their home. You need to
(16:18):
get down here right away. And as I drive up,
the community is already showing up. The state police are there.
And about that time, Shari made her way out and
she was just in tears, in tears and tears, and
she's Pastor John, my family's dead, my family's dead. Somebody
murdered my family, somebody killed my family. How do you
(16:40):
handle that? What do you do? I mean, can you
imagine the emotional and physical and just spiritual distraught that
you would face. Nobody can't prepare for that. I don't care.
Nobody's prepared to walk into a scene like that, especially
the daughter. The family was grieving and they were mourning.
(17:03):
It's all Rancho. This isn't supposed to happen in a
community like this. People are speculating that could this happened
from the community. Did somebody come here from somewhere else?
Was it a family member, was it a friend? Was
it a robbery that went wrong? You know why? Why?
It was like, okay, we need some answers.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Since al Rancho didn't have a police force of their own,
the New Mexico State Police handled the investigation by mourning.
The police still didn't know much.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
We're still insure as to what happened out there. The
guys are still working. Its working very.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Hard to determine what exactly happened, but at this point
we still don't know.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Well, how in the world could something like this happened?
You know, one person dead, okay, but when there's three,
it raises a lot a lot of questions.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Police believe that three victims were shot to death inside
their home, but nothing appeared to be missing. Investigators wondered,
if it was a murder, you were a murder. Suicide.
Officer Paul Chavez was one of the first responders.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
My role primarily is to process and document the crime
scene to try and make sense of what occurred there.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
But the severity of the crime scene limited what he
was able to do.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
You can't disturb the body mutch, and with the amount
of bloodshed that was present, we weren't able to assess
the wounds as well as we would like to have
been able to.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
So Originally the police believed all three victims were shot
to death, but the results of the autopsies for each
victim revealed something far more personal.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
That these were, in fact not gunshot wounds. There were
actually lacerations that were penetrating with a blood object.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Clearly something was missing. When the police returned to the
scene of the crime, they found a five pound pick
axe lying on the ground just over the fence of
the adjacent property, and the pick axe contained bloodstains.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
What the pick axe did provide us was DNA from
all three victims, so we unequivocally had our murder weapon.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
However, we were unable to forensically link a suspect to
the pickaxe.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
So what does that mean? A murder weapon with DNA
of the victims but nothing to indicate a suspect.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
It could mean a number of things that maybe they
were wearing gloves, or they covered their handiness some way
or shape or form, and just sometimes the lab just
can't find it. It's not one hundred percent certainty that
they're going to be able to find DNA when something
is touched. There's a chance that we will, but it
doesn't always work out that way.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
So the one thing about the Ortz murder was really
the pressure on the police.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Reporter Alex Tomlin covered the story for a local TV station.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
There was an incredible amount of pressure from that small
knit community, but also the surrounding communities, and so there
was a lot of pressure on them to get who
did it, make it a clean investigation, and let's get
this person behind bars. And I'm sure at times that
pressure was overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
The people of l Rancho couldn't shake the fear that
they could be next.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
Nobody wants to think that they're going to go to
sleep and somebody who's pick axed a couple and their
son to death is going to come into their home next.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
They even refuse to talk to TV reporters, not because
they felt pastored, but they were fearful of their own safety.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
And that's the other terrifying thing. Think about the strength
it takes to push that pick axe back multiple times
and pick act someone to death. That is cold blooded,
that is calculated. That is incredibly scary for a community
because that person is dangerous. You know, when you can't
(20:37):
easily tie up a case like this, when you can't say, oh, it's,
you know, a scorned lover, or it's, you know, a
drug deal gone wrong, or different things like that, then
it becomes a well, in my next you want to
find who did this because you don't want the community
looking at you and saying, what are you doing? Why
aren't you protecting us? Why don't you have the answers?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
With no suspects a weapon and murder seeing free of
any DNA, investigators started to look at the person who
first discovered the bodies. That person was Shuri or Tease.
Speaker 6 (21:09):
When something this horrific happens, the community wants answers and
they want them quickly, right, So you want to be
able to tie a nice bow on this thing and
be done with it and Sharien her husband seemed like
that nice bow. They lived on the property. You could
come up with a motive.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
The police wondered if Shari and her husband, Jesse knew
more than they were saying, especially after they listened back
to Shari's original LIMO one call.
Speaker 6 (21:33):
She's very frantic in that nine one one call. As
you can hear. She made some comments on that nine
one one call about you know, they must have been
shot because of how they looked.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
I just talked.
Speaker 8 (21:51):
Shot.
