November 5, 2024 • 33 mins
Introducing American Homicide. Burden of Guilt host, Nancy Glass, 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 burden of guilt. Listeners, I'm Nancy Glass. I want
to introduce you to a new weekly show that our
team at Glass Podcast just launched. It's called American Homicide.
This is a weekly true crime series about some of
the country's most bizarre and grizzly murders. The show was
hosted and produced by a very successful journalist, Well I
(00:22):
can honestly say I love because I'm her mother, Slow Glass.
So talk about why American homicide is unique.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
American Homicide is a re examination and a reinvestigation of
infamous true crime stories. You are hearing from law enforcement
who is behind the investigations. You are hearing from lawyers.
You are hearing from judges. You are hearing from victims
(00:52):
and their friends and family. We're starting in New Mexico,
we go back to the East Coast where you and
I or from. We are going to New Orleans to Alaska.
And I think what makes it so significant and special
really plays off of something that you and I both
learned when we were out in the field as journalists
(01:13):
that 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. 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
(01:34):
was a case that had 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. And the first story
that we have in American homicide it made me feel
that same way.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
So Sloan talk about the episode we're going to share.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
The episode that the Burden of Guilt audience is about
to hear 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 beatn to death.
And that's what happened to a woman in the small
town of l Rancho, New Mexico. And this is a
(02:18):
case with no arrest for.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Years, and the daughter was actually a suspect, right.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, The main suspect for a substantial amount of time
was the daughter who had found her family. And this
is a woman who liked Tracy Raquel had to fight
to find answers to what exactly happened to her family,
and meanwhile everyone is looking at her like she was involved.
It just leaves you wondering what was going on here.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Thanks Slow. Here's the first episode of American Homicide, the
Father's Day Murders, Part one.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
On It was Father's Day twenty eleven when Charie or
Teas walked into her parents' home and found the bodies
of her mother and father.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
They had been shot in the head, and it occurred
sometime earlier in the day I just walked. The brutality
was unspeakable.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The hunt to find the killer would tear the community
apart and devastate Cherie.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I really do have hope this is going to get solved.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
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.
(03:55):
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 El Rancho, New Mexico, for part one of the
Father's Day Murders on American Homicide. As a note, this
(04:16):
podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable for
all audiences. Discretion is advised. Let me paint 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
(04:37):
of America's richest landscapes.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Northern New Mexico in particular. It's a very unique place.
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Alex Tomlin was a local TV news reporter who lives
in the area.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
It has impeccable weather and the mountains are incredible.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
The region is home to natural hot springs and wild rivers.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
You can drive an hour north and go whitewater rafting,
or you can and 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 2 (05:06):
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 5 (05:19):
It's a lot of people who have kind of grown there,
have families there, kind of all know each other.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But it's also a desolate place.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
But 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 2 (05:36):
And even though the homes are all spread out across the.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Desert, 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 2 (05:48):
The tragic murders on Father's Day twenty eleven would stretch
the fabric of l Rancho to its limits.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
So June eighteen, twenty eleven, seemed like a normal night.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Shari Orties had dinner plants with her parents, Lloyd and
Dixie Shari Orties.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
She lived on the property with the Ortizes.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Her parents and brother lived in a large one story house,
and Shari 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 5 (06:22):
Anyone could come in have dinner at their table or
spend time with them. They were just kind of a
good family in this community that was very tight knit.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
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 5 (06:43):
He was an incredibly loving father, a hard working man
who provided for his family. His wife, Dixie, they sound
like a perfect pair.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
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 5 (07:03):
They took in a child who had chicken baby syndrome
and adopted him as their own raise that child. Loved
that child.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
That child's name was Stephen. Stephen 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 5 (07:30):
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 2 (07:38):
Since it was Father's Day, Sharie or Teas 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
(08:01):
and some of Lloyd's handmade tiles.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
Cheri 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. The body was
(08:25):
just 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 2 (08:41):
Serie's husband, Jesse, ran right over to investigate.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
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 2 (08:58):
Lloyd's body was found on a cinder block path that
connected the Ortiz back porch to their fenced in yard.
