Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Steve Sandlin Pt. One

Transcript

Steve Sandlin Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:30
Welcome back to the Path with Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and
0:34
I'm Ashley. Hey Robin, why don't you tell the listeners what your latest
0:38
trip to crime Con? Well, right before we recorded this, I took
0:41
my annual trip to the crime Con event, which took place in Nashville.
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I've been attending crime Con virtually every year since it started in twenty seventeen.
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I get my own booth on podcast row so that I can meet a lot
0:54
of listeners of The Trail and Cold and introduce myself to my podcast to a
0:59
bunch of new people. This is my second year going to Nashville. They
1:03
held it there in twenty eighteen at the Gaylord Aupryland Hotel, which is the
1:07
largest hotel I've ever been into my life. You could easily get lost there,
1:11
and it's so large that they actually have an indoor boat ride that in
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circles the entire convention. So I never left the hotel at all during my
1:21
four day stay because I didn't have to. They have everything you need right
1:23
there. But it was great to meet some old friends again and hang out
1:27
with some fellow podcasters who are always there, and see a lot of interesting
1:30
sessions as well. I saw John Benny Ramsey's father John Ramsey give a session.
1:36
Also John Walsh from America's Most Wanted. I wanted to meet him,
1:41
but the line for his meet and greet was so long that I didn't get
1:44
to see him. But I did get a photograph of Josh Mankowitz from Dateline.
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He goes to these events all the time, but this was the first
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time I met him and got a photo with him. And I also got
1:53
to meet Dan Stidham, the original defense attorney for Jesse Miss Kelly on the
1:59
West Memphis three case, who has just published a new book, so I
2:01
got a signed copy from him. And he's a really cool guy. And
2:05
I can always chat about the West Memphis three any time. So great experience.
2:10
That is so cool. I'm jealous, Jules, and I keep saying,
2:14
one day we're going to get there, but you know, one day,
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one day, I'm hating a new baby, so we'll we'll see when
2:20
that one day comes. Well, I do get listeners come up to me
2:23
and ask about you too, and compliment the path when Chili's so I think
2:25
your audience is ready to meet you, bitch. I love that. And
2:30
one other story I wanted to mention is that the weekend after Crime Con,
2:32
I traveled to Toronto to attend an event called the Crime and Mystery Festival,
2:38
which is a mixture of true crime and fictional murder mysteries. And I was
2:43
invited there by Laura Norton, who hosts The fall Line podcast, because she
2:46
was invited to give a panel there because she has published a book about forensic
2:52
science called Lay Them to Rest. And what's crazy is that I get a
2:55
shout out in the intro of the book because in twenty seventeen, Laura Hell
3:00
heard a Trail at Cold episode I did about a missing set of twins called
3:05
the Millbrook Twins, and she was so inspired that she decided to start her
3:09
own deep dive podcast in the case called The fall Line, and eventually took
3:15
covered a whole bunch of other cases and then started a new career in forensic
3:20
science and then published a book about her experiences. And when she gave me
3:23
the book, she signed it Robin, I literally could not have done this
3:28
without you. And it's so surreal to think that if she had listened to
3:30
that Trail and Cold episode, her book might have turned out her life might
3:34
have turned out differently and this book would not exist. So it was a
3:38
very flattering feeling. That's a real serendipitous, full circle moment, it was,
3:44
And what an honor. I love that she took her career and completely
3:46
changed it because she was so inspired. I think that's amazing and a huge
3:51
testament to you and her grit and determination. What an awesome human being,
3:55
Very very cool. Yes, she's a great human being. I got to
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hang out with through again. I had seen her in years. Also hung
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out with Christy Lee from Canadian True Crime, who was also at the event
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and lives nearby, so it was a great time to catch up and reminisce
4:10
with old friends. Well, now that you've made all the listeners and us
4:13
jealous, let's dive right into this week's case. May seventh, nineteen eighty
4:19
eight, Mountainair, New Mexico. Steve Sandland, a twenty one year old
4:25
rookie with the local police department, is found dead inside the station. He's
4:30
been shot in the head, and the police chief pushes forward the theory that
4:33
Steve's death was either suicide or an accident. However, Steve's family becomes suspicious
4:40
when they discover several bags of marijuana inside his house and learned that Steve had
4:45
recently arrested a local resident who was involved in drug dealing. However, Steve's
4:51
family becomes suspicious when they discover several bags of marijuana inside his house and learn
4:58
that Steve had recently arrested a local resident who was involved in drug dealing.
5:02
Information is uncovered to suggest that Steve may have been the victim of a conspiracy
5:08
involving other police officers, and while his death is eventually reclassified as a homicide,
5:15
it officially remains unsolved. After that the path went Chile. So on
5:20
today's episode, we'll be covering a strange mystery involving a police officer, the
5:26
unexplained ninety eight death of Steve Sandlin. As you probably know, many law
5:30
enforcement officers are killed in the line of duty every year, but in the
5:33
majority of those cases, the perpetrator is brought to justice, as the death
5:38
of one of their own will often motivate police departments to solve the case as
5:42
quickly as possible, But sadly, sometimes this does not happen because the victim's
5:46
fellow officers might have actually been involved. Today's story was once featured on Unsolved
5:51
Mysteries and involves the death of a rookie officer named Steve Sandlin, who who
5:57
is found dead under suspicious circumstance is inside his own police station. Well the
6:01
superiors initially tried to write off his death as a suicide or tragic accident.
