Bloody Triple Murder Madness - El Rancho, New Mexico

[music] Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yeah! Choo-choo! Yeah, indeed, Jimmy. Yeah, indeed. My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. [music] Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on an absolutely nuts edition of Small Town Murder Express. As always, 10 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag. We have just a diabolically crazy gross, weird wacky Halloween plot for you. There's nothing to do with Halloween, but it's gross, so we'll put it in there, and it's horror. We'll put it that way. So, going to be crazy stuff. Before we get to that, head over to Shut Up and give me murder.com. What's there, you may ask? Well, all merchandise you could possibly want, everything from skateboards to coffee cups, but besides that, tickets to live shows get 'em last two of the year. November the 13th were in Terry Town just about sold out, so check the website, not sure about that. Yeah. Then, the next night, November the 14th, we are in Medford, just outside Boston at the Shevalier. Awesome theater. It's going to be great. So, get your tickets for that. Great place. God damn it. Our last time, we usually did another venue, and that was the first time last time we love the place. So, Shut Up and give me murder.com is where you get all of that and more. Also, listen to crime and sports, listen to your stupid opinions, get yourself Patreon, everybody. Oh, yeah. You want it. Patreon.com/crimeinsports. That's where you get all the bonus materials. All you have to be is $5 a month or above a cup of coffee, a single cup of coffee will get you instead. First of all, hundreds of back bonus episodes, almost 400 of them as soon as you subscribe. New ones every other week, one crime and sports, one small town murder and you get it all, everybody. And this week, what you're going to get is for crime and sports, we talk about in other unrelated old timey news, crazy old newspaper articles about people just dying in insane ways and crazy medical ads and it's just crazy stuff. Again, for small town murder, talked about the widower documentary there, the widower on Netflix till death do us part where this guy had six wives and four of them were dead. That doesn't seem right. And then we find out. I'm told we undersold how fucking creepy he is by the way. I don't even know how we said he's the creepiest man we've ever seen. I don't know what more we could have said about him, but we hate his dots. We really made fun of him a lot. So, there he is though, patreon.com/crimeinsports is where you get all of that. And on top of that, you get every show we put out crime and sports, your stupid opinions, both small town murders, all ad free with that page and ad free, damn it. And you get a shout out at the end of the regular show too. You can't beat it. So that said, I think it's time everybody to sit back with you say here, time to clear the lungs, arms to the sky, and let's all shout, shout out back, give me murder. Let's do this everybody. Let's go on a trip. Shall we? Yeah. We are going to Jimmy's favorite state in the 50. You know which one that is, don't you, Jimmy? Dusty bitch in Mexico. Yeah. By the way, he has no idea what we're doing. All I have to say is Jimmy's least favorite state and it's New Mexico. So bad. He hates it so much. Because the land of enchantment enchant this fuck that place. One time driving through New Mexico, it was a sunny day and it was warm, but in the shadow of a bush, there was some snow. And that was this much enchanting. I was like, that's kind of a chanting. That's kind of cool to see. Yeah. And then snow on a desert floor is so weird. 80 miles an hour ago and just all the enchantment was gone a second later and it was back to New Mexico. I get what you're saying. Yeah. We get to one of those gas station truck stops that's embedded in a rock. In a rock. And they have the fake deer and anal open. It's weird. What are you doing? Why is this why is this place sucks so bad? This is El Rancho, New Mexico. Oh, yeah. El Rancho, not the El Rancho hotel, which is by Gallup. This is different. This is in North Central, New Mexico up top there. Yeah. 25 minutes to Santa Fe. All right. And I know the way to Santa Fe and it's through this shit hole apparently. So it's the way to go. It's got to be. It's an hour. I don't know. I just know it's 25 minutes to San Jose about an hour and 20 to Albuquerque and three hours and 20. Not San Jose. Not San. I know. That's the joke. Got it. Yeah. Got it. So I had to stick something in there. And three hours. Because we were talking about that. We were in San Jose. Yeah. We brought that up. Yeah. Well, three hours and 20 minutes to Farmington, New Mexico, which was our last episode. Last one. There. Yes. Episode 701. The meaningless mutilation murders. Uh-huh. That was weird stuff. This is in Santa Fe County area code 505, which is at the whole state, I think. Hopefully. There's can't be that many people. No. There really isn't. Population here. Definitely not that many. 1342. Wow. It's a very small place. It's in like the. They counted in the Santa Fe statistical area because it's sitting out by itself out there. A median household income here. Pretty low. 20,000 under the national average is $48,068. Median home cost. Also well below the national average, $240,100, which is. That's pretty steep. A little steep if you're making $48,000 a year for your whole family. That's tough. A history of this town, well, it started out here in the 1300s. The Pueblo people, Pueblos were here and, um, yeah, they moved from the mountains down into the river valleys to farm. There's local streams and, you know, irrigation they were doing here. The area was first part of Spanish, New Mexico, then Mexican territory, then became the part of the U.S. after 1948, the Treaty of Guadalupe, Hidalgo. It's really, it was a Pueblo revolt in 1680. It's been a lot of that kind of strife between the Spanish settlers and the people who were from there. Yeah. So during which a lot of the many northern Pueblos were abandoned and then there was resettlements and then there was a smallpox epidemic that worked a lot of people out. There's a lot, there's an awful big deal here. In, after World War II, the Santa Fe metro area kind of got a little bit bigger because also it's close to Los Alamos, which was the huge site of the Manhattan Project and all this government stuff. So I think this is a place like if you're in the government and you're going to Los Alamos, you probably fly into Santa Fe and then go over there. So that's how it works. Now, reviews of this town, there are no reviews of this town that I could find. Is that right? I'm trying a couple of reviews of the county, which will give you an idea of what's going on here. Here's five stars. It's a great place to live other than rent being so high and minimum wage doesn't cover. Either you are poor or you are rich, no in between here, which could be said. There's rich people there. That could be said pretty much that sounds like a description of America as a whole at this point. Oh, yeah. Most, most places at this point. Here's five stars and this is a great one because this could be like Sedona. There's several places that this could go in Santa Fe, New Mexico's got a lot of that mystical spirituality shit going on, not religion, but like, you know, no, just in turquoise and with the earth, the vortex will hear this review. More crystals, more crystals, more crystals, more crystals, more crystals, more crystals, more crystals, more crystals, more crystals, that's the whole review. Is that what they do? Yeah, crystals. Yeah. Yeah. Just like Sedona. And then here's two stars. There are people driving through Santa Fe, smoking products, laced by companies and citizens alike with nano metals, gallium, aluminum, neodym, beryllium, et cetera, chaff and other pesticides, glossoglyphosates, taking that it is only one part of the United States geographic territory. They would have to put check on that to be rated anything undet health really. Their guess is good as mine, everybody. That person smoke. I don't know what's in the water in northern New Mexico, but it's making this person insane and sort of phosphate. I don't know what's happening. Things to do here. We got the Santa Fe spring festival. Santa Fe's got a spring festival. A spring. They have all sorts of fest. They've got a wine festival, a harvest festival. Well, this, the big attraction here is to watch the annual sheep shearing. Let's watch a guy. Once a year, let's watch a guy shave a sheep, I guess at this thing, they use historic methods from centuries past. I guess they pin it down and scrape it with a sharp rock, which sounds great. Big straight razor. Yeah. See traditional weaving and dying demonstrations, along with child-centered crafts, Jesus this sounds boring. We got a guy playing live Spanish guitar at 10 a.m. You got a meat harley, the buffalo. It's a buffalo. You go meet him. It's a big buffalo. I don't know. Yeah. Civil war infantry demonstration. Yeah. All right. The lightning boy foundation, which is hoop dancing. I don't know. Oh. Native hoop dancing. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. That makes that's a good deal here. The Entra Flamenco used dancers and folk dancing from New Mexico, Bailey's day salon. So there we go. I feel like I feel like just let me know when the hoop dancing is around. Yeah, let's do that and then I'm going back home. Tell me when the sheep's being sheared so I can avoid that, please. I don't want to see that off the orders. That looks horrible. Have you seen that? Yeah. They look so helpless. It's horrible. I realize it's probably helping them. Well, it just looks like the scene in Stripes when everybody goes to get their hair cut for the RV. That's what it reminds me of where they're like sad. Fuck it. Yeah. All right. That's sad. Let's talk about a murder here, everybody. Here we go. All right. Let's start out and talk about some nice people. I'll tell you right away they're nice. We're going to start out in 2011. All right. We're going to talk about Lloyd Ortiz, he's 55 years old and his wife Dixie Ortiz, 53 years old. They've been married for 34 years. Wow. So I mean, they got married young and stayed married. They have two kids, two got girls at some point here. Lloyd runs a tile company and Dixie runs activities at a nursing home. So they're sought to the earth, these people. So between the two of them, they're pretty busy. If you run your own business, you're very busy and it's a tile business is not glamorous. It's hard work. It's real work. That'll nick your hands up a lot. That's cool. Things are going to hurt. Your back's going to hurt. It's a life of pain and I guess there's plenty to do with the nursing home also here. Oh, meeting a new person every day. That's saying goodbye to somebody every day. Every single day. Yeah. So Lloyd basically works, he's up with the sun working. I mean, that's how it is and he works a lot of times till after nine at night. So he's working 14 hour days to he has Ortiz tile contractors. It operates out of the family home and nothing glamorous, just making a good living for your family. That's all he's doing here. So much then set. So Dixie works in a nursing home in Los Alamos as the activities director and her daughter Angela said that Dixie didn't see the job even as work. She just liked helping people really didn't even see it as a job. But one of the co-workers said she has such a big heart and a fierce advocate for the elderly. She just loves old people and wants to wipe her thoughts. Now it's a tough gig because it's tough and you also have to say no a lot to him because they offer you a bunch of their shit when they like you and you have to, you're not allowed to accept that. No, no, that would be my son of $17,000. Jack. He can't be. He can't be a prison guard and take shit from the inmates like and that's generally what you're doing here. It's not gonna work. My son, my son came home and he goes like, can't accept this. I was like, no, he goes, I sure would like to. I'm sure. You would. Yeah. So when, um, yeah, they just said she's a great lady. So they have two daughters here in the 70s. They have Angela and Sherry, C-H-E-R-I-E. So Sherry, Sherry maybe? Yeah. Either way, we're gonna call her, we'll call her Sherry for now. Yeah. Okay. Because she's gonna come up a lot. Now 1989, Sherry and Angela are teenagers and that is when somehow Lloyd and Dixie come across a seven-month-old baby boy named Stephen who's got apparently no parents. What? And as a baby that they can adopt and apparently the Stephen, this is how nice they are. This is not, oh, a brand new shiny baby boy, this get us problems, medical problems that are gonna persist his whole life and they're gonna, they're gonna sign up for this. So where do they come across as baby? That is a, that I'm not positive. Something tells me as something to do with church because they're big into church. So he had cerebral palsy apparently, which is not gonna get better. A couple of angels, yeah, that doesn't heal. No, the left side of his body doesn't work very well. Sherry said, my brother, he was a shaken baby who wasn't even supposed to live. He had so many mental and physical disabilities to begin with. That's who he is. They were told that he's probably never gonna walk, he might never speak because somebody shook him. He had problems to begin with and I think that is why someone got frustrated and shook him, which is horrific. That happens a lot. Kids with a lot of medical problems tend to get abused more because they're driving crazy. Yeah, you can't communicate with them. People snap, yeah, which is horrible actually, obviously. So I mean, to take this on, it's not this, it's a person, but to take that baby on is you have to be a fucking angel. You know what I mean? We just adopted a cat and there was cats and we're like, there's some cats that need medication and we're like, oh, we gotta do that every day, that's tough and shitty as it was to say, but that's what you think about, you know what I mean? When you're donating your time, you have to understand and be honest with yourself, what you're capable of donating because people sign up for so much and then they're like, oh no. And then the cat gets re-homed again for the kid gets re-homed again, you can't do that to people, you can't do that. And that's why that's what happens with a lot of foster kids. It's whether in 20 homes by the time they're 15, it's horrible. So it's going to take a lot of work, obviously, but he apparently comes out and is way more capable and able than anyone would have ever thought he was. He walks, he talks, he's got a great personality, he's very well liked. He just flew at, yeah, you could call him like Josh, but if you don't, Josh Blue is, he's a funny comic who's a great guy and a good friend of ours and just a wonderful guy, I love him a lot. He's a great guy. Very capable. Oh, he don't shit. I mean, he wouldn't, he has cerebral palsy and he's a comic. He has children that he fucking, he can't stand, he's hilarious. He's just a great guy and he plays soccer. He plays soccer and he's like, good, good, too, place for the US. We saw him hurt Ben Roy. That's pretty funny. He can throw. He can throw punches. He was like, Jesus Christ, man, what the hell, stop. Yeah, don't get Josh drunk and let him take a swing on you. He can, he can do some damage. He'll block in your eye. He will. So at the church, the pastor said he would walk in and greet everyone who came in because he was like the church mascot. Everybody loved it because he like overcame all of this stuff and he had been through a couple of brain surgeries. He had constant debilitating headaches. So for all this and this is, we're talking early 2000s, doctors prescribed him medical marijuana at a boy for his symptoms. So his family had a medical marijuana card for him in a license to grow it as well because there's not. And, and to cultivate, there's nowhere to get it in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico really. So I think that was the fourth state that got it, right? Oh, something probably. Yeah. I think it was Washington, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico. I think California had medical too. Oh, those California first, right? I think they were one of the first anyway. So they had a locked fence at the back of their property where they grew weed plants for Steven. They had 17 legal plants growing back there. Awesome. Yeah. And he had the chronic head pain and apparently this helped him by 21 years old. So 2011 where we started, Steven is, he still lives at home with his parents, which that's fine. But he's doing great though. He really is. He's an outgoing person. He has friends. He has, you know, he's made a life of what they said he wouldn't have one. So, now, Cherie or Cherie, however you will call her Cherie, Cherie is the one daughter. She lives on the other side of the fence from them. She lives behind, like in the house, the back front of her behind, yeah. With her husband Jesse, Jesse Rios, and they have a couple of kids as well. Yeah, and they have the other daughter, Angela, that we talked about too, Lloyd and Dixie. So now, Cherie's son, Robert, is friends with a boy named Nicholas Ortiz. No relation. No. Ortiz is an extremely common name in this area. I was reading like it's, it's like Smith or Jones or something. It's as common as it gets. So no relation, Nicholas Ortiz, he hangs out at their house all the time. He comes from kind of a troubled house. He's a 16 year old. So they have taken on the, you know, banner of taking in wayward people like their parents do. Because that's how they're raised. It's part of who they are. Yeah. And apparently the daughters didn't even mind when they brought this, you know, baby with disabilities in and they were like, oh, that's fine. They took to him and tried to help him as well. All together. Yeah. Great people, very nice. So Nicholas is 16 years old. He's a little five, got five five, little guy. Yeah. He grew up a few miles from El Rancho. And he also went to church and that's how he knew them was through church. One of the pastors said he was one of the most eager helpers that they had at church. He was really into helping out. His pastor said Nicholas was there almost pre-consistently. Those are, that's a weird word salad, almost pre-consistently, almost pre-consistently is a lot. Wow. And always willing to help if we were doing something at church, what do you need me to do? Or he would go to the youth pastor and say, what can I help out with this? What can I do here? And constantly wanting to be part of it. part of what we were doing, he showed himself to be a very pleasant young man. Right. All right, so Nicholas is a very pleasant young man. He's got a lot of like social media, a lot of like inspirational shit and biblical shit and stuff like that. Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow, shit of that nature, you know what I mean? Corporate motivational posters. That kind of thing, you know, little kitty dangling. Also, he claims to be in a gang here at 16, but there really, as we'll find out, there really isn't any gang because there's nobody really around to be in a gang with him. Right. It's just him and another friend of his and they call themselves Sir Trace, Sir Tresse, South 13. Sir Trace, they think they're, they think they're in Sir Trace. That's what they're calling themselves. This is in 2011, too, so you know. Yes, you are. Sir Trace. Yes. Exactly. His friend is Jose Roy Bal. He's 15 years old and that's the kitty hangs out with and they're, they're the gang. Just two dudes, it's two dudes. There's a check later. We'll talk about two, but she's older and she's maybe the most pathetic person in this story because she's like 23 hanging out with 16 year old boys, which nice that the psychology there. You don't have to say, I mean 16 year old girls don't want anything to do with 16 year old boys. I walked as a 23 year old girl wanting to do with a 16 year old boy. That's terrible. They're hard, James. They're bad at that. Yeah, they're real hard. Yeah. So, Cherie and Jesse take pity on Nicholas. He had a tough home life, but he seems to be a nice kid despite that. Frequent bouts. Yeah. Besides that. Frequent bouts of volatility, a lot of fighting, bad home, very chaotic home environment. So, Cherie offers him a room at their house. You can live with us to get out of that environment. A jar of drywall. Yeah. And he's friends with her son. They go to the same church. He seems like a nice kid. They want to help him out. Their parents did that. So, why not? So, he lives there for several months, has his own room, and even he spends a lot of time over at Lloyd and Dixie's house, too. He's around the other side of the fence and they love taking in a straight, so they feed him all the time and they like having him there and, you know, all that kind of thing. They drove him around wherever he needed to go. Later on, the relationship is described as he had a real tight relationship with the RT's family. He was almost like one of their children and he loved both of them. Both Dixie and Lloyd got along really well with them. Nobody really, you know, disputes that here. Then, at a nowhere, they started noticing things missing once in a while. Oh, Nick. Little things missing. Cherie and Jesse noticed cash disappearing. They walked in on Nicholas going through their shit, rifling the drawers and they're like, "Hey, what?" "No." So, they said, "Okay, we're not going to throw you out. We know you're fucked up and we know you come from a bad environment and all that kind of thing." So, here's what we're going to do. You need money? Tell you what. You do chores and we'll pay you. And then you can make money that way, which is not a bad angle given the kid a chance to redeem himself. If he just needs money and didn't know how to go about it, and that's all he ever knew to do is to steal it. Maybe you can teach him not to steal it. And if he takes to that, great, if not, which he probably won't find. But you never know. Maybe that'll help. Was there a punishment or just the. No, they told you. Just the avenue of success. No, they just gave him an avenue of success and said, "If you want to get money, you do things and you earn money." That's how you get. They were like teaching him a life lesson that they didn't think he knew of. You have to earn your money, basically. But it doesn't stop the stealing, obviously. At one point he stole a 22 caliber gun. He stole a jug of coins. Yeah, he admits later on that he broke in the house through an open window and stole the gun. Now early June 2011, about two weeks before Father's Day, his behavior starts really getting on Lloyd and Dixie's nerves a little bit. Not even their nerves. More like it's fraying their nerves. They're not angry. They're just. It's too much. Yeah, they're ready to start talking about giving up. Well, at one point they found him, Lloyd and Dixie found him hiding in the backyard and he didn't use the gate. He didn't knock. He climbed the fence and was hiding in the yard and they're like, "Okay, this is. You can't do that." That's sneaking around. Yeah. Come knock on the door. That's fine. So Lloyd told him to leave my family alone and go back to your parents. Like, go back from once you came, essentially. We're getting up on you. Sheree sent him home, said, "We can't do it. This is about two weeks before Father's Day." The way Nicholas put it was, he said he lost contact with the family, quote, "After he got blamed for stuff that he didn't do." He says he never did all that. He said, "Loyd just told me, 'I left up my trust with them and not to go near them anymore.' I don't know what that means. Maybe messed up. He was trying to. F'd up. Something like that. That's how it goes. And he even said, he told the cops who talked to him about the theft. He said that, "If I ever find out who did it, I'll call you guys and tell you. I didn't do it." So I'll even. I'll. He'll look. Look for the real killer. He's going to look for the real killer on the golf course. Yeah. Now, Jose Roybal, his gang brother there, two of them with their two-man gang, he's got a cousin and that is Nicholas' girlfriend for a while and then kind of on and off whatever the fuck they are. She's Ashley May Roybal and she's goddamn 23 years old, fucking around with a 16-year-old, which is the pinnacle of pathetic for a young woman. I mean, pinnacle. That is. That's sad. What is she going to have to do that? To do that. Oh, boy. Yeah. I mean, the psychology there is pretty goddamn obvious of what's going on here. So she's seen or been through. Yeah. Participated in. Something's gone wrong here. Her aunt says it's got the best of her. Now, she was a church kid starting out, too. The same pastor who said good things about Nicholas said, she started coming to church as a little girl. Actually, her and her sisters we absolutely loved. She was always at the church, always. I don't think a day went by that her and her sisters were never at the church. They would come and clean. They would come and help us with the yard. They would help us with performances, with dramas. She went to school with the pastor's sons and grew up with them. She went to prom with the pastor's oldest son. How about that? Yeah. He said as she got older, she became less and less involved in the church to the point where she never came back again. I would hear bits and pieces that she was running with some of the wrong people, the wrong crowds, drinking, drug use, even to the point where she was getting involved in doing things a little bit criminal. Oh, boy. So she went from church girl to like in the wild guys, which why would kids spend all their time at church when things are bad at home? I mean, every day. I don't mean go into church once, I mean, if you show up every day, I just want to help with the yard work. I bet you things aren't great at home. Why don't you have anything else teenager to do? Exactly. Or just kids at all. It just seems like that to them. They caught that as this is a safe place where people don't, there's not chaos here, essentially. So for them at the time, for a lot of people, it's not a safe place if you've seen anything about the Catholic church. But it's very dangerous. But for them, it was a refuge. So by her mid, by her 20s, she's got felony convictions, burglary, drug charges, what? And she's fucking a 16 year old. So you can count child molestation on that toe. Yeah. We have to check on that one too. Also a felony. Also a felony. She also knows Lloyd and Dixie because she grew up with Stephen and went to school with him. She's two years older than Stephen. And