He was face down, wearing only his underwear. His eyeglasses
sat just inches away. Covering his head was some green shrubbery. By.
Now Cherie was on the phone Onways.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
What is your name?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Cheri frantically told the nine on one operator that her mother, father,
and brother were shot to death.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
I just everybody shot my brother and my.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Mom's still 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 cell 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
(10:06):
was or if they were still on the property.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
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 2 (10:18):
And then there's another problem. Now Rancho is way off
the beaten path, which delays the response time for law enforcement.
Oh my god, you have to hurry with no local
police force of their own. The New Mexico State Police
were dispatched to investigate the.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
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 mother's
sacred but I didn't want to go until I finished
the beans up for him. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Charis stayed on the phone for nearly minutes before officers arrived, so.
Speaker 6 (11:03):
I kind of get thet I'm going to watch the
game and late to them. I'm too nervous, just sitting
in my yard.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
My name is Paul Chavez. I was a member of
the full Time Crimes Unit as an agent with the
New Mexico State Police.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
The two hundred homicide cases Officer Chavez worked in his
career didn't prepare him for what he saw inside the
Ortis house.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
In this case, the magnitude of the violence evolved was
the worst that I had seen in my career. The
brutality was unspeakable. Cherryotis had found her parents and her
adopted stepbrother dead within the residence. She reported that they
had been shot in the head, and it had occurred
sometime earlier in the day.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It turns out that although Shari said she didn't see
who committed these murders, she did hear something that there was.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Reportedly gunshots heard the previous night in the air.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Now hearing guntrots 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
(12:21):
the Orties' home, Officer Chavez and his team assess the situation.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Once I enter into the residence. There is a master
bedroom immediately to the left as you walk in, and
that is where the first victim, identified is Dixie or Teas,
is in her bed and her nightgown under the blankets.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Dixie was found clutching her pillow.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Her upper extremities and her head is completely saturated in
blood where she had sustained a parent trauma. From that bedroom,
there's a drip trail which extends to the kitchen area
where we have a second victim, a young man identified
as Stephen Ortez.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
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 3 (13:10):
This scene was absolutely brutal.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
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 (13:24):
The blood continued from that area out the back door,
where the third victim, Loiterties, was found. Outside the back porch,
there was a significant amount of bloodshed, indicating that he
did sustain some massive trauma, and there was also shrubbery
from a nearby bush that was covering his head.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
That's two bloodied bodies inside the home and one outside.
And then something else stood out to law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
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 had.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
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 in plain view sat
Lloyd's wallet containing hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
This did not look like a robbery. It looked like
a case of anger, a lot of anger. Based on
the brutality that occurred.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It was a father's day to forget for residents in
this tiny suburb of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lloyd and
Dixie Ortiz were pillars of the tight knit Laranto community.
They were quick to lend a helping hand to others
in need. So who was angry enough to harm them?
And why?
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Your tees lived in an RV right next door to parents'
house on the same property. Both home sat on a
sprawling lot surrounded by hills in the dusty El Rancho,
New Mexico Desert. On the evening a Father's Day twenty eleven,
Shari walked into her parents' house and found her mother, father,
and brother savagely murdered. Like many others in the community,
(15:20):
Pastor John Trujillo.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
Was in shock.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
I get a phone call. They call me PJ.
Speaker 7 (15:25):
Pastor John says, PJ, they found Stephen Lloyd and Dixie dead.
I said, what are you talking about? Was there cracks
in what happened? He says, no, they're it seems like
they were murdered in their home. You need to get
down here right away. And as I drive up, the
(15:47):
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 past John. My family's dead. My family's dead. Somebody
murdered my family. Somebody killed my family. How do you
handle that?
Speaker 4 (16:06):
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.
