Fresh eyes and new technology: Digging into the cold case killing of a rookie cop in Mountainair 

Published May 8th, 2024 at 10:03 am

This story was originally published by City Desk ABQ, a local nonprofit daily newsroom covering local government, politics and more. If you like this story, please support local, independent journalists like these by reading more and donating today at citydesk.org

It was the evening of May 7, 1988, and while most of the town of Mountainair attended a talent show at the high school, a rookie cop remained at the police department — in a cramped room atop a narrow staircase above town hall. 

Stephen Sandlin, a 21-year-old who had joined the four-man force a couple of months earlier, called his girlfriend to vent his frustrations with the chief who told him to “mellow out because he was issuing too many citations and running his radar too much.”

Before the evening turned to night, Sandlin was shot in the head with his own service weapon. 

Tuesday will be the 36th anniversary of his death. 

The case has been examined by multiple investigators over the years — former Attorney General Gary King confirmed to City Desk ABQ last week that his team came to a conclusion but was not able to definitively prove their case in 2010 — but no one has ever been charged or officially declared a suspect.

This year, the investigation is receiving a fresh look from the New Mexico Department of Justice (the recently re-branded Attorney General’s Office) whose cold case unit is using Forensic Genetic Genealogy to compare DNA from a crime scene to profiles uploaded into ancestry websites.

This is welcome news to Mountainair’s town clerk and mayor, both of whom successfully pushed to name the police station after Sandlin in 2019.

“It’s a significant thing,” said Mayor Peter Nieto, who grew up in Mountainair and was 3 years old when the homicide occurred. “One of the things that I learned when I got older was how young he was. He was so young, he had just started, he was still just a rookie. It’s just a terrible situation.”

Almost from the start, Sandlin’s death was mired in controversy and contradictions. 

Initially, investigators said he had killed himself — a finding his parents disputed — but it was later determined to have been impossible because of the angle of the gunshot wound. 

Those who remember the case — and there are many — suspect Sandlin’s fellow law enforcement officers may have had something to do with his death, and that it could have been connected to a marijuana bust he was involved in about a month prior. 

“He will never be forgotten as long as there’s still some of us around,” said Gayle Jones, who was one of the first EMTs on scene and now serves as mayor pro tem. “It stays with the community — the next generation may not realize the full impact, but it lives on. It’s always hanging, like a dark shadow.”

To report this story, City Desk ABQ drew from contemporaneous newspaper articles, incident reports and other documents as well as interviews with survivors and investigators.