she said that when, and she liked Lloyd and Dixie too, because she said when her own mother died, Lloyd and Dixie helped pay for the funeral. These people are fucking angels. They're saints. These people take care of everybody within their orbit that they can possibly do. They do. That's amazing. So they help bury her mother. And she grew up with Stephen. Now she's lives in the area and drives a gray car. That's important later. Okay. Jose Roy Ball. He's 15 years old, Ashley's first cousin and Nicholas's friend and gang brother and huge. I can't make air quotes that big. Like here, I'll use both hands for one, both hands with those of your air quotes there gang. So basically, they're two, their cousins, sort of kind of not really what they kind of think of themselves as cousins. And the other cousins, Jose and Ashley are described as best friends who like to smoke a lot. So her days consist of hanging out with 15-year-old boys and smoking weed as a 23-year-old girl. Yeah. Now Jose has a history of violence against his own family and has threatened Ashley in the past and threatened other people in the past and his family. So Jose is kind of a loose cannon here. Yeah. And he said that at one point, this is wild. I guess at one point, there's a documented thing allegedly that something happened in the neighborhood and Jose was worried that somebody was going to tell on him. Oh. So he told somebody, you see that baby there? That baby will die if you're a rat, allegedly. I don't know. Yeah. Um, Jose's hard. The, yeah, and a relative of his named Alyssa later said, Jose want showed her a tattoo that he had at his teens. Yeah. And he said to her that this represents the three souls I took. Okay. 16 15 year old bluster. I'm tough. Stay away from me. You know, the mark of the three souls, three souls I took. And Jose is left handed, by the way, just like the great car. That's just something to put in his, his file. Okay. Um, now Sunday, June 19th, 2011, his father's day in New Mexico. And everywhere else time to be alive. Nice time. Now on Father's Day, Sheree makes enchiladas for her dad. Oh, it's Father's Day. So she walks them over from her side of the property to her parent side. And lets herself in. She has the spare key, you know, they'll go back and forth. We don't know exactly when this was. I don't know if this is the morning. Or there's been reports that it was as late as 7 p.m. So anywhere from like 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. this could have happened. We're not positive somehow. Um, but she walks in and she said, quote, I walked in and I was like mom. And then I walked over to her in the master bedroom to shake her. And her head was blown. Oh, boy. And so I ran to the kitchen to check for my brother and dad. And I thought my it was my dad laying on the floor in his underwear because his face was so blown off. And I ran home screaming, screaming for my husband. So she said she walks in and sees horror, obviously, unidentifiable faces, but that's insane. A male in underwear, face gone, a mom in bed, face gone. Face gone. Now we find out that the body in the kitchen is not her father. It's actually it's poor Stephen as if he hasn't been through enough. But she was the damage was so bad she couldn't tell her father from Stephen. Who aren't even related. Yeah. So Jesse comes here and he's the one who said to her, listen, that's Stephen in the kitchen. Your dad is dead too, but he's in the backyard. So she was like, Oh, thank God. That wasn't my father. And he's like, not so fast. Hold on. Yeah. I found him too. She said, I started to row, he said I started to run toward her. And that's when I saw a hole close to her temple and dried blood down her face. Dry blood. Okay. So somebody calls 911, the New Mexico state police respond because there's no police force in El Rancho. So they find Dixie. She's in the master bedroom in her pajamas with trauma to her right temple. They find Lloyd in the backyard near a tree with injuries to his head and upper body. They find Stephen face down in the kitchen floor, struck repeatedly in the head and shoulder area. And he has a deep defensive gash on his thumb. So Stephen was fighting back, no matter which is saying something, no gun. That's, this is the thing here. Lloyd is struck seven times Nicholas, Nicholas, Dixie, Dixie, Dixie, Dixie was in the master bedroom. She has struck twice in the head near the right temple, never got up. And then Stephen, they think that must have heard the commotion of whatever and came out of his room and his underwear and tried to fight off the, whoever the intruder is and had a deep defensive gash on his thumb. They said he has struck 17 times. Just aggressive for a guy against a guy that's got physical ailments. Lots of them. Yeah. So substantial. And this is like, like, we'll find out what the weapon is too. But it's an absolutely fucking devil's brutal, horrifying, it looks like it's not even real. Like it's you just like a horror movie. They made it for a prop, but it's they you could buy it at Home Depot. It's fucking crazy. So Lloyd's wallet is on the kitchen counter next to Stephen's body. It's full of money, by the way, because he deals a lot in cash and things like that and for his business. There's also safes in the house and none of them have been touched. What the fuck? None of the safes. One officer said it was the worst crime scene he's ever been called to and said this is three people, the ferocity of it was just horrifying. There's no gunshot residue and no obvious weapon. Because at first they thought these are, there's holes in these people a lot of them. They thought they were shot and they realized they're not shot. There's no forced entry anyone could point to. They don't know what happened. Now they're thinking maybe this was a robbery gone wrong. But like we said, Lloyd's wallet is full of cash. The two safes in the house, one safe held $4,000 and the other had $80,000 in it. So yeah, a good amount of cash. Great. Both were untouched. 17 marijuana plants out back untouched. What? Nobody pulled their weed plants nothing and it was now the safe. The safe was pretty secret like the Sherry and Jesse and the other kids, nobody knew about that. No, but they have all this stuff so they're like, if the motive was robbery, whoever did this to a terrible job, awful. Now they talked to Sherry and Jesse first because they found the bodies and their stories too are a little weird and so they want to get this locked in here. They say they arrived home just after midnight. They went for an evening at the casino and got home and we're watching a movie. It always. It's always there. Casino. Never go to the casino. Never ever. It's always bad. These people who live in like the middle of nowhere like this, that's all there is to do is the fucking casino. It's open all the time. It's horrible. So they just should shit all their money away. It's terrible. So Jesse says to the cops that he heard some noise coming from the other side of the fence. So he went out there and stood there for a minute and then he went back in. Waited to hear some more and then heard nothing else. He went inside. Went back in. But some time goes by in the evening and Jesse says, I left something out of my story, guys. Oh. Yeah. He said, all right. Remember how I said I heard a noise and I went out and just stood there for a minute and came in. Yeah. Kind of lied about that. Why would you lie? Why? At all. He said that, okay, I heard a noise outside. The dog started barking. So I got up and grabbed my gun and looked outside. He said, yeah. He said he saw a gray car driving away and he heard someone shout from the road. Hurry up. Let's go. Okay. So Jesse said, so I had my gun and I jumped in my truck and followed this gray car until they started driving crazy and I lost the car. Oh. Then I drove home. And he said, so I just went back to sleep, figuring it was teenagers messing around trying, you know, doing some vandalism or something. So we just went back to sleep. Didn't go look to see what they've vandalized. No. Just went in there. Now, the officers were like, what an odd thing to leave out of your story. Right. Like a potential actual. Anything. Yeah. That's why would you leave? There was people there saying hurry up. Let's go driving away. I chased them with a gun through the streets and I'm just going to leave that part out. Not only leave it out, but replace it with I stood outside for a second and then I heard nothing and went inside. It's very weird. So what they're doing, the police do not initially release the actual cause of death stuff. They actually release publicly that the family had been shot. That's what they say first, because they want to keep this particular detail. So they said that three people were found shot to death in the state police were trying to determine whether it was a homicide or a murder suicide at this point still, which is completely