Speaker 7 (16:22):
Especially the daughter. The family was grieving and they were mourning.
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?
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Was it a friend? Was it a robbery that went wrong?
Speaker 3 (16:43):
You know why? Why?
Speaker 4 (16:45):
It was like, okay, we need some answers.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
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 (16:57):
We're still unsure as to what happened out there. Guys
are still working, working very hard to determine what exactly happened,
but at this point we still don't know how in
the world could something like this happen.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
You know, one person dead, okay, but when there's three,
it raises a lot, a lot of questions.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
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 or a murder suicide. Officer
Paul Chavez was one of the first responders.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
My role primarily is to process and document the crime scene,
try and make sense of what occurred there.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
But the severity of the crime scene limited what he
was able to do.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
You can't disturb the body much, 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 so.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Originally, the police believed all three victims were shot to death,
but the results of the autopsies for each victim revealed
something far.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
More personal that these were in fact not gunshot wounds.
There were actually lacerations that were penetrating with a blood.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Object 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 contain bloodstains.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
What the pick axe did provide us was DNA from
all three victims, so we unequivocally had our murder weapon. However,
we were unable to forensically link a suspect to the pickaxe.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So what does that mean? A murder weapon with DNA
of the victims but nothing to indicate a suspect.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
It could mean a number of things that maybe they
were wearing gloves, or they cover their hands in 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 5 (19:00):
So the one thing about the Ortez murder was really
the pressure on the police.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Reporter Alex Tomlin covered the story for a local TV station.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
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 2 (19:23):
The people of l Rancho couldn't shake the fear that
they could be next.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
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 2 (19:35):
They even refused to talk to TV reporters, not because
they felt pastored, but they were fearful of their own safety.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
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
(20:03):
easily tie up a case like this, when you can't say, oh,
it's you know, a scorn 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 2 (20:22):
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 Tisse.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
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 2 (20:48):
The police wondered if Shari and her husband, Jesse knew
more than they were saying, especially after they listened back
to Shari's original limomunkle.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
She's very frantic and that nim on 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 6 (21:14):
I just talked everybody shot.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
It wasn't later until the Office of the Medical Investigator
determined that actually they had been pick axed to death.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
And you have no idea who would have done that.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Anybody around.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
Oh my god, they were such good people. Oh theo
my god, Oh my god. Oh my god, Oh my god,
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Hurry.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Desperate and upset, Chari spent seventeen minutes on that NIE
on one call, but as investigators listened back, they zeroed
in on a Commentari said, now, listen closely to what
CHERI told the operator. So Scharie said her parents had
been dead since that morning. How did she know that?
(22:09):
And why didn't she call nine one one till seven
that evening?
Speaker 6 (22:14):
I can't believe I didn't come check earlier this morning.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
Why you know?
Speaker 6 (22:23):
I can because I didn't have money for a father's
sacred but I didn't want to go until I finished
the the issue.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I'm up for him.
Speaker 5 (22:29):
They one percent thought she was a main suspect.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
I can't believe this property.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
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 act to execute such a violent crime.
For months, Shari and Jesse felt the stairs and heard
the whispers. Their pastor, John Truhio, tried to be the
(23:10):
voice of reason.