6:06
There was a lot to suggest that something very fishy was going on there,
6:11
and that an ambitious young cop who only wanted to do the right thing found
6:15
himself caught up in a web of corruption which cost him his life. Here's
6:18
where my heart immediately gets worried is that he's a young officer who's new to
6:24
the job. And when people come in like that, they really do have
6:27
that pure ambition to do good, to change the world, to make their
6:32
community safer, and they're up against a culture that is sometimes already tainted with
6:40
a that's not how we do things here, right, or you've got to
6:43
learn the ropes and how we actually do things. You don't cross these certain
6:47
lines, you know, we don't talk about certain things, we don't go
6:50
after certain individuals, and so it's it's a world that I think a lot
6:57
of people don't understand that these young cops come in and they're being trained by
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seasoned officers who might have a slanted or distorted view, and so I'm anxious
7:06
to see if he was one of those people who was a rule follower and
7:10
loud and wanted to do the right thing. Is that what actually cost him
7:14
his life. It's interesting that I believe you said the chief of police was
7:17
the one who initially was like, oh, it's an accident or his suicide,
7:21
when he's actually inside the own police department and he's right there with a
7:26
gunshot wound to his head. I've got to learn more about the wound where
7:30
it was. Why it was so easy for the chief of police to say
7:33
right away that he was potentially taking his own life or it was an accident.
7:40
But it gives me that pause for concern immediately, because I can understand
7:45
the mentality of a new officer who says, I came to this to do
7:48
everything by the book, and sometimes that's not how certain departments actually operate.
7:55
Yeah, that's pretty much what's going to happen here, and before Warmed,
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there's going to be some terrible police work in this episode. Surprise, surprise,
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no way. It's so infrequent that we come across a case where we've
8:07
did one recently where we were like, the police work here was stellar.
8:11
But that happens so rarely that I guess because we cover our unsolved cases,
8:16
we're rarely applauding it. Right, That's exactly what it is. Yeah,
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the one way we were praising the police work was probably Mary Jane van Gilder,
8:22
which wound up being solved. So that's kind of the problem here is
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so many of these unsolved cases are I've remained that way because of that police
8:30
work. I think that's exactly right, Jewels. I think it's because these
8:33
are cold cases. A lot of the times, you know, we talk
8:37
about there is no perfect murder. As science progresses, if the police work
8:41
has been done, even old police work's been done, there are miracles that
8:45
happen because of good police work, and these cold cases can be solved.
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These ones when you're talking almost you know, thirty forty fifty years later and
8:54
the case just doesn't have a lot of details in it, we are often
8:56
talking about the fact that police somehow drop the ball, didn't make the right
9:01
assumptions in the beginning, which prevented them from gathering the right evidence. So
9:05
I've got to remember too, who's the officer who worked the Keith's case that
9:11
was amazing and kept his case alive as well. That was actually an EMT,
9:16
not a police officer. A Dallas Lip. Oh, okay, yeah,
9:18
Dallas Lip right, yeah. Oh man. Every time I think about
9:22
great emergency response, it was him who said, guys, this is clearly
9:26
not a suicide, right, this is a murder. But yeah, I
9:30
mean, miracle law enforcement every single day. But when we talk about a
9:33
cold case shoot, Jules nailed it, it's because a lot of the times
9:37
it just simply wasn't investigated correctly when it happened. Our story begins in nineteen
9:43
eighty eight in this small town of mountain Air, New Mexico, an isolated
9:48
mountain community of around eleven hundred people located in Torrance County. Our central figure
9:54
is twenty one year old Steve Sandlin, a rookie officer who's been working for
10:00
for the Mountainair Police Department for eight weeks. Since his father, Tom Sandlin,
10:05
was a twenty year veteran with the Albuquerque Police Department. Steve wants to
10:09
follow in his footsteps, and, by all accounts, a career in law
10:13
enforcement is the only thing he ever wanted to do. Before he was hired
10:18
to work in Mountainair, Steve lived in the town of Bosque Farms with his
10:22
fiance, Michele Sturdevant and their eighteen month old son. Since Mountainair is such
10:28
a small town, only three other people besides Steve are employed by the local
10:33
police department, the Chief, David Carson, and two officers at Mondo Diaz
10:37
and Frank Peeler. In fact, when Steve first arrived in town to start
10:41
his new job, he briefly lived in a trailer with Peeler. According to
10:46
Chief Carson, Steve approached his job with an extraordinary amount of enthusiasm and worked
10:52
extremely hard, even going so far as to work during his off hours and
10:56
to put in sixteen to eighteen hour days. On the evening of May seventh,
11:01
Steve called his fiancee, Michelle and told her he was working alone inside
11:07
the mountain Air Police station filling out reports. He'd said that he was angry
11:11
because he'd just gotten into an argument with Chief Carson, who apparently yelled at
11:16
him over writing too many traffic tickets. Steve told Michelle that if they wanted
11:20
him to be a security guard. Then he'd just sit in the station and
11:24
be a security guard. At around seven pm, Michelle claimed she heard a
11:28
female voice in the background during the call. Their conversation was interrupted as Steve
11:33
muffled the phone and proceeded to speak with this woman. Michelle could not make
11:37
out what they were actually saying, but thought the woman in the background was
11:41
yelling and calling him Steve at least once. Steve got back on the line
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and told Michelle that the woman was looking for the town hall and that he
11:50
had to go, but assured her the whole thing wasn't a big deal.