crazy when you hear the scene because this would be impossible to do to yourself. So this is, they're, this is total bullshit. They're just bullshitting the public here. They said, quote, at this point, state police can only say the victims died of gunshot wounds, but can't confirm if there was forced entry into the home or how many times the victims were shot. We're unsure as to what happened out there. The guys are still working it, working very hard to determine exactly what happened. So the last part's true, but the rest of it's bullshit. So whoever did it's got to be going, what? Yeah, what the fuck? So then, according to Sherry and Jesse, about 14 hours after the police finished searching the house, the state office of the medical examiner recommended crime scene up, crime scene cleanup companies to them, because you know, I'm sure he gets a, I'm sure there's some kick back system in this, but they know this type of thing. So the cleaners showed up that evening, which is the same 24 hour period as the killings pretty much. There were still, they were still there when state police came back to search the house again for a murder weapon. Really? And they're like, it's all been cleaned. That's it. Yeah, we're just looking for a murder weapon, keep, keep, keep, keep sponging. Yep. A report said that noted that the carpet from the bedroom was already in a biohazard bag by the time the investigators returned, which is all shit they need. So everything's being bagged by a cleaning service, and that's not good. No, the house has been bagged and bleached. You can't, there's nothing for you now. Nothing no forensics, no DNA, shit like that. Now they end up finding a weapon, and it's definitely the murder weapon in a field next to the house. It's just tossed, not buried, not hidden, just thrown in a field, not even with some brush on top of it, nothing. It is an axe, it's a matic I believe they're called. The one that is it's curved. the axe blade is curved like a nasty looking fucking murder weapon and out of the back of it is just a giant straight fucking pick. It's terrifying. It's a pickaxe. A pickaxe, but the way it's around, it's crazy. It looks like a murder weapon. Firemen's weapon in like a really raging fire. Yeah, this is like in the in the murder weapon section of Home Depot, you find this over there. Oh, you know what it looks like? It looks like what wildfire people carry. Yes. Yeah. It's the back to this because we mentioned this earlier in a different episode this week. The last action hero, it's the guy, the axe that the guy has that he throws at Schwarzenegger as he ducks in and goes over his face. And that's double axed on. That might be double, but one side is like that and a giant. The other fucking jet it out. Yeah. It's disturbing and it is covered in fucking blood in this field. Wow. Covered in blood. They find out it has three DNA strands on it. Uh-huh. Dixie Lloyd and Stephen none of, none of anybody else. No fingerprints from anybody either. Wow. So June 19th somewhere between June 19th and June 21st. So somewhere in this time when all this becomes public, a teenager named Eric Zubia or Zubia, he goes to the police and says that I got a phone call. This kid I know says he did it. Oh. Yeah. He said Nicholas Nicholas Ortiz said I killed those. I did it. And the cops are like, yeah, right. Fine. This is what kids do. They brag about shit they didn't do to try to sound tough. You shouldn't brag about a triple murder. Probably that's not bright. But kids brag about shit and the police completely just blow it off. They write it down and everything but they're like, yeah, he didn't do this. No. So June that he goes there on June 21st to tell them that. Now a week after the murder is that's when the medical examiner and everybody they confirm it was actually blunt force trauma and you know, penetrative wounds with the back of the pickaxe. It's it's fucking crazy. And they say they state and state investigators say they have no suspect and no motive for this. So for the next year, this stays in this crazy limbo stagnant state. No swamp, swamp water for a year. But police are now rolling in on who they think did it. And that's sherry and Jesse. Those are their suspects based on Jesse's lie and sherry found the body. That's bad. So it's not good. So it's very and everybody in town thinks that they did it too. It's like a weird apparently a weird rumor. They said as a matter of fact, the pastor of the church here said that for the next year and change basically, the daughter was the only person that anyone talked about as a suspect in town. And in church people gossip and they do all that, only the daughter. Police never named them publicly as suspects. But that's who everybody thinks is a suspect. Yeah. And the police at one point in June 2012, so a year into the investigation said there's a group of people we've not been able to completely remove from the investigation. Also, and you know that is them because the insurance payment has frozen. They will not pay out until the police clear them essentially. And if you want Jesse or the beneficiaries part of them. Yeah, at least. So if you want to know if you're a suspect, that's a way to find out. If you get the check, you're less likely to be a suspect than if you're not. If it's frozen, you're a fucking suspect. So it's interesting. Now the police had to put in writing that they weren't suspects. Sheree said, everything my dad worked for is going to be repossessed for closed because of this, because of the cops mistakes. Right. And Jesse said, I feel that the police, if they would have done a thorough job, they could have eliminated us the first day. Yeah. You shouldn't lie. It also. Right. Year after the murders, psychic Sylvia Brown, number her on TV all the time. She made a televised appearance to talk about the case and make a psychic prediction. She named Jesse Rios as the murderer. You bitch. I'm not fucking television. Which is crazy. Daytime. Daytime TV. So it's real people really think of that because Jesse had a gun. He had a truck. He, you know, he said the first statement left out that chase. He admitted that he employed argued on occasion. But he said it was just for petty things. And it would be, they lived on top of each other. People are going to argue a little bit and he said it was forgotten once it was over. So police searched Jesse and Sheree's house, nothing came back forensically because Sino footage from the night before lines up with the couple's account of exactly where they were when they said they were. But that was well before that the murder would happen. Anyway, you're at home when it happened. Yeah. So the police after a while start to kind of think that maybe it's not them actually. Distance a little bit a little bit because they're like something would have come up. We would have gotten something on them. So they said they've conducted more than 120 interviews in four states over a year. They have a bunch of evidence. They've collected. But they said this homicide is the number one priority for our case investigation for our investigations bureau in the northern half of the state. One thing we've learned through modern day policing is that a year or from now, two, three years from now, one piece of critical information may come up and break the case wide open. He also said there might be a break in the case coming next month. He said, I do feel we have to give more, give them more of a chance to see what they are on, see where they are on this. I know the longer it takes, probably the worst it gets. I don't know what evidence they have. They've not shared that. So that's what's going on. That's the spokesperson said. So they have other leads here. There's unverified claims that Stephen had been killed over an unpaid meth amphetamine debt. I think he has enough problems. Imagine someone on Paul's it has that as palsy on meth. That's a, that's a bad joke. Plenty of energy books so boundless energy. If you gave Josh meth, we gave him booze and it went crazy. Booze and weed. If you gave Josh and he had too much energy then. Yeah. He was two down some scotchens and weed. So anyway, also then somebody changed their story and said that wasn't it. Then other reports said the family may have sold drugs and they're like, no, they said the weed on the property was for my brother's prescription because that came. Oh, they had weed plants. Maybe they were selling it. And there's a big. No, they were selling cash. James true, true. But he also has a tie a tile company that runs out of the house. Yeah. So that makes sense. He keeps as safe as his bank. He doesn't try. That makes that so thing. So they're going through it all. Meth rumors. The weed. Maybe it was this. Maybe it was that. Then at one point, Angela, remember Angela, the yeah. Polonious 23 year old child molester there. Oh, no, not that one. That's I'm sorry. Not Angela. The other sister. The other