Speaker 7 (23:12):
I think when you have to go through that, like
Jesse ANSWERI did. I think it was just a reassurance
that says, 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 is, and they need a
starting point somewhere. Just go through the process, answer the questions,
(23:35):
be honest, be truthful, and let them eliminate you, and
then they can move forward from there.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
So there were a number of red flags that required
us to investigate char and just to the fullest.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
State Police Agent Paul Chavez took the difficult line of
questioning a mourning Shari.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Could family gain from the death of the victim? Sure,
they kind of, there is insurance insurance policy the place
or is their property a place? Is there something to
be gained? That's definitely something that was going to be
looked at.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Investigators asked about Scheri'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 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 (24:28):
Jesse and Sherry involvement couldn't be ruled out.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Jesse and Suri told detectives that they were at a
local casino on the night of the murders.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
But thought there was some conflicting statements between Shari and Jesse.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
The triple murder that rocked the close knit village of
El Rancho turned friends into enemies, families into suspects.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
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 2 (24:57):
Alex Tomlin worked as a reporter for a local TV
stationed the.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Case was a little bit cold at this time, and
we got a call saying she's willing to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Shari was on the defensive and wanting to publicly clear
her name, so she scheduled an interview with Alex.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
Scherie offered to show me the home where her parents
had lived and had been murdered.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Alex met Sharie at her home and interviewed her just
steps away from where Lloyd Dixie and Stephen were murdered.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
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
(25:47):
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
(26:09):
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
(26:31):
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 2 (26:42):
With the cameras rolling A like to ask Shari about
the investigation.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
I believe they're going through it with tunnel vision, just
specifically focusing on us in instead of the real people,
or I know.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
It had to be people.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
How could one person do that?
Speaker 5 (26:59):
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 2 (27:08):
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, Suri said they couldn't
pay their bills and worried their homes would be foreclosed.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
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 the
conversation centered around.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
We could lose everything my dad worked so hard for.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
I actually saw like marks on the floor in different
things like that where this had happened. It was a
really horrific experience.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Something has to give. I really do have hope.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I know this is going to get solved.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
With tears in her eyes, Shari then looked into the
camera to try to clear her name and her husband
Jesse's as well.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Well.
Speaker 5 (28:00):
We had nothing to do with it. My god, that
was my mom, and Mike added my little brother.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
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
Schaves investigated, if.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
You don't investigate Justin and Shirvey to the foolest, you
make a very easy argument for a defense attorney to
create dowt in jury's mind. And that's exactly what have
happened if we had not followed up on all of
the red flags that came up during the course of
the investigation.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
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.
(29:00):
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 (29:11):
There was a lot of leads that came in that
were followed off on, but none of them pouned out.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
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 (29:29):
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 2 (29:36):
And it wasn't just Shari who was pressuring the New
Mexico State Police. Here's TV reporter Alex Tomlin.
Speaker 5 (29:43):
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 happened to them. I mean, they are gludgeon to
death with a pickaxe.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
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 pupil Then,
sixteen months after the murders, a local twenty three year
old woman named Ashley Roibald got arrested. While she's in custody,
(30:26):
she tells the police something astonishing, that it okay to.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Call you Ashley, all right, I understand that you know
some details I did.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Ashley tells detectives that she knows who killed Lloyd Dixie
and Stephen Ortiz.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
It isn't until Ashley Roibald gets in trouble that all
of a sudden she's willing to tell police what happened.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
I'll just let you go ahead and tell me the story.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
It was almost like the answer everyone had been waiting for.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
It.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Ashley Roibald kept quiet for sixteen months. During that time,
Shari juggled losing her mom, dad, and brother. We'll be
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 finally
(31:13):
ready to.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Talk, and this was the turning point in the investigation.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
But would anyone believe Ashley?
Speaker 5 (31:20):
There's things that kind of don't match up, there's shifting stories.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
We just want the truth.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
They say the wheels of justice move very slowly, and
in this case, that would prove to be an understatement.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
And I remember thinking, Oh God, here we go again.
This poor family has been through the ring error.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
I would have never suspected that it was going to
come down to this.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Find out what Ashley says really happened that night, and
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.
(32:02):
That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide
is hosted and written by me Sloane 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 Gams. The series is also
(32:23):
written and produced by Todd Gams, with additional writing by
Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our associate producer is Kristin Melcurie,
Our ihearty Is, Ali Perry, and Jessica Crimecheck. Audio editing
and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, Additional editing support from Nico
Ruka Tanner Robbins, brit Robischow, Dave Seya, and Patrick Walsh.