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Steve then hung up the phone, but unfortunately, this would turn out to
11:58
be the last time he was confirmed to be alive. How bizarre the day
12:03
that he's actually killed. You have that he's not only fussing possibly with this
12:11
woman or kind of having a colorful conversation with this woman, but he also
12:16
got in an argument with the chief of police, who very quickly is like,
12:18
well, guess what. He either completed suicide or he accidentally discharged his
12:24
weapon. So both those things make this a very very odd call. You
12:31
can tell he's very excited about making sure he's doing his job, right,
12:35
he's going to write those darned tickets when people aren't following the rules. And
12:39
again Chief Carson says, you know, backup, boy, that's not how
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we're doing it here, right, That's just not how we do it.
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And you see him getting so angry because he feels so called with his dad's
12:50
history of law enforcement, with his own little family at home. You can
12:54
tell he's driven by that desire to serve like his dad, to make his
13:01
child proud. And yet here he is just a couple weeks on the job,
13:05
and he's already so frustrated with the fact that he's being a little bit
13:09
derailed by the chief, and now here's this mystery woman who's maybe screaming on
13:13
his name. It's very odd. Yeah, you pretty much called that during
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the intro that Steve was going to be established as like a very enthusiastic cop
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who pretty much wanted to do this his whole life and wanted to work hard
13:28
and do the right thing. Yet he's only in this small town for like
13:31
a limited amount of time before he just becomes completely disillusioned from the job.
13:35
And I think that's kind of a sign that there must have been some major
13:37
culture problems there. If Steve could become that frustrated that quickly in eight weeks,
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can you imagine you'd think that if you were so enthusiastic, You're stoked
13:46
about this new job. It's a lifelong dream, your dad was a twenty
13:50
year veteran of the Albuquerque Police Department. You're going to be so excited.
13:54
It would take a lot to kind of dampen your mood and to bring you
13:58
back down to earth and go, oh, like, maybe there's something else
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going on here. I think you're right, Robin, that that speaks to
14:05
really problematic culture within that police department, because it's just so sad that he
14:11
actualizes his dream and becomes a police officer and then eight short weeks later he's
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deceased. Here's what else is interesting. You got to remember they're in a
14:22
tiny town, right, So isn't he serving in a town of eleven hundred
14:24
people? That's correct, Yeah, But as we're going to talk about,
14:28
there seemed to be an awful lot of criminal activity in this town for such
14:31
a small place. Well, it's also going to be one of those places
14:35
where even if there is a lot of criminal activity, everyone knows everyone and
14:39
so there's a lot of entitlement from citizens with law enforcement also in that kind
14:45
of culture, Like we live in a very, very small town. We
14:48
actually just got a new parking officer who goes around and writes tickets to people
14:52
who don't pay their parking because we're a little tourist town and you should hear
14:58
local people in ray, how dare I got a ticket? And I laugh.
15:03
I called my husband. I was like, well, did they pay
15:05
their ticket? Did they pay their parking fee? Did they pay the box
15:09
or the meter? Because that's the law, Like why is everybody so mad
15:13
at his poor new officer who's having a joy just writing ticket after a ticket
15:18
for the city when people don't pay their parking. But the local citizens are
15:24
outraged because does he know who I am? Right? I live here,
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And it's like, well, you still have to follow the rules, buddy,
15:30
and other officers have been really lax on people because they know their cars,
15:35
they know their family, they grew up in school with them. So
15:39
I think there's a lot of that as well, like older officers would have
15:41
that connection and know everyone, and this new young officer comes in and it's
15:48
off putting to a lot of people that he is enforcing those rules. Yeah,
15:50
I would not surprise me if that's what happened. That Steve was just
15:54
wanting to follow the law and didn't understand the way things work in this town
15:58
like they always have so. Shortly thereafter, Chief Carson claimed that he received
16:04
a radio call from Eugenie Wright, a soldier on lee from four Hood,
16:08
Texas who happened to be a friend of Carson's son. Wright told him that
16:12
he had just entered the police station and discovered one of the officers on the
16:17
ground surrounded with blood. At around seven forty five, Carson and one of
16:21
his officers and Mondo Diaz arrived at the scene together and found Steve's body on
16:26
the floor. He had been shot in the head and his three fifty seven
16:30
magnum was resting by his side. Steve was still alive at this time,
16:33
so Carson called for help, but shortly after emergency medical services arrived, Steve
16:38
passed away and was pronounced dead at the scene. It would turn out that
16:42
the bull which killed Steve had been fired from his own gun, which was
16:45
missing one round. According to Carson, he did not see any noticeable signs
16:51
of foul play or that a violent confrontation had taken place inside the police station.
16:56
His initial assessment was that Steve's death may have been a suicide, possibly
17:00
because he was disillusioned about their final conversation together. As you recall, Steve
17:06
had told Michelle that Carson yelled at him earlier that afternoon over traffic tickets he
17:11
had written. Carson confirmed that this conversation did take place, but maintained that
17:15
it was more amicable in nature. He said that he had simply advised Steve
17:21
to slow things down and take it easy and not burn himself out because quote
17:25
unquote, you don't have to catch everybody. In spite of this, Carson
17:29
thought that Steve seemed a little down after their conversation and wondered if perhaps it
17:33
might have prompted him to take his own life. Of course, Steve's family
17:37
and friends completely refuted the idea that he was suicidal and that such a minor
17:41
incident could have compelled him to shoot himself. According to Michelle, while Steve
17:47
seemed angry during their final phone call, he had been discussing their plans to
17:51
celebrate Mother's Day, which did not seem like the actions of someone who was
17:55
planning suicide. Carson also pushed forward the idea that Steve's dead maybe been an
18:00
accident, as he was apparently prone to playing with his gun, so perhaps
18:04
the weapon accidentally discharged and fired the fatal bullet into his head. So for
18:11
me, there's zero way that that conversation actually caused a person to take their
18:15
own life. It's totally different if you had told me Chief Carson approached him
18:21
about a potential investigation. It is something he had done that there was potentially
18:26
he was going to lose his job and have legal action taken against him or
18:30
something. But here's this young man who's engaged, he has a baby,
18:34
he has a new career, and he's frustrated that he can't just do his
18:38
job the way he wants to. It's someone venting to their wife or fiance
18:44
that how dare this guy be such a jerk? Like I'm doing my job
18:47
and he won't let me. That's just normal husband and wife conversation, not
18:52
I hate. This is so tragic. There's nothing that was even a big
18:55
deal about this conversation. He's angry that he was following the rule and this
19:00
guy says, lay off of people, Right, that's a natural frustration.
