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