(32:48):
American Homicide's theme song was composed by Oliver Bains of
Neiser 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
(33:09):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts
High burden of guilt. Listeners, I'm Nancy Glass. I want
to introduce you to a new weekly show that our
team at Glass Podcast just launched. It's called American Homicide.
This is a weekly true crime series about some of
the country's most bizarre and grizzly murders. The show was
hosted and produced by a very successful journalist, Well I
(00:22):
can honestly say I love because I'm her mother, Slow Glass.
So talk about why American homicide is unique.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
American Homicide is a re examination and a reinvestigation of
infamous true crime stories. You are hearing from law enforcement
who is behind the investigations. You are hearing from lawyers.
You are hearing from judges. You are hearing from victims
(00:52):
and their friends and family. We're starting in New Mexico,
we go back to the East Coast where you and
I or from. We are going to New Orleans to Alaska.
And I think what makes it so significant and special
really plays off of something that you and I both
learned when we were out in the field as journalists
(01:13):
that 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. 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
(01:34):
was a case that had 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. And the first story
that we have in American homicide it made me feel
that same way.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
So Sloan talk about the episode we're going to share.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
The episode that the Burden of Guilt audience is about
to hear 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 beatn to death.
And that's what happened to a woman in the small
town of l Rancho, New Mexico. And this is a
(02:18):
case with no arrest for.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Years, and the daughter was actually a suspect, right.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, The main suspect for a substantial amount of time
was the daughter who had found her family. And this
is a woman who liked Tracy Raquel had to fight
to find answers to what exactly happened to her family,
and meanwhile everyone is looking at her like she was involved.
It just leaves you wondering what was going on here.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Thanks Slow. Here's the first episode of American Homicide, the
Father's Day Murders, Part one.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
On It was Father's Day twenty eleven when Charie or
Teas walked into her parents' home and found the bodies
of her mother and father.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
They had been shot in the head, and it occurred
sometime earlier in the day I just walked. The brutality
was unspeakable.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The hunt to find the killer would tear the community
apart and devastate Cherie.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I really do have hope this is going to get solved.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
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.
(03:55):
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 El Rancho, New Mexico, for part one of the
Father's Day Murders on American Homicide. As a note, this
(04:16):
podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable for
all audiences. Discretion is advised. Let me paint 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
(04:37):
of America's richest landscapes.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Northern New Mexico in particular. It's a very unique place.
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Alex Tomlin was a local TV news reporter who lives
in the area.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
It has impeccable weather and the mountains are incredible.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
The region is home to natural hot springs and wild rivers.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
You can drive an hour north and go whitewater rafting,
or you can and 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 2 (05:06):
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 5 (05:19):
It's a lot of people who have kind of grown there,
have families there, kind of all know each other.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But it's also a desolate place.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
But 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 2 (05:36):
And even though the homes are all spread out across the.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Desert, 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 2 (05:48):
The tragic murders on Father's Day twenty eleven would stretch
the fabric of l Rancho to its limits.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
So June eighteen, twenty eleven, seemed like a normal night.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Shari Orties had dinner plants with her parents, Lloyd and
Dixie Shari Orties.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
She lived on the property with the Ortizes.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Her parents and brother lived in a large one story house,
and Shari 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 5 (06:22):
Anyone could come in have dinner at their table or
spend time with them. They were just kind of a
good family in this community that was very tight knit.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
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 5 (06:43):
He was an incredibly loving father, a hard working man
who provided for his family. His wife, Dixie, they sound
like a perfect pair.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
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 5 (07:03):
They took in a child who had chicken baby syndrome
and adopted him as their own raise that child. Loved
that child.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
That child's name was Stephen. Stephen 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 5 (07:30):
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 2 (07:38):
Since it was Father's Day, Sharie or Teas 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
(08:01):
and some of Lloyd's handmade tiles.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
Cheri 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. The body was
(08:25):
just 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 2 (08:41):
Serie's husband, Jesse, ran right over to investigate.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
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 2 (08:58):
Lloyd's body was found on a cinder block path that
connected the Ortiz back porch to their fenced in yard.