19:03
Not something you take your life over. And he's sitting there planning Mother's Day
19:07
events with his fiance while he has a little one. So that's a big
19:11
deal when your babies are a little Mother's Day is a huge deal because mama
19:17
just gave birth to that baby eighteen months earlier and it's their what second Mother's
19:22
Day together? Right? So no way, there's just no way that this
19:26
caused him to take his own life. The level of fragility that they're speaking
19:30
about with regards to how deeply impacted he would have been by just a simple
19:37
exchange of words saying yeah, write less tickets. That would have showed in
19:41
every other aspect of his life. People would have thought you wouldn't make a
19:45
good cop because you don't have the particular constitution to be able to take criticism.
19:51
I think we would have seen mental health difficulties. And Ashley, you
19:55
can speak to this because you've worked with police departments. But isn't there typically
19:59
psychologue screening? Oh yeah, there is, And there's also I mean,
20:03
like I said, you often see suicide and things like that becoming an issue
20:08
longer on the forest when there's you're exposed to a lot maybe there's a case
20:12
that really haunts you and sticks with you. Maybe there's a trauma that's triggered.
20:17
He's only been there for eight weeks and he's you can hear him well.
20:22
Like the one thing that he's really driven by his writing parking tickets.
20:25
So I don't see our traffic tickets. I just don't see this being a
20:29
high stress job for him yet. Well. The results of Steve's autopsy were
20:34
inconclusive, but it did bring up some troubling issues for Starters. The coroner
20:41
believed that the gun may have been as many as two feet away from Steve's
20:45
head when the shot was fired, and it seemed pretty out of the ordinary
20:48
for someone to kill themselves by holding their guns such a long distance away.
20:53
There was also what was described as a very insignificant amount of gunpowder on Steve's
20:59
hand, which seemed to go against the idea that he could have fired the
21:03
weapon himself. Steve also had bruises on both of his cheeks and a cut
21:07
over his left eyebrow, though they theoretically could have been caused by the force
21:12
of his head hitting the floor. But since the Mountainair PD had virtually no
21:18
formal training in handling evidence, Steve's death scene had not been properly preserved and
21:22
sealed off. In spite of these discrepancies, the state Attorney General would not
21:27
completely rule out the possibility of a suicide or accidental death, so it was
21:33
officially classified as undetermined. However, there were a number of red flags to
21:37
suggest to Steve's family that something was wrong. Steve's funeral was heavily attended by
21:44
some of Mountainair's most prominent citizens, including the mayor and the town council.
21:49
Investigators from the Attorney General's office were in attendance, and some of Tom Sandlin's
21:55
former colleagues with the Albuquerque Police Department made the trip to Mountair dead be there.
22:00
Yet, no one else from the Mountainair PD, including Chief Carson Edmundo
22:07
Diaz and Frank Peeler, attended Steve's funeral, even though a notice had been
22:11
published which said they would be honorary pallbearers. They would later claim that Steve's
22:18
death hit them pretty hard and they couldn't bring themselves to attend, But it
22:22
was pretty out of the ordinary for police officers to not pay their final respects
22:26
to one of their own after they were killed. In the line of judy
22:30
if that wasn't enough. Within a week of Steve's death, Heeler resigned from
22:36
the force, and the official reason was that he had been found to have
22:40
contributed to the delinquency of a minor by giving them alcohol. Very odd that
22:45
they wouldn't attend the funeral. This is someone who was a newbie ond the
22:48
force. Is a young man who has a fiance and a little baby who
22:52
are grieving his death, and out of just respect for that woman and child,
22:57
you would think that these individuals would show up. No one showed up.
23:03
That is a slap in the face to the entire family and to the
23:06
father who says I was a man in blue as well, and you just
23:10
didn't you know, like you didn't show up for my son, you didn't
23:14
show up for his grieving widow and baby. That automatically puts alarm bells off.
23:21
And then, like you indicated, you had one of these officers resigned
23:23
because he was contributing to the delinquency of a minor. You can tell that
23:27
it is that small town lacks like I'm above the law and I can kind
23:33
of do what I want because these are my people. But that's not how
23:36
it works. You gotta follow the rules. So I'm very frustrated. I'm
23:40
hurting for his widow and child who look up and you know, there's nobody
23:44
when that baby grows up and looks back, there's nobody in a uniform representing
23:48
dad and supporting him. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Yeah,
23:52
from what I've heard, that is a major no no in law enforcement,
23:56
because it's pretty much a rule that if one of your own is killed
23:59
in the line of doing you attend the funeral, even if it was someone
24:02
you did not personally like or get along with. It's the respectful thing to
24:06
do. And it's kind of a weird excuse where it's like, well,
24:08
we couldn't attend because Steve's death hit us pretty hard. But they really didn't
24:14
know him all that well, So it seems ridiculous that all these people who
24:17
barely knew him were going to make a trip from another city to attend the
24:21
funeral and they won't even do that for one of their own fellow officers.
