S1: E1 – The Father’s Day Murders, Part 1

It was Father's Day twenty eleven when Charie or Tease, walked into her parents' home and found the bodies of her mother and father.

They had been shot in the head, and it had occurred sometime earlier in the day.

I just.

The brutality was unspeakable.

The hunt to find the killer would tear the community apart and devastate CHERI.

I really do have hope this is going to get solved.

My name is Sloan 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. Will explore how these murders are shaped by their unique landscapes, and how these tragedies have shaped the fabric of these

Northern New Mexico in particular, it's a very unique place. It's beautiful.

Alex Tomlin was a local TV news reporter who lives in the area.

It has impeccable weather and the mountains are incredible.

The region is home to natural hot springs and wild rivers.

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.

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.

It's a lot of people who have kind of grown there, have families there, kind of all know each other.

But it's also a desolate place.

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.

And even though the homes are all spread out across the desert.

Everyone kind of knows each other. But there is an interesting dynamic here. As much as it's known for its beauty, is also known for the crime.

The tragic murders on Father's Day twenty eleven would stretch the fabric of l Rancho to its limits.

So June eighteenth, twenty eleven, seemed like any normal night.

Shari or Ties had dinner plants with her parents, Lloyd and.

Dixie Shari Orties. She lived on the property with the Ortizes.

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.

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.

Lloyd or Teas 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.

He was an incredibly loving father, a hardworking man who provided for his family. His wife, Dixie.

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.

They took in a child who had Shacken baby syndrome and adopted him as their own. Raise that child. Loved that child.

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.

They were just really giving, loving people, burying northern New Mexico. Hard working, you know, love the land, loved the culture kind of thing.

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 Dill hung on the gutters of her parents' home. Inside, the walls were adorned with crucifixes and some of Lloyd's handmade tiles.

Cheri said she walks in and realizes something's very wrong. She found her mother in bed. Her mother's head was pretty damaged that 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 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.

Serie's husband, Jesse, ran right over to investigate.

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 out the side, right outside the back door, kind of in the field there.

Lloyd's Bonnie 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 onwards.

What is your name?

Cheri frantically told the nine on one operator that her mother, father, and brother were shot to death.

I just and everybody shot in my brother and my mom.

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 was or if they were still on the property.

Oh my god, Oh my god, oh my god. I am freaking out. I can't even walk over there because I own service.

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.

I can't believe they're already dead. 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 sacred but I didn't want to go until I finished. Could be a job up for him.

Oh my god, Charise stayed on the phone for nearly twenty minutes before officers arrived.

Oh and started going, So.

I kind of get thet I'm going.

To watch the game and late to them. I'm my two nervous just sitting in my yard.

My name is Paul Chavez. I was a member of the full Time Crimes Unit as an agent with the New Mexico State Police.

The two hundred homicide cases Officer Chavez worked in his career didn't prepare him for what he saw inside the Ortis house.

In this case, the magnitude of the violence evolved was the worst that I had seen in my career. The brutality was unspeakable. Chariotis had found her parents and her adopted stepbrother dead within the residence. She reported that they had been shot in the head, and it occurred sometime earlier in the day.

It turns out that although chari said she didn't see who committed these murders, she did hear something.

There was reportedly gunshots heard the previous night in the area.

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 the Orties' home, Officer Chavez and his team assess the situation.

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 RTIs is in her bed and her nightgown under the blankets.

Dixie was found clutching her pillow.

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.

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.

This scene was absolutely brutal.

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.

The blood continued from that area out the back door, where the third victim, Loiter Tease, 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.

That's two bloody bodies inside the home and one outside. And then something else stood out to law enforcement.

There was a small mayer I want to go 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, 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.

This did not look like a robbery.

It looked like a case of anger, a lot of anger based on the brutality that occurred.

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 Aloranto community. They were quick to lend a helping hand to others in need. So who was angry enough to harm them?

And why?

Sure?

Your teas lived in an RV right next door to her parents' house on the same property. Both home sat on a scrawling lot surrounded by hills in the dusty El Rancho, New Mexico Desert. On the evening of 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. Pastor John Truhio was in shock.

I get a phone call. They call me PJ.

Pastor John says, PJ, they found Stephen, Lloyd and Dixie dead. I said, what are you talking about? Was the 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 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 it's just Pastor John. My family's dead. My family's dead.

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. 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.

Since ol 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.

We're still insure as to what happen out there.

The guys are still working.

Its 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. You know, one person dead, okay, but when there's three, it raises a lot, a lot of questions.

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.

My role primarily is to process and document the crime scene and try and make sense of what occurred there.

But the severity of the crime scene limited what he was able to do.

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.

Originally, the police believed all three victims were shot to death, but the results of the autopsies for each victim revealed something for him more personal.

That these were in fact not gunshot wounds. There were actually lacerations that were penetrating with a blunt object.

Clearly something was missing. When the police returned to the scene of the crime, they found a five pound pickaxe lying on the ground just over the fence of the adjacent property, and the pick axe contain bloodstains.