He was face down, wearing only his underwear. His eyeglasses
sat just inches away. Covering his head was some green shrubbery. By.
Now Cherie was on the phone Onways.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
What is your name?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Cheri frantically told the nine on one operator that her mother, father,
and brother were shot to death.
Speaker 6 (09:39):
I just everybody shot my brother and my.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Mom's still 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 cell 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
(10:06):
was or if they were still on the property.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
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 2 (10:18):
And then there's another problem. Now Rancho is way off
the beaten path, which delays the response time for law enforcement.
Oh my god, you have to hurry with no local
police force of their own. The New Mexico State Police
were dispatched to investigate the.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
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 mother's
sacred but I didn't want to go until I finished
the beans up for him. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Charis stayed on the phone for nearly minutes before officers arrived, so.
Speaker 6 (11:03):
I kind of get thet I'm going to watch the
game and late to them. I'm too nervous, just sitting
in my yard.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
My name is Paul Chavez. I was a member of
the full Time Crimes Unit as an agent with the
New Mexico State Police.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
The two hundred homicide cases Officer Chavez worked in his
career didn't prepare him for what he saw inside the
Ortis house.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
In this case, the magnitude of the violence evolved was
the worst that I had seen in my career. The
brutality was unspeakable. Cherryotis had found her parents and her
adopted stepbrother dead within the residence. She reported that they
had been shot in the head, and it had occurred
sometime earlier in the day.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It turns out that although Shari said she didn't see
who committed these murders, she did hear something that there was.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Reportedly gunshots heard the previous night in the air.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Now hearing guntrots 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
(12:21):
the Orties' home, Officer Chavez and his team assess the situation.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Once I enter into the residence. There is a master
bedroom immediately to the left as you walk in, and
that is where the first victim, identified is Dixie or Teas,
is in her bed and her nightgown under the blankets.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Dixie was found clutching her pillow.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Her upper extremities and her head is completely saturated in
blood where she had sustained a parent trauma. From that bedroom,
there's a drip trail which extends to the kitchen area
where we have a second victim, a young man identified
as Stephen Ortez.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
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 3 (13:10):
This scene was absolutely brutal.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
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 (13:24):
The blood continued from that area out the back door,
where the third victim, Loiterties, was found. Outside the back porch,
there was a significant amount of bloodshed, indicating that he
did sustain some massive trauma, and there was also shrubbery
from a nearby bush that was covering his head.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
That's two bloodied bodies inside the home and one outside.
And then something else stood out to law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
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 had.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
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 in plain view sat
Lloyd's wallet containing hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
This did not look like a robbery. It looked like
a case of anger, a lot of anger. Based on
the brutality that occurred.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It was a father's day to forget for residents in
this tiny suburb of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lloyd and
Dixie Ortiz were pillars of the tight knit Laranto community.
They were quick to lend a helping hand to others
in need. So who was angry enough to harm them?
And why?
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Your tees lived in an RV right next door to parents'
house on the same property. Both home sat on a
sprawling lot surrounded by hills in the dusty El Rancho,
New Mexico Desert. On the evening a Father's Day twenty eleven,
Shari walked into her parents' house and found her mother, father,
and brother savagely murdered. Like many others in the community,
(15:20):
Pastor John Trujillo.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
Was in shock.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
I get a phone call. They call me PJ.
Speaker 7 (15:25):
Pastor John says, PJ, they found Stephen Lloyd and Dixie dead.
I said, what are you talking about? Was there cracks
in what happened? He says, no, they're it seems like
they were murdered in their home. You need to get
down here right away. And as I drive up, the
(15:47):
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 past John. My family's dead. My family's dead. Somebody
murdered my family. Somebody killed my family. How do you
handle that?
Speaker 4 (16:06):
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.
Speaker 7 (16:22):
Especially the daughter. The family was grieving and they were mourning.