24:25
And it's not even just for him, it's for the family, it's for
24:27
you make a vow that if something happens to him you're going to take care
24:30
of his family, and that widow sitting there with no one from that department
24:36
where he was killed. No one's there. It's a big fu and I'm
24:41
sorry. The collective group of the entire police department thought it was too much.
24:48
I could see that it could potentially hit one person really hard, and
24:51
perhaps they were having like they were triggered by it in some way, and
24:55
their reaction was too much that they thought, Okay, maybe you would be
24:59
inappropriate for me to attend, but not for every single member to attend,
25:03
especially not the chief. It looks so bad, Like what do you think
25:08
is father's colleagues from the Albuquerque Police Department thought when they showed up, and
25:15
like you said, it's a huge no no, and none of his the
25:18
police department are there. It looks so sketchy. Anyway. Three days after
25:22
Steve was killed, his fiance, Michelle, went to his house to collect
25:26
his belongings and was accompanied by Steve's mother and stepfather. To a complete shock,
25:32
Michelle discovered five bags of marijuana inside a drawer in the kitchen. Prior
25:37
to this, Steve's house had already been searched by the Mountaineer PD the state
25:41
Police and the Attorney General's office, but none of them uncovered the marijuana,
25:45
even though it was not hidden at all and could be found by simply opening
25:48
the drawer. Steve's family were adamant that he never used drugs, and a
25:52
toxicology report found no trace of marijuana or any other drugs in his system.
25:57
And there was another being discrepancy. Since he first showing the Mountaineer PD,
26:03
Steve had always carried around a small tape recorder to keep a record of all
26:07
the traffic stops he made while on duty. He'd apparently recorded multiple cassette tapes
26:11
worth a material during his eight week tenure with the department, but Steve's family
26:15
could not find these tapes anywhere inside his house. That's so bizarre. It's
26:21
almost like the marijuana was planted there, or that no one really cared to
26:27
investigate the home and see what could have been happening, but more likely that
26:30
it was planted there. And then there's these missing tapes, where had he
26:34
uncovered something that made him uncomfortable or observed behavior from a superior or a fellow
26:41
officer that he wasn't okay with. He could have easily had that on a
26:45
recording in this little tape recorder he had, but they're missing, And so
26:51
you have evidence that's present that wasn't found, and then you have evidence that's
26:55
missing, right, that could indicate what happened, and neither seem right.
27:00
That whole thing about the tapes is pretty crazy, because I'm sure you know
27:03
that these days there's always big controversy and law enforcement about bodycams and how sometimes
27:07
officers will not turn them on during very convenient times when they're doing something controversial.
27:14
Yet here's Steve, who's such a responsible police officer at the back in
27:17
the eighties, before the invention of body cams. He's carrying around a tape
27:19
recorder to keep a record of all his traffic stops. So he seemed like
27:23
a guy who wanted everything on the record so that if something went wrong,
27:27
he wanted to have a recording of it. Robin, I forgot to ask
27:32
you this question earlier, but it was something that was absurd that was said
27:36
about Steve, and I just wondered if there was any more context for it,
27:41
and that was that Steve was known to play with his gun. I
27:44
thought this sounded like an insane thing. The idea that he would have had
27:48
accidentally shot himself while inside the police department because he was playing with his gun.
27:53
Yep, that's what Carson said. Like when they tried to push that
27:56
this wasn't suicide, Carson says, well, maybe it was an accident.
27:59
He is playing with his gun and accidentally went off, and sounds like he's
28:03
describing a child there, Like knowing what a responsible officer Steve is that he
28:07
doesn't sound like someone who's who's twenty one years old, who's just gonna play
28:11
with a guy. It'd be so irresponsible that he accidentally shoots himself. And
28:15
he remembered he just went through training to make sure he's a responsible gun owner
28:18
and operator and a law enforcement agent who has a gun to his disposal,
28:23
so everyone knows you don't play with your gun and if you are looking at
28:30
your weapon, then you're able to operate in a responsible, safe manner.
28:34
It would be very odd to me that an officer would be sitting at his
28:37
desk and accidentally disfire his weapon. I just discharge his weapon. I just
28:41
don't think that that's a reality. And with the father that was on the
28:47
Albuquerque Police force for twenty years, I would think that he would have taught
28:52
him his son something about guns, maybe not how to shoot them or how
28:56
to handle them, but just how to be safe around them, because officers
29:00
will take home their guns and then typically lock them up, will they not?
29:04
Yes, yes, And with a child in the house, one of
29:07
his biggest things would be, we don't play with a gun. Our weapons
29:11
are our weapons, and if you pick it up, you better be capable
29:15
of understanding what the consequences are of that. And I think for a father,
29:19
you would make sure your child was very well aware of how serious it
29:22
was and how it is not a toy. It's a weapon that can kill
29:26
someone, and you got to be willing when you pick up a weapon that
29:30
that's the consequence. So yeah, no way does he sit there and twiddle
29:33
the gun or roll it around in his fingers, which is not happening.