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 pick axe.

So what does that mean? A murder weapon with DNA of the victims but nothing to indicate a suspect.

It could mean a number of things that maybe they were wearing gloves, or they covered their hands in some way or shape or form, and just sometimes the lab just can't find it. It's not a 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.

So the one thing about the Ortez murder was really the pressure on the police.

Reporter Alex Tomlin covered the story for a local TV station.

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.

The people of l Rancho couldn't shake the fear that they could be next.

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.

They even refused to talk to TV reporters, not because they felt pastored, but they were fearful of their own safety.

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.

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.

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 Sharen her husband seemed like that nice bow. They lived on the property. You could come up with a motive.

The police wondered if Shari and her husband, Jesse knew more than they were saying, especially after they listened back to Shari's original limom uncle.

She's very frantic in that nim of one call, as you can hear, she made some comments on that nine on one call about you know, they must have been shot because of how they looked.

I just walked shot.

It wasn't later until the Office of the Medical Investigator determined that actually they had been pick axed to death.

And you have no idea who would have done that.

Anybody around them. Oh my god, they were such good people. Oh the go my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, oh my god.

We have hurry, desperate and upset. Chari spent seventeen minutes on that nim on one call, but as investigators listened back. They zeroed in on a Commentari said, now listen closely to what Trei told the operator. So Scharie said her parents had been dead since that morning. How did she know that? And why didn't she call nine one one till seven that evening?

I can't believe I didn't come checker here this morning. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Why you know? All because I didn't have money for a father's sake, gire, but I didn't want to go until I finished the pie and chub up for him.

They one percent thought she was a main suspect.

I can't believe this is happening.

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, Sharie and Jesse felt the and heard the whispers. Their pastor, John true Hio, tried to be the voice of reason.

I think when you have to go through that, like Jesse answer, ree 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 is, and they need a starting point somewhere. Just go through the process, answer the questions, be honest, be truthful, and let them eliminate you, and then they can move forward from there.

So there were a number of red flags that required us to investigate share and justice to the fullest.

State Police Agent Paul Chavez took the difficult line of questioning a mourning Shari.

Could family gain from the death of the victim?

Sure they kind of there is insurance insurance policies in place, or is there property of place?

Is there is there.

Something to be gained. That's definitely something that was going to be looked at.

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. Schuri 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, Jesse.

And Sherry involvement couldn't be ruled out.

Jesse and Suri told detectives that they were at a local casino on the night of the murders.

But thought there was some conflicting statements between Shari and Jesse.

The triple murder that rocked the close knit village of El Rancho turned friends into enemies, families into suspects.

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.

Alex Tomlin worked as a reporter for a local TV station.

The case was a little bit cold at this time, and we got a call saying she's.

Willing to talk to you.

Shari was on the defensive and wanting to publicly clear her name, so she scheduled an interview with Alex.

Scherie offered to show me the home where her parents had lived and had been murdered.

Alex met Sharie at her home and interviewed her just steps away from where Lloyd, Dixie and Stephen were murdered.

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 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.

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 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.

With the cameras rolling and like to ask 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 or I know it had to be people.

How could one person do 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?

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.

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.

We could lose everything my dad worked so hard for.

I actually saw like marks on the floor in different things like that where this had happened. It was a really horrific experience.

Something has to give I really do have hope.

I know this is going to get solt.

With tears in her eyes, Shari then looked into the camera to try to clear her name and her husband, Jesse's as well.

We had nothing to do with it.

My god, that was my mom and Mike, my little brother.

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 Schavez investigated.

If you don't investigate Justin and Shehrby to the fullest, you make a very easy argument for a defense attorney to create dowder 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.

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.

There was a lot of leads that came in that were followed off on, but none of them pouned out.

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.

That was the hardest part of this case for me was knowing that we have not been able to bring justice for this family.

And it wasn't just Shari who was pressuring the New Mexico State Police. Here's TV reporter Alex Tomlin.

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 bludgeoned to death with a pickaxe.

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, she tells the police something astonishing.

Is it okay to call you? Ashley?

All right?

I understand that you know some details.

I did it. Ashley tells detectives that she knows who killed Lloyd Dixie and Stephen Ortiz.

It isn't until Ashley Roibald gets in trouble that all of a sudden she's willing to tell police what happened.

I'll just let you go ahead and tell me the story.

It was almost like the answer everyone had been waiting for. It.

Ashley Roibald kept quiet for sixteen months. During that time, Shari juggled losing her mom, dad, and brother, well be looked at by everyone as a suspect, all while she could collect their life insurance money, and was scared she'd lose everything. But now, sixteen months later, Ashley was finally ready to.

Talk, and this was the turning point on the investigation.

But would anyone believe Ashley?

There's things that kind of don't match up they're shifting stories.

We just want the truth.

They say. The wheels of justice move very slowly, and in this case that would prove to be an understatement.

And I remember thinking, oh God, here we go again. This poor family has been through the ring error.

I would have never suspected that it was going to come down to this.

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. That's American Homicide Pod atmail 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