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?
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Was it a friend? Was it a robbery that went wrong?
Speaker 3 (16:43):
You know why? Why?
Speaker 4 (16:45):
It was like, okay, we need some answers.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
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 (16:57):
We're still unsure as to what happened out there. Guys
are still working, working very hard to determine what exactly happened,
but at this point we still don't know how in
the world could something like this happen.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
You know, one person dead, okay, but when there's three,
it raises a lot, a lot of questions.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
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 or a murder suicide. Officer
Paul Chavez was one of the first responders.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
My role primarily is to process and document the crime scene,
try and make sense of what occurred there.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
But the severity of the crime scene limited what he
was able to do.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
You can't disturb the body much, 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 so.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Originally, the police believed all three victims were shot to death,
but the results of the autopsies for each victim revealed
something far.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
More personal that these were in fact not gunshot wounds.
There were actually lacerations that were penetrating with a blood.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Object 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 contain bloodstains.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
What the pick axe did provide us was DNA from
all three victims, so we unequivocally had our murder weapon. However,
we were unable to forensically link a suspect to the pickaxe.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So what does that mean? A murder weapon with DNA
of the victims but nothing to indicate a suspect.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
It could mean a number of things that maybe they
were wearing gloves, or they cover their hands in 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 5 (19:00):
So the one thing about the Ortez murder was really
the pressure on the police.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Reporter Alex Tomlin covered the story for a local TV station.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
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 2 (19:23):
The people of l Rancho couldn't shake the fear that
they could be next.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
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 2 (19:35):
They even refused to talk to TV reporters, not because
they felt pastored, but they were fearful of their own safety.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
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
(20:03):
easily tie up a case like this, when you can't say, oh,
it's you know, a scorn 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 2 (20:22):
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 Tisse.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
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 2 (20:48):
The police wondered if Shari and her husband, Jesse knew
more than they were saying, especially after they listened back
to Shari's original limomunkle.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
She's very frantic and that nim on 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 6 (21:14):
I just talked everybody shot.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
It wasn't later until the Office of the Medical Investigator
determined that actually they had been pick axed to death.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
And you have no idea who would have done that.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Anybody around.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
Oh my god, they were such good people. Oh theo
my god, Oh my god. Oh my god, Oh my god,
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Hurry.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Desperate and upset, Chari spent seventeen minutes on that NIE
on one call, but as investigators listened back, they zeroed
in on a Commentari said, now, listen closely to what
CHERI told the operator. So Scharie said her parents had
been dead since that morning. How did she know that?
(22:09):
And why didn't she call nine one one till seven
that evening?
Speaker 6 (22:14):
I can't believe I didn't come check earlier this morning.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
Why you know?
Speaker 6 (22:23):
I can because I didn't have money for a father's
sacred but I didn't want to go until I finished
the the issue.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I'm up for him.
Speaker 5 (22:29):
They one percent thought she was a main suspect.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
I can't believe this property.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
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 act to execute such a violent crime.
For months, Shari and Jesse felt the stairs and heard
the whispers. Their pastor, John Truhio, tried to be the
(23:10):
voice of reason.