29:37
Why would you even pull your side arm unless there was a threat. Suspicion
29:41
started amount that Steve's death may have been related to an arrest he made on
29:45
the job. One of Steve's routines while he was on patrol was to wait
29:51
outside local bars to check for drunk drivers. On the evening of April eleventh,
29:56
less than one month before his death, Steve pulled over an intoxicated motorist
30:00
named Melvin King, who also happened to have marijuana on him. He arrested
30:06
King for possession and was able to obtain a warrant for the Mountain Air PD
30:10
to search King's house. They wound up finding fifty four pounds of marijuana,
30:15
which had a street value of around one hundred thousand dollars. While within days
30:21
of this bust, Steve apparently started receiving death threats, including anonymous notes and
30:26
phone calls. By this point, Stephen moved out of the trailer he shared
30:30
with Frank Peeler and was renting a house, but since he often found threatening
30:36
notes on his front door, he became too paranoid to sleep there. Three
30:40
days prior to his death, Steve asked a friend to spend the night at
30:44
his house with him because he was scared to be alone. That's insane.
30:48
So within eight weeks he had moved in with one of his fellow officers,
30:52
but then decided, I'm not going to stay there. He goes and he
30:55
rents his own house, and he's so scared based on these threats, receiving
31:00
and backlash he's receiving that he can't even sleep in his own home as a
31:04
trained officer with a weapon at his disposal. Something's way more serious than he's
31:11
led on to anybody, Because, like I said, you have an officer
31:15
who has his weapon at a service weapon at home and is trained to handle
31:19
a dispute and he doesn't even feel like he can do that on his own
31:23
at his own home. That's horrifying. Well wait, do you hear the
31:27
next part. This part is really going to make you cringe about how badly
31:30
he was handled. So after his arrest, Malvin King was released on a
31:36
one hundred thousand dollars bond, but all the charges against him were eventually dropped
31:40
when the fifty four pounds of marijuana recovered from his house went missing, and
31:45
the circumstances of how this happened are pretty unbelievable. After the marijuan was seized,
31:49
it pretty much just had to sit on the floor in a corner of
31:52
the Mountaineer Police station while the officers guarded it because there was no secure place
31:57
to store it. The marijuana eventually transferred to the Torrance County Sheriff's office in
32:01
the town of Vestancia, thirty miles away and kept inside a storage locker before
32:07
it was moved into a locked trailer in an impound yard outside the station well.
32:12
At some point, someone apparently smashed one of the trailer's windows, broke
32:15
inside, and stole all fifty four pounds worth of the marijuana, But there
32:21
was a disturbing discrepancy with its alleged theft. Torrance County under Sheriff Gary Watts
32:27
claimed that the marijuana was not actually put inside the trailer until six days after
32:30
Steve's death, but the mayor of Mountainair claimed that he started hearing rumors about
32:36
this theft weeks before Steve was killed. The bags of marijuana which were discovered
32:40
in Steve's kitchen drawer had red and white tape on them, which was normally
32:45
used by law enforcement agencies to label evidence, and this seemed to indicate that
32:49
these bags were some of the same marijuana that had been seized from Melvin King,
32:54
So how could it have been inside Steve's house days before it was supposedly
32:59
stolen. King was later interviewed and denied any involvement in Steve's death, claiming
33:04
that he was not even a Mountain Are on the night he was killed,
33:07
and incidentally, Sheriff Watts and three of his deputies would be arrested one year
33:12
later on charges of larceny and conspiracy after it was discovered that they stole items
33:16
during a drug raid in September of nineteen eighty eight. In the end,
33:21
two of the deputies pled guilty to misdemeanors, but the charges against Watts and
33:25
the third deputy were dismissed. This is crazy. Fifty four pounds of marijuana
33:31
is like a heaping pile of bags of marijuana. So this was like,
33:37
Okay, hey, guys, put it in the corner over there, Let's
33:39
move it eventually, let's store it eventually in this trailer. So just that
33:45
alone, the protocol to have illegal drugs out on the floor in a corner
33:51
somewhere, like the vision of that makes me my head spin, right,
33:54
it doesn't make any sense. And the moment you started describing it, I
33:58
thought, Okay, he clearly was part of this apprehension of king, and
34:04
there's fifty four pounds of marijuana. I wanted to know what did the bags
34:07
at his home look like? And then you told me they had the police
34:12
tape on it, and so it almost sounds like it's possible Steve stumbled across
34:17
some of this law enforcement intertwinement with the drug trade around there, and that
34:23
maybe someone did put it in his home because they were gonna say, well,
34:29
you're a part of it too. And if you're a part of it
34:30
too, now because these drugs are in your house, you can't rat on
34:34
us either. And or there's an odd chance that Steve took something because he
34:38
was trying to build a case of knowing something wrong was going on. I
34:43
can't see him taking these bags of marijuana for his own personal use. Again,
34:49
remember there's nothing in this system indicating he was using marijuana, and he's
34:53
such a rule follower why would he take evidence home? So that is so
34:59
concerning and can fusing because it seems like it's linked to that drug bus specifically.
35:05
And another disturbing detail is that Steve's house after his death was searched by
35:09
numerous law enforcement agencies who failed to discover the marijuana in the drawer until his
35:15
fiance stopped by there. So that makes me think that this marijuana was planted
35:20
there after the original law enforcement search, and because Steve was dead at this
35:23
point, there's no way he could have stolen it. So it just seems
35:28
to me that like someone was trying to destroy his character, hoping that maybe
35:30
this would bring the investigation to an end. Do you think that it was
35:36
law enforcement that planted the marijuana? I don't know. I mean, it
35:39
could have been Melvin King or maybe some other criminal, But I find the
35:44
timing interesting that it did show up there until after it was searched by multiple
35:49
law enforcement agencies. You if it had been put there by law enforcement,
35:52
though, and they're trying to rope him into being part of a deal or
35:58
part of a problem so that he can't rat on them, wouldn't they want
36:01
to find it so that they could say, well, look at this,
36:05
he was stealing evidence he was a problem, Like maybe that's why he took
36:08
his own life. Like I feel, there's also the other side that if
36:13
it was planted there by law enforcement because he was a problem to them,
36:17
why wouldn't they just turn it on its face and say, look at what
36:20
a problem he was and use that as part of their explanation to kind of
36:23
get the heat and the attention away from it being an inside job killing him.