sister. Yeah. I was talking about the other one. So Angela, the other sister, she said, you guys should talk to Nicholas Ortiz. So they questioned him and he was calm. They said, do you know anything that could help us? And he said, I don't. The only thing I've heard was what people have told me from the news. He said, yeah, I did have tension with the family. They asked me to leave, which is kind of nothing new for me. I get asked to leave places quite often. I'm told to leave a lot. Yeah. He said he was at home that night. The night, you know, going into father's day when they think this happened like late at night. He said he woke his dad up just after midnight for father's day and said, happy father's day. And then he went to sleep when his family corroborated it that they remember him waking the father up saying happy father's day and then going a bet. So October, 2012, Ashley, that's the one I was thinking about, Ashley Roy Ball, not Angela, Ashley is the child molesting felon. She is 25 years old and in custody on burglary and felony larceny charges. Oh, she's a real asshole. Oh, yeah. They said, all right, Ashley have the right to remain silent. They give her all that. And she waves it away and says, I have information about the El Rancho murders. Don't worry about reading me my rights. We're going to get right to business. Yeah. I'm going to get out of this because I know something worse. I don't want to be charged with larceny. Yep. So they said, why are you telling us this? And she said, because it's not right, I grew up with Steve and I went to school to him. I wanted to come and I just couldn't. So they're like, hmm, okay. So they said for months now, the only names were going around was the family and now you throw this one in here and saying this. So she does another interview saying, okay, well, we'll look into all your shit. You think it's, you know, because she tells them it was the Nicholas and it was that other kid and, you know, they have a gang and all this shit. So they check into Nicholas' phone records from that night and something doesn't fit Ashley's story because she gave them a big story that we'll talk about. They bring her back and they said, listen, there's a lot more that you're not telling us. There's a lot more involvement from some different people and that's what we need to clarify. The records show a third person and that was her 15-year-old cousin Jose that we know about. Right. And she left him out to try to protect him. Really? Yeah, just left him out of the scenario. She's going to ruin her boyfriend's life and save her cousin. That's what she said. Well, they're not together anymore. Right. So, yeah, the three, they planned, she said, we planned the burglary together, Jose backed out, but Nicholas went in and did this, basically. She said that there's no fingerprints or anything because Nicholas wore socks over his hands to not leave any prints or anything, socks. So they go looking for the gray car, because they said, you, she said, I drove a, what kind of car do you drive? I drove a gray car, then they remember Jesse saying he chased a gray car. So they will say, oh, well, let's find the car. Unfortunately, it's been sold and was crushed at a scrap yard. So at this point, it's a cute, so ran it into the fucking ground over a year ago, probably that's, that's it. There's a reporter named Alex Tomlin, who said, so Ashley tells the police that they cooked up this plan to go in and steal money in marijuana and that Nicholas knew the house. He knows the family. He's going to be in and out, right? She drops the two guys, Jose and Nick off at the family's house. The way the story goes from there, there's this, there's this Jose kind of backs out, but Nicholas decides to go ahead and go in and he goes in and he commits the crimes and he calls to get picked up and she picks them up. Yeah. He said, there's things that kind of don't match up or shifting stories. And then of course, there's always the element that, again, she was facing her own criminal charges and other things. So with Ashley and Jose, the question remains, what part did they really play? Is it just them two doing it and blaming him? That'd be easy to do. So it's, it's, it's a lot. So the state police interview Nick again and they sit him down, they've talked to him multiple times, they go through his phone records, you know, they don't, physical evidence. There's nothing. Not a lot. Yeah. Not a lot to go on, but they have this call log and communication between Nicholas, Ashley and Jose on the night of the murders peaking around the time of the killings. So all the, you see the communications get closer and closer. So they put this in front of Nicholas here. And he said, well, I did break in through a window and steal a gun when I after they kicked me out, but that's all I've done. They said, your name has come up quite a bit and we're talking in reference to the Ortiz homicide. And I can, I know we've talked to you a few times. Some hope and you can run by me pretty much what happened. He gives the alibi that night. I was hanging out with, with Jose. We were drinking. We were getting a little high. I was home by 10, watched a movie, woke my dad up for Father's Day went to sleep. So the investigator said, but there's evidence that shows me you're lying to me. I have phone records that prove you are at a certain place after 10. And it wasn't home. And I've talked to Jose and I know you guys were together after 10 p.m. And then they say about Ashley, her phone was in the same spot. Do you want to know where that place is at the Ortiz residence? You were there that night. Remember that? So he says, I'm going to be honest with you and this is really the only thing I could remember. We had broken into the house and stole a gun. They said, this is at Steven's house, right? How'd you get in? And he said, there's a bathroom window that was opened in there. And honestly, that's the only thing I could remember that might have happened around that time. So that's what he's saying. So they said, so, why are these people putting themselves at the Ortiz residence and saying they're with you? Why would they throw themselves under the bus? This doesn't look good for you. Yeah. Why would they say they were at a murder scene and the cell towers corroborate that and that you're there? What's up with that? And he says, listen, I want this to be over as much as you guys. Oh, we do you. We're on the same team here, pal. Look, starting five. Let's all get together. Let's do it. Listen, let's hands in the middle and say, solve. Yeah. I'm tired of having to look over my shoulder. I know you guys follow me. I see you guys and I'm just, I'm just tired of it and I want it to be over. And then after about an hour and a half, he says, with all due respect to you guys and all that, I'd really like to just stop talking and go home. Oh. So he does. Another year goes by because I have anything because they, I mean, you arrest him and it just looks like they're trying to save their own asses. Who knows? It's too much of a mess. So now they turn to Jose. He tells them the same story is Ashley pretty much dropped off. Nicholas wanted to go in and kill. He ran away. Nicholas went in and killed. That's what he said. And then he says the whole light, but he says the whole idea of killing the family wasn't his or Nicholas says it was Ashley's, my own cousin, Ashley's idea. That's what he said. So he throws her in there now. Uh oh. So then they get Nicholas back in there. And he said, this, they're telling him like that basically they have him dead to rights and he says, I want to get it over with. I want to get processed and I just want to start doing my time already. This is before they've even arrested him. He just said it basically, if you're going to say I did it, then just throw me in prison and get it over with the entire of this shit is what he said. So Nicholas didn't talk much about, he's still going to church. At one point he came to the pastor and the pastor said, Nicholas come, came and says it feels like something's unraveling or coming down the pipe and I just need some prayer. And I said, well, what's going on? What did you do? What happened? And he said, well, I can't say anything right now. But can you at least, can you say, just say a prayer for me? And you could see, and you could see that he was very troubled and so we prayed with him. He said it was a different kind of scare. It wasn't a scare like you were going to get in trouble for wrecking a car or getting a speeding ticket. This was a deep rooted fear I saw in him. Okay. Goddamn it. We are running out of time here in this. We have a lot to go. Okay. So February 12, 2015, they arrest him. Five total charges. Nicholas said, quote, I don't agree with two. There were the charges on there. So that's interesting. And they were the two charges that weren't murder. They didn't agree with those. He didn't say you didn't