Speaker 6 (21:56):
It wasn't later until the Office of the Medical Investigator
determined that actually they had been pick axed to death.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
And you have no idea who would have done that,
anybody around them.
Speaker 8 (22:13):
Oh my god, they were such good people. Oh my god,
my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god,
oh my god. We have to get hurry.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Desperate and upset. Schari spent seventeen minutes on that nine
on one call, but as investigators listened back, they zeroed
in on a comment Chari said, now listen closely to
what CHERI told the operator. So Chari said her parents
had been dead since that morning. How did she know
(22:42):
that and why didn't she call nine one one till
seven that evening.
Speaker 8 (22:48):
I can't believe I didn't come check earlier this morning.
Oh my god, Oh my god, oh my god. Why
you know, because I didn't have money for a father's sake,
I didn't want to go into I finished and up
for him.
Speaker 6 (23:03):
They one hundred percent thought she was a main suspect.
Speaker 8 (23:07):
I can't believe this is happening.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
When Lloyd Dixie and Stephen Ortiz were brutally murdered in
their l Rancho home, their daughter Sharie and her husband
Jesse appeared to investigators to be the only people with
motive and the access to execute such a violent crime.
For months, Shari and Jesse felt the stairs and heard
the whispers. Their pastor, John Truhillo, tried to be the
(23:44):
voice of reason.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
I think when you have to go through that like
Jesse and Sharie did, I think it was just a
reassurance that said, listen, you know you need to do this,
You need to go through this. Just cooperate with the
state police investigators, whatever you need to do, because it's
just a process of elimination. They're looking for answers just
as much as everybody else's, and they need a starting
point somewhere, just go through the process, answer the questions,
(24:09):
be honest, be truthful, and let them eliminate you, and
then they can move forward from there.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
So there were a number of red flags that required
us to investigate Sherry and just to the fullest.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
State Police Agent Paul Chavez told the difficult line of
questioning a mourning Shari.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Could family gain from the death of the victim? Sure,
they kind of there is insurance insurance policies in place,
or is there property a place? Is there something to
be gained? That's definitely something that was going to be
looked at.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Investigators asked about Shari's credit card debt and the fact
that she didn't pay her car loans or even the
rent on her RV, and then there was this. Suri
also told the investigators that she had removed eighty thousand
dollars in cash from her parents' home, but she didn't
tell this to police until three days after the murders.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Jesse and Sherrie involvement couldn't be ruled out.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Jesse and Suri told detectives that they were at a
local casino on the night of the murders.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
But thought there was some conflicting statements between Shari and Jesse.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
The triple murder that rocked the close knit village of
El Rancho turned friends into enemies, families into suspects.
Speaker 6 (25:25):
At the time, there was a lot of speculation about
her and her husband and whether or not they had
been involved in this crime.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Alex Tomlin worked as a reporter for a local TV station.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
The case was a little bit cold at this time,
and we got a call saying, she's willing to talk
to you.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Shari was on the defensive and wanting to publicly clear
her name, so she scheduled an interview with Alex.
Speaker 6 (25:48):
Cheri offered to show me the home where her parents
had lived and had been murdered.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Alex met Shari at her home and interviewed her just
steps away from where Lloyd, Dixie and Stephen were murdered.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
I remember distinctly being in the kitchen and we were
talking about her brother, Stephen, and you know, when the
autopsy came out, he had held about a dozen or
so blows. I think about maybe seventeen blows. And I
remember her talking to me about how he was such
a big guy, that he was kind of a teddy bear,
but he was such a big guy, and it's such
(26:22):
a weird sensation. We were standing in someone's kitchen and
you're seeing marks on the floor and you know their
body had been there. And you know, she cried a
lot during that interview, understandably, but really thinking about this
young man coming out who didn't really have the cognitive
ability to understand what was happening, you know, very much
still a child kind of in a man's body, and
(26:43):
to have that many blows to him. My only thought
in that moment was he must have been trying to
protect his parents. He must have been really scared, he
must have really fought back, and that was just so sad.
It was so sad to think about those final moments
and what that must have been like for him, either
(27:06):
knowing that he was dying or knowing that something had
happened to his parents. It was just really traumatic standing
there and knowing this is where he died, and he
died in such a violent way.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
With the cameras rolling. Alex asked Shari about the investigation.
I believe they're going through it with tunnel vision, just
specifically focusing on us in instead of the real people.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
Or I know it had to be people. How could
one person do.
Speaker 6 (27:32):
That, So it left this very weird sensation in the
community where some people were still speculating other people really
believed them. Why would they do this?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Shari said her parents had life insurance, but she could
not collect that money since she and her husband were
considered suspects and without that money, Shuri said they couldn't
pay their bills and worried their homes would be foreclosed.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
So it was really this sense from her of trying
to advocate for herself but advocate for her parents and
her brother to say, I need to know who killed them,
and at the same time, I need people to know
it wasn't me. And so that was really what this
conversation centered around.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
We could lose everything my dad worked so hard for.
Speaker 6 (28:15):
I actually saw like marks on the floor in different
things like that where this had happened. It was a
really horrific experience.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Something has to give. I really do have hope. I
know this is going to get solved.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
With tears in her eyes, tre then looked into the
camera to try to clear her name and her husband
Jesse's as well.
Speaker 6 (28:35):
We had nothing to do with it. My God, that
was my mom, and my added.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
My little brother.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
It was no secret that the two were being looked
at in the triple murder, but were they that desperate
for money that they would murder their own family. Paul
Shabaz investigated, if you.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Don't investigate Justsin and Shirby to the fullest, you make
a very easy argument for a deference attorney to create
dowder in jury's mind.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
And that's exactly what.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Have happened if we had not followed up on all
of the red flags that came up during the course
of the investigation.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
But as the investigation dragged on, Shari shifted the blame
back on the state police. She claimed that they botched
the investigation and said casino security guards or even children
could have done a better job. Against the advice of
law enforcement, Shari even set up a po box where
people could anonymously submit information about who might be responsible.
(29:35):
A year after the murders, the police promised a press
conference to share some breaking news on the case, but
that press conference never happened.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
There was a lot of leads that came in that
were followed up on, but none of them pouned out.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
A billboard even went up along a local highway with
a picture of Lloyd, Dixie, and Stephen then offered a
one thousand dollars reward for information, but still there were
no arrests.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
That was the hardest part of this case for me
was knowing that we have not been able to bring
justice for this family.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
And it wasn't just Shari who was pressuring the New
Mexico State Police. Here's TV reporter Alex Tomlin.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
There was an incredible amount of pressure from that small
knit community, but also the surrounding communities and pretty much
all of the state saying you've got to find who
did this. You could not take a family who more
people said nice things about and have a more awful
thing happen to them. I mean, they are bludgeoned to
death with a pickaxe.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Publicly, the police didn't reveal much about other potential suspects,
but behind the scenes it was a different story. Aside
from Shari and her husband Jesse, investigators interviewed numerous people. Then,
sixteen months after the murders, a local twenty three year
old woman named Ashley Roybald got arrested. While she's in custoge,
(31:00):
she tells the police something astonishing.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Is it okay to call you Ashley. All right, I
understand that you know some details.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I who did?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Ashley tells detectives that she knows who killed Lloyd Dixie
and Stephen Ortiz.
Speaker 6 (31:16):
It isn't until Ashley Roibald gets in trouble that all
of a sudden she's willing to tell police what happened.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
I'll just let you go ahead and tell me the story.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
It was almost like the answer everyone had been waiting for.
Speaker 7 (31:26):
It.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Ashley Roibald kept quiet for sixteen months. During that time,
she re juggled losing her mom, dad, and brother well
being looked at by everyone as a suspect, all while
she couldn't collect their life insurance money and was scared
she'd lose everything. But now, sixteen months later, Ashley was
(31:47):
finally ready to talk.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Well, this was the turning point in the investigation.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
But would anyone believe Ashley?
Speaker 6 (31:55):
There's things that kind of don't match up their shifting stories.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
We just want the truth.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Any of the wheels of justice move very slowly, and
in this case that would prove to be an understatement.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
And I remember thinking, oh God, here we go again.
This poor family has been through the ring error.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
I would have never suspected that it was going to
come down to this.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Find out what Ashley says really happened that night, Part
two of the Father's Day Murders. That's next time on
American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by
emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
(32:37):
That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide
is hosted and written by me Sloan Glass and is
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced
by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series is also
(32:58):
written and produced by Todd Ans, with additional writing by
Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our associate producer is Kristin Melcurie.
Our iHeart teap is Ali Perry and Jessica Crimecheck. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, Additional editing support from
Nico Ruka Tanner, Robbins, brit Roebashow, Dave Seya, and Patrick Walsh.
(33:22):
American Homicide theme song was composed by Oliver Bains of
Noisier Music Library provided by my Music follow American Homicide
on Apple Podcasts, and please rate and review American Homicide.
Your five star review goes a long way towards helping
others find this show. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit
(33:44):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Andrea Gunning
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