36:29
I see that perspective as well. I can totally see both sides of
36:32
it. It seems like the way that it disappeared, it almost had to
36:36
be sanctioned by law enforcement in some type of way. But then again,
36:39
I see your point. If it was law enforcement, then why wouldn't they
36:44
then find it so they could make such a big deal about it. Yeah,
36:46
it is weird that they didn't personally find it themselves and it just happened
36:50
to be found by his family. Tom Sandlin remembered a conversation he had with
36:54
his son shortly before his death, in which Steve expressed his with the Mountainair
37:00
Police Department. Even though Steve had been incredibly enthusiastic about his job at first,
37:07
Tom noticed that his attitude gradually started to change, and he started saying
37:12
that the job wasn't what he expected. Steve told his father there was something
37:16
going on in the town that he did not agree with and asked for advice,
37:21
so Tom told him to simply tell the truth. The day before he
37:24
was killed, Steve was interviewed by officials from the New Mexico Attorney General's Office,
37:30
who were investigating citizen complaints about allegations of mishandling evidence. Steve was told
37:37
he'd be interviewed again, but he wound up dead the very next evening.
37:42
One of Steve's biggest advocates was Assistant Attorney General James S. Guarantino, who
37:47
came to believe that Steve had been murdered. Scarantino spoke to several witnesses who
37:52
claimed they saw Chief Carson's patrol car parked outside the Mountainair Police Department between seven
37:59
fifteen and seven twenty five pm on the night of Steve's death, even though
38:04
Carson claimed that he did not arrive until seven forty five. One witness even
38:08
recalled hearing what sounded like a gunshot at seven sixteen and claiming that a white
38:14
pickup truck was parked outside the station at that time. There was a window
38:19
of approximately twenty five minutes when Carson's whereabouts could not be accounted for. He
38:23
was last seen by witnesses at a high school talent show at seven oh five
38:29
and supposedly picked up at Mundo Diaz at his house at seven thirty. After
38:34
spending a few minutes on patrol together, Carson and Diaz received a call for
38:37
assistance from the police station when asked where he was between seven oh five and
38:43
seven thirty, Carson simply said he could not remember, and Diaz also claimed
38:49
that Carson seemed very upset when he arrived to pick him up. When interviewed
38:53
separately, Carson and Diaz gave differing accounts about what route they drove during their
38:58
brief time period when they were on patrol that night. When in question by
39:02
the FBI, Carson did agree to take a polygraph test, and in spite
39:07
of the inconsistencies in his story, he still found up passing. Well,
39:12
I mean, we can only put so much stock into a law polygraph test.
39:15
There's a reason they're not admissible in court, but they do give us
39:19
information, and it's interesting that he does pass, especially an FBI polygraph test.
39:24
It's so bizarre to me, though, that a chief of police,
39:28
someone who sits down in his whole career, he said, where were you
39:31
on this day at this time, and he expects people to answer, has
39:37
no idea where he was just a few days earlier, right between seven oh
39:42
five and seven thirty before he goes and picks up his fellow officers. So
39:45
it's it just kind of blows my mind, like that's what you do for
39:49
a living. And your answer is I can't remember. That is weird because
39:53
you'd think as a police officer, he would know. That would be suspicious.
39:57
Like he doesn't have to give like an elaborate cover story, just say,
40:00
while I was driving around a patrol for twenty five minutes and nothing happened,
40:04
I'd just turned on a few random streets. But the fact that he
40:07
said he could not remember is just very telling. However, there also happened
40:12
to be issues with the story provided by Eugene Wright, the Fort Hood soldier
40:15
who discovered Steve's body and radio chief Carson. Wright was questioned by an army
40:21
investigator who believed he was withholding information as he failed two polygraphs and gave a
40:27
number of inconsistent statements. Wright allegedly said that if he quote unquote told the
40:31
truth about what happened, he would go to jail. In the summer of
40:36
nineteen eighty nine, the New Mexico Attorney General's office was approached by an Albuquerque
40:40
police detective who claimed that over a week before Steve was killed, he had
40:45
received a tip that a quote unquote gringo coop was going to be killed in
40:49
the mountains. The tipster claimed he was passing this tip along to the Albuquerque
40:53
PD because he didn't trust the authorities in Torrance County, but since he didn't
40:59
provide any specific details, the detective was unable to act on this tip.
41:02
After reading about Steve's death in the newspaper, the detective turned this information over
41:07
to the state police, but they dismissed it because they initially believed that death
41:12
was a suicide. Around the same period, investigators from the Attorney General's Office
41:17
spoke to a witness who claimed that a law enforcement officer from another agency had
41:22
confessed to killing Steve and added that it wouldn't have happened if Steve had just
41:27
quote unquote kept his nose out of things well. James Scarantino thought this witness's
41:31
story might be a potentially major break in the case, but within days of
41:36
receiving it, he wound up being fired by the Attorney General's Office and two
41:40
of his investigators were reassigned. Scarantino claimed that this was because he had refused
41:45
to back off after constant pressure from his superiors to ease up on the investigation
41:51
into Steve's death, and earlier that same year, Scarantino's predecessor had resigned from
41:57
the position of Assistant Attorney General due to his frustrations over how the investigation was
42:01
being handled. Okay, go back to this man that they had interviewed,
42:07
the officer from Fort Hood or the soldier from Fort Hood. He is the
42:13
one who discovers the body, and radio is the chief, and yet he
42:15
fails two polygraphs and says, well, if I tell the truth, I'm
42:19
gonna go to jail. That's it. That's all we know about this guy.