murder anybody though. So here are the different versions here. According to Ashley, Nicholas called her the day the next day and told her more about this. He said, he killed the family with a pickaxe and it thrown it outside the home, which was information that actually shouldn't exactly. So it's very interesting. Also, they find out that they figure whoever did this was right-handed based on the angles. So they don't think it's Jose because he's left-handed if we remember. So Nicholas said me and them were just hanging out drinking a little bit and getting high. Ashley said the boys needed money. Nicholas knew about the safe and the marijuana because he lived there. The plan was a burglary. She agreed to drive and nobody said anything to her about the killing and Jose's version is the plan was to rob the house for money and weed Ashley actually suggested they kill the family instead of been waiting for them to leave. That's much easier. Ashley supplied her grandfather's medic. Took it from grandpa's house. Grandpa Ashley supplied socks for their hands and plastic bags for their feet so they didn't leave footprints also. Wow. Nicholas. No, you look like you don't look an asshole going in there. So basically Jose said, Ashley said, why don't you just kill them? What are we doing? Why are we fucking around? She's a gem. This one. So they said that basically Nicholas said he watched a few movies and woke his dad up around 12 then just after midnight, Nicholas's father testified he was in bed just after midnight. His son came in, wished him a happy father's day. Meanwhile, there's Shari and Jesse watching movies after a night at the casino. She, according to Ashley, about 3 a.m., she dropped Nicholas and Jose off at a road near the Ortiz residents in her gray car and left. Both boys are prepared, socks over their hands, plastic bags over their feet. Nicholas is carrying the large mat. Pick on one end, blade on the other, fucking nasty, socks and bags are for obvious reasons. So minutes after the drop off, apparently Jose decided he wanted to back out. And Jose said she left and they told me he would go in. He wanted me to go in with him to go kill and I told him, no, I didn't want to. I was scared. When he started walking toward the house, I ran to the river. Jose also said he could hear dogs barking and could see that some of the families in the area were still awake. Nicholas tried to talk him into it and Jose said, no, he watched Nicholas walk up to the back door and knock and then he ran. And also, I mean, that sounds right. And also later on, apparently Nicholas texted Ashley about 20 minutes after the drop off and said, Jose had punked out. So we got that also. So they reconstructed. Nicholas knocked on the back door, Lloyd answers. Maybe if would have come out to check on the barking dogs, they said he's struck him, Nicholas struck him quickly across the head across the body by a pickaxe here and struck over and over again until he collapses under an evergreen tree seven times. He dies right there goes inside Dixies in the master bedroom. She struck twice in the head near the right temple. Never got up. She might not ever awoke and might have just been over. Stephen heard the commotion comes out to the kitchen confronts Nicholas. He fights him gets the defensive wound. He struck 17 times because he piss Nicholas off and yeah, that's brutal. So that's also according to Jose, Nicholas said, quote, Stephen wouldn't die. I had to really go after him. And also he told other people the hardest part was when Stephen looked at him because he knew him. Yeah. Yeah. After he'd already been hit. Yeah. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Then they called Ashley, Nicholas called Ashley and said, you know, come get me, come get me. She drives back. Find him near the house. He has blood all over him, a sock on his right hand, a trash bag on his foot. It's a mess. And Ashley said that's when he told me that he used a pickaxe. He told me he got Lloyd first, then Steven in the kitchen, then Dixie in the bedroom. But me told you, you brought it, lady. That's the thing. And Ashley's version, Steven dies before Dixie, but in the prosecution version in the state's version, Dixie dies before Steven. It's a small thing, but something that a defense attorney could pinpoint. Nicholas also kept saying, she said, I messed up, I killed them. That's what he kept saying. So then they cleaned up. Ashley drove Nicholas to her grandparents' house, so he could shower. And in Jose's version, it was her grandfather's house, the same grandfather whose axe was in the field there. Buddy clothes in a bag, I actually later admitted to police that she had disposed of the clothes after the slangs. So that's a tampering with evidence charge right there. Nicholas has given clean clothes to walk home. And Jose's where he was is kind of mushy here. Ashley's account and Jose's account of where he was don't match. Jose said he saw Nicholas afterward and Nicholas looked like he had seen a ghost. According to Ashley, Nicholas also threatened her and told her she better keep quiet. So one says he was horrified by it, the other says no. So Nicholas's mother later said that when she came home from work in the morning, she saw her son asleep on the couch. Another version though, Nicholas said he saw his mom off to work at 7 a.m. So we don't know which one that is. So it's, this is crazy. A judge denies him bail citing Nicholas as a flight, flight risk. And in June 2015 though, the judge reconsiders it and sets bail at $100,000, 10% cash. So 10 grand, you can get him out. Nicholas pays the 10 grand and he's out. Oh my God. He's released to a third party custodian in Albuquerque and barred from traveling north of Santa Fe. Okay. Okay. Now Ashley appears in court on her own burglary case. Which by the way, pregnant and in custody by June 2015, prosecutors told the court she could also be implicated in murders, even though she hadn't been implicated August 2015. She pleads guilty to several charges, including burglary under a deal that requires her to testify against Nicholas. So and sentencing will decide, it will be decided basically on how well she testifies. Jose is given immunity to testify. Really? They believe he didn't have anything to do with it. Apparently or they really want to get him in there. And he's given them the details they need. So the case goes to trial. The lawyer for the defense said, I've done a lot of trials. Not try not to overreact to anything. Just be neutral and fair and even keeled, but you know, I have to say I was uncomfortable with the large contingent of people from El Rancho, as what he said afterwards. How many people showed up like, well, this is like a lynch mob and it's not. It's uncomfortable. No, they want it. They want to do it instead. All right. Yeah, he said I was concerned that there was going to be some kind of physical confrontation out in front of the courthouse between the Ortiz family and the group from El Rancho. So there were some sparks there, definitely, meaning Nicholas Ortiz, not the other Ortiz. It gets confusing. So the defense in his opening statement said, he wasn't the kind of person that would do something like this in my perception. And I believe that he did not. I believe that he may have had something to do with planning it or saying, yeah, let's go in and get this money, but he did not want anything to do with the physicality of killing these people. Jose, New Nicholas, they were bros, so to speak, and considered themselves to be gang members. Although there was no gang, they were really associated with. He said, Sheree was always complaining about not having any money, always whining about it and her conflict with Lloyd and the fact that she needed money and was willing to do anything to get money, that's why I suspected that she was part of it. And I still do suspect that and I probably always will, the defense attorney says. So Sheree, you know, testifies Jose or Jesse testifies, which cross examination for him wasn't great because they're saying, well, why did you lie to police then? Why would you lie to police about chasing intruders and all that kind of thing? Yeah, they testify about when Nicholas got kicked out, Ashley testifies and everything she had to testify in the confession, disposing of the murder of the clothes and supplying. She denied supplying the acts, socks, or bags, even though Jose said she did. Jose testified here, all that kind of thing in the middle of Jose's testimony, he mentioned a previously undisclosed agreement with prosecutors. And the defense said that they had never turned over that document to the defense. And so he moved for a mistrial, it was denied. Okay. So yeah, they get the friend that said Nicholas told him that he did it. It's all coming out here basically. Nicholas's parents try to give him an alibi, basically, that he was saw him in the morning, but that doesn't work because it looks worse because now there's two versions of it. So it looks like they lied. Anyway, the prosecutor says neither one of their stories were the same, but you look at the consistencies. They both said Nicholas had a pickaxe, and both said they were wearing socks and plastic bags on their hands and feet. What do you do when you look for the truth? You look for the inconsistencies. His own words kept coming back to him. He can't get away from his own words. His own words are going to take him down. And the defense attorney says the only thing they agree on was that it was Nick. Everything else is different, meaning Jose and Ashley. Maybe Jose went in there and maybe he's the one that did those left-handed blows because there was a couple of blows that they said may have been done by a lefty, but probably a righty. He said, I think it's not guilty here because the state has not proven its case at all. Thank you. You take my advice, really. That's it. Yeah. We said so. Now, he also says that his client faces 112 years. So the case goes to jury before Memorial Day. That's what the evidence they have. That's it. They were sent home early. The holiday weekend off. They came back the next week, seven women, five men on the jury and they say they are hopelessly deadlocked. Yeah. That's tough. First degree murder, eight to four for conviction, aggravated burglary with a deadly weapon 10 to two for conviction and conspiracy to commit burglary, seven to five for acquittal. So that's very interesting. They retry him again just after Thanksgiving of 2016 and they tell again, the real killer is Jose. The defense says he was high. I believe that Jose was hired to do this killing. Now it's a hit. Oh, no. Wow. I think someone else came in there and cleaned up the scene completely so that there were no prints. There was no DNA. It was just not what you would think would happen in a scene like that. It's called crime scene cleanup. Yeah. And because Jose's got immunity, they can really pin it all on him because they're like, he's got immunity. So obviously they said he never spent a day in jail on this, not even an hour. He wasn't even a suspect. Meanwhile, they got my guy and there's no nothing. There's no DNA. There's no fingerprints blah, blah, blah. So the same testimony basically comes in there and the verdict is they start deliberating late on Wednesday and they have a verdict by Friday afternoon and they find him guilty of everything this time. Yeah, which is something. By the way, his mom is fucking hilarious. His mom, Nicholas's mom, turned to prosecutors and the one prosecutor pointed and said, "I hope you're proud of yourself, you little shit." And then turned to the other one, Susan Stinson and said, "And you too, you little shit." She's fun. She wanted to send some of that to her kid when he was a kid. Yeah. It's fucking amazing. The motion for a new trial before sentencing comes down, they end up finding there's a fundamental error in the second trial. Really? They didn't even say what it was, the judge just said it was a fundamental error, didn't even say what it was and reversed everything. Wow. Even his own lawyer, Nicholas's lawyer said it was highly, highly unusual. You don't get this to work before sentencing ever. It never works. So the state moves for reconsideration. They appeal to the Supreme Court. It takes 10 days for the Supreme Court to decide that's a crazy decision reinstated, fuck you. So yeah, they said the motion for a new trial based on alleged defects and the jury instructions was filed more than seven months later and therefore clearly untimely. So not even saying they were wrong, it just wasn't timely, it wasn't filed a lot. His lawyer, Nicholas's lawyer called the ruling disgusting and cowardly and said it bothered me a lot. Ashley makes a deal. Yeah. You gave me a win and then took it away. I actually took a deal. The police settled several cases at once, including unrelated burglaries, probation violations. She pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and tampering with evidence. You, ma'am, may fuck off more than 20 years with six years suspended for, and credit for about three and a half years, meaning no more than 10 and a half years in prison and maybe less than that with good time. Right. Jose is never charged. Nicholas here, they said, um, yeah, the defense Jose there. that's sentencing. No, no, no, no. We don't know if he was at the crime scene or not. No fucking idea for the reason that the crime scene or not. He might have gone in. He might have done some of this. We have no idea. Immunity. Can't be true. Oh my God. So the defense says the best available research indicates that even serious juvenile offenders are far more likely not to desist from criminality as they mature. It seems extraordinarily unlikely that he would live to the time of his release. The prosecution said there is a definite end date. Therefore, it's not life without the possibility of parole. So basically this, the fact that he was under 18 when it happened, that one law doesn't apply that you can't give them life without parole, even though they're saying it's essentially life without parole because but it's his outdates past his, his out date in life, essentially. Passes is born on date. That's crazy. So a friend, a friend of his named Kelly testified and said the media's portrayed Nicholas to be a monster. He's a good, good man with a wonderful soul and he deserves a second chance. And he, Nicholas just, Nicholas said, I did not do what I'm facing my life in prison for. And the judge says, well, you sir may fuck off 25 years on each murder count concurrent though. So 25 years, 85 percent is required as a serious violent offense. So he's got to do 85 percent of 25 years. 20 years, 18 years, something like that. And his crimes, he's got credit for time, sir, from 2015 projected parole eligibility late 2036 or early 2037s, all only being his 40s. Plenty dangerous still. What the fuck? Sheree said, I just don't understand what more a person would have to do in this state to get a life sentence. I'm still in shock that that was truly his sentence. Angela, the other daughter said, I think my three beautiful family members deserve a lot more than this. There's no way he's going to be a better person in 25 years. His debt will never be paid. It doesn't matter how much time he has. It's never going to be paid because I can't get my family back. I honestly feel like he got, I honestly don't feel like he got enough time. He took three lives and they're far worth far more than 25 years. To be completely blunt, I truly feel for his family. I really do. They had no part in this. Again, they're nice people. Yeah, he did a terrible, terrible thing. Brutal. This is one of the worst I've ever heard. Yeah, it's fucking hard. The cops said this was horrifying. Sheree also said, Jose got off Scott free. He even had the balls to ask for a reward. Ballsy. It was really not only a slap in the face for my family who suffered so brutally, but for our justice system in New Mexico. Wow. That's fucking brutal. And for Steven, she says, you know, he has so many disabilities and the way Nicholas killed him, I mean, just unbelievable. Somebody with that kind of hate and evil in them should never ever be allowed to walk the streets. There is a Supreme Court he goes to for appeals and all that sentence confirmed. The aggravated burglary count had been vacated, leaving three counts of felony murder in one count of conspiracies. That doesn't matter. Nicholas apparently has him records have him now at the Lea LEA County Correctional Facility maintains his innocence. Wow. And apparently Ashley is still in jail now. She might be getting out pretty goddamn soon though. And there you go. That's El Rancho, New Mexico. And a pretty goddamn fucked up ass. I'm so mad at you for doing this. I'm terrified. It's twisted story. It's twisted, right? Those are dangerous human beings. All three are dangerous. All three as we've heard before. Yeah. That is an asshole of a giant animal. That is bad. The three of these fucking twats. Yeah. I can Ashley, Jose and Nicholas. So there you go, everybody. Now if you like that story, get on whatever app you're listening on. Give us five stars. If you're watching on Netflix, double thumbs up us. That would be excellent if you could do that. We'll be dead soon. So it's really do it and tribute to us. It's great. So follow us on social media. We are at small town murder on Instagram at small town pod on Facebook. Shut up and give me murder.com. Get your tickets for live shows. Get all your merchandise. Last two live shows of the year. Don't worry though. New slate for 2027 being announced this month in November and then tickets will go on sale in December for those. Get your tickets to the last two of this year. Terry Town, November the 13th, Medford and just outside of Boston. 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