Speaker 7 (23:12):
I think when you have to go through that, like
Jesse ANSWERI did. I think it was just a reassurance
that says, 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 is, and they need a
starting point somewhere. Just go through the process, answer the questions,
(23:35):
be honest, be truthful, and let them eliminate you, and
then they can move forward from there.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
So there were a number of red flags that required
us to investigate char and just to the fullest.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
State Police Agent Paul Chavez took the difficult line of
questioning a mourning Shari.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Could family gain from the death of the victim? Sure,
they kind of, there is insurance insurance policy the place
or is their property a place? Is there something to
be gained? That's definitely something that was going to be
looked at.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Investigators asked about Scheri'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 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 (24:28):
Jesse and Sherry involvement couldn't be ruled out.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Jesse and Suri told detectives that they were at a
local casino on the night of the murders.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
But thought there was some conflicting statements between Shari and Jesse.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
The triple murder that rocked the close knit village of
El Rancho turned friends into enemies, families into suspects.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
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 2 (24:57):
Alex Tomlin worked as a reporter for a local TV
stationed the.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Case was a little bit cold at this time, and
we got a call saying she's willing to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Shari was on the defensive and wanting to publicly clear
her name, so she scheduled an interview with Alex.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
Scherie offered to show me the home where her parents
had lived and had been murdered.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Alex met Sharie at her home and interviewed her just
steps away from where Lloyd Dixie and Stephen were murdered.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
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
(25:47):
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
(26:09):
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
(26:31):
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 2 (26:42):
With the cameras rolling A like to ask Shari about
the investigation.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
I believe they're going through it with tunnel vision, just
specifically focusing on us in instead of the real people,
or I know.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
It had to be people.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
How could one person do that?
Speaker 5 (26:59):
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 2 (27:08):
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, Suri said they couldn't
pay their bills and worried their homes would be foreclosed.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
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 the
conversation centered around.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
We could lose everything my dad worked so hard for.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
I actually saw like marks on the floor in different
things like that where this had happened. It was a
really horrific experience.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Something has to give. I really do have hope.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I know this is going to get solved.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
With tears in her eyes, Shari then looked into the
camera to try to clear her name and her husband
Jesse's as well.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Well.
Speaker 5 (28:00):
We had nothing to do with it. My god, that
was my mom, and Mike added my little brother.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
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
Schaves investigated, if.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
You don't investigate Justin and Shirvey to the foolest, you
make a very easy argument for a defense attorney to
create dowt in jury's mind. And that's exactly what have
happened if we had not followed up on all of
the red flags that came up during the course of
the investigation.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
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.
(29:00):
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 (29:11):
There was a lot of leads that came in that
were followed off on, but none of them pouned out.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
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 (29:29):
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 2 (29:36):
And it wasn't just Shari who was pressuring the New
Mexico State Police. Here's TV reporter Alex Tomlin.
Speaker 5 (29:43):
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 happened to them. I mean, they are gludgeon to
death with a pickaxe.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
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 pupil Then,
sixteen months after the murders, a local twenty three year
old woman named Ashley Roibald got arrested. While she's in custody,
(30:26):
she tells the police something astonishing, that it okay to.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Call you Ashley, all right, I understand that you know
some details I did.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Ashley tells detectives that she knows who killed Lloyd Dixie
and Stephen Ortiz.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
It isn't until Ashley Roibald gets in trouble that all
of a sudden she's willing to tell police what happened.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
I'll just let you go ahead and tell me the story.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
It was almost like the answer everyone had been waiting for.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
It.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Ashley Roibald kept quiet for sixteen months. During that time,
Shari juggled losing her mom, dad, and brother. We'll be
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 finally
(31:13):
ready to.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Talk, and this was the turning point in the investigation.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
But would anyone believe Ashley?
Speaker 5 (31:20):
There's things that kind of don't match up, there's shifting stories.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
We just want the truth.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
They say the wheels of justice move very slowly, and
in this case, that would prove to be an understatement.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
And I remember thinking, Oh God, here we go again.
This poor family has been through the ring error.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
I would have never suspected that it was going to
come down to this.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Find out what Ashley says really happened that night, and
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.
(32:02):
That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide
is hosted and written by me Sloane 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 Gams. The series is also
(32:23):
written and produced by Todd Gams, with additional writing by
Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our associate producer is Kristin Melcurie,
Our ihearty Is, Ali Perry, and Jessica Crimecheck. Audio editing
and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, Additional editing support from Nico
Ruka Tanner Robbins, brit Robischow, Dave Seya, and Patrick Walsh.
(32:48):
American Homicide's theme song was composed by Oliver Bains of
Neiser 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
(33:09):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts
Host
Nancy Glass
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