42:24
Because there's clearly something there. And I'm horrified at the fact that you
42:30
have an Attorney General's office who says, basically, back off, back off
42:37
of this case. Your job is to achieve justice for a community. Why
42:42
would any of these individuals be told back off of solving this person's murder.
42:47
It is very bizarre, But especially when you consider that Mountaineer as a small
42:52
town like it's not like this crime took place in a big city where you
42:55
would expect widespread corruptions. So you wonder why the Attorney er office just wanted
43:00
this case to go away. I mean, were they involved, was powerful
43:05
people involved in drug smuggling? Did they fifty four pounds in marijuana place some
43:08
sort of role in Steve's death, and like you mentioned, Eugene Wright,
43:13
this army soldier who he failed these polygraphs, but then they never really followed
43:17
up on him or applied any more pressure. As you might recall, he
43:21
was a friend of a Chief Carson's son, so if he was involved in
43:24
the conspiracy, he probably would have had motive to lie. It was not
43:30
until nineteen ninety five when Steve's death was finally officially reclassified as a homicide and
43:37
his name was added to a memorial outside the Law Enforcement Academy in Santa Fe,
43:42
New Mexico police officers who were killed in the line of duty, but
43:45
the investigation into his death continued to remain at a standstill. In December two
43:51
thousand and four, Melvin King died after an apparent accidental overdose of tailanol,
43:57
but autopsy reports also showed like the King had been on a methamphetamine high and
44:01
dingusted antifreeze. In twenty thirteen, Robert Chung, the police chief of Mountainair
44:07
at that time, decided to reach out to Steve's family in order to put
44:12
together a ceremony to honor him and commemorate the twenty fifth anniversary of his death.
44:17
A four foot monument dedicated to Steve's memory was erected outside the Mountainair Police
44:22
Station, and the ceremony was attended by Steve's son, who was twenty six
44:28
years old at that point. The station would eventually experience a fire, which
44:31
required extensive renovations, but in May twenty nineteen, another ceremony was held in
44:38
which the rebuilt building was renamed the Stephen A. Sandlin Memorial Police Station.
44:45
However, Steve's death is no longer considered to be a suicide or accident.
44:50
There were still no conclusive answers about how he was killed, So I guess
44:54
you could say the path went Chile. What's so powerf is that twenty five
45:00
years later you have a brand new law enforcement agency there. Right, almost
45:06
everybody would probably have been replaced over those twenty five years through retirement and people
45:10
leaving the job, and that department can look at this case and say there
45:15
was such a lack of justice for this family. And it's probably pretty well
45:22
known that no one from that department attended the funeral, And like I was
45:25
saying, it creates such a loss for the widow and for the son who
45:30
are looking and saying, look, my dad lost his life on the job,
45:35
and no one cared enough about him to honor him or to show up
45:37
when we needed the most, when they're supposed to protect and serve not just
45:43
the community but each other's families, and they didn't. And then you have
45:46
this amazing turnaround where the department says, basically, shame on us, Right
45:53
the people before me that should have really fought for Steve and his family and
46:00
should have been there to provide the support and the respect and the love that
46:07
Steve could no longer give to his family, they do this amazing ceremony.
46:10
His poor son is twenty six years old, but he finally sees his dad
46:15
being honored for the life that he wanted to live and the sacrifices he was
46:21
willing to make for his job in law enforcement. I think it's amazing because
46:24
it's not the same people that turn their back on him at that time.
46:29
So it's twenty five years too late, but what a beautiful sentiment for this
46:34
family to say, Wow, this kind of new department comes forward and says,
46:38
we realize he wasn't treated fairly, and this wasn't handled properly, and
46:43
we respect and care about you. It's a big deal. Yeah, this
46:47
is definitely a fresh air compared to a lot of the other cases like this
46:51
we've covered, because a lot of the time, if a death is ruled
46:53
accident or suicide, the reclassification never takes place because nobody wants to admit that
47:00
they were wrong. But here, Steve's death was reclassified as a homicide and
47:05
the current administration did acknowledge that the previous police department made a lot of mistakes
47:12
and pretty much disrespected his memory. And that's what always gives me hope for
47:15
a lot of these older cold cases that remain unsolved for decades, that you
47:19
just hope that once the old garden is out of the picture, they'll get
47:22
some fresh blood in who wants to take a fresh look at these cases and
47:25
do the right thing and solve them. So that's why I'm not going to
47:30
lose hope that there may be answers in Steve's death someday and there's no one
47:35
to fear here anymore. It's like everyone's probably retired or moved on and things
47:38
like that, and it's saying, this is my police department. Now it's
47:42
a badge I wear, and if I can uncover that there was some corruption
47:45
or something going on, so be it. So I think this would be
47:49
a good time to bring it into part one. But join us next week
47:52
as we present part two of our series about the death of Steve Sandlin.
47:57
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Cold
48:00
Patreon. Yes. The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now,
48:04
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I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
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we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not
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One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of
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48:51
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48:54
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49:02
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call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy