Robbie Stroup was only 15 when he went missing in Moriarty in October 2002. In November 2002, a farmer found a human head in his cornfield. Authorities found other coyote-chewed remains in the vicinity. They were positively identified as Robbie Stroup’s. This is the story of Robbie Stroup, and the absolute joke of “justice” that he received.
Kevin Jensen: A Creep Hiding in Plain Sight
Kevin Jensen was neighbors and good friends with the Rice family before Robbie’s murder. Despite being 42, he showed an unhealthy interest in their kids. Barbara and Wayne Rice grew concerned the day he left the family 16 messages, asking to speak to their children. They cut off contact with Jensen and forbade their kids from being around him. Jensen often visited their house crying, begging to see the kids.
When Jensen realized that the Rice family would not allow him near the kids anymore, he switched his focus to Robert Stroup and an 18-year-old boy named Ben Wetherill, who both lived in the same Sunset Acres subdivision as he did. Jensen would give them beer and cigarettes at his house and show them porn. He also often took them to Albuquerque to eat.
Ben Wetherill later testified in court that Jensen got Robbie so drunk one night that Robbie threw up on a dog. Wetherill, being a teenager, thought that was really cool. Bea Stroup, Robbie’s mom, said that she smelled alcohol on her son’s breath one night when he kissed her good night. She told him not to do it again and Robbie’s dad, John Stroup, threatened Kevin Jensen with legal action if he continued to give their son alcohol. Yet they continued to let Robbie go over to Jensen’s trailer after that incident.
Robbie Stroup took a trip with Jensen and Wetherill on October 27, 2002 to a haunted house in Albuquerque’s Winrock Center. After attending the haunted house, they came home for supper at Jensen’s house. Then Wetherill walked home, leaving Stroup alone with Jensen. Jensen told police that Stroup also left at 10 to walk home on foot.
Stroup’s parents reported him missing the next day. The police immediately contacted Kevin Jensen to find out where Robbie Stroup was, and also to obtain fingerprints. Jensen agreed to come in to furnish the prints, but then disappeared.
He was later found at his sister’s home in Overland Park, Kansas. He was arrested on the unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Stroup’s remains were found in Moriarty just a day after Jensen was arrested in Kansas. Some of his body parts, including his head, were found in a cornfield near the Sunset Acres subdivision. Stroup had been dismembered with a knife that cut through his bones. Wild animals then scattered his body parts over a seven-mile radius. A cause of death could not be determined from the skeletal remains.
Jensen was extradited back to New Mexico. He became the prime suspect for obvious reasons. That’s when the investigation revealed the true reason Jensen had been spending so much time with Stroup and Wetherill: he was a sexual predator, grooming them with alcohol, tobacco, and porn.
FBI collected evidence from Jensen’s home and discovered visits to over 40 child porn sites on his computer. They also found liquor bottles strewn on the floors, rotten food in the fridge, and an inordinate amount of animal filth, human vomit, and varmints. There was even a dying emu in one of the bedrooms.
The Joke of Jensen’s Sentence
It wasn’t until 2004 that Jensen was sentenced to six years for child abuse. The child abuse was based on the fact that Jensen had cooked for Stroup in his home, amid absolute squalor. Jensen was also charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor by plying Stroup and Wetherill with alcohol and letting them view porn on his computer. His light sentence was set due to the belief that he could not be rehabilitated through intensive counseling in prison, only on probation.
He appealed the child abuse conviction in 2005. And guess what? The New Mexico appellate court reversed the decision. The decision for the reversal was based on: “Absent evidence showing the particular susceptibility to endangerment of a child who has reached fifteen years of age, we do not believe the evidence was sufficient for a rational jury to conclude from common experience beyond a reasonable doubt that the situation was sufficiently precarious such that Robbie was on a reasonably sure path to harm’s way with unfortunate health consequences reasonably likely to result.”
Jensen got out in 2007, three years early, and was free to harm other kids. Way to go, New Mexico. Fortunately, he died in 2010. But who knows how many kids he hurt in those three years he was out. He was a diabetic so hopefully his health hindered him from procuring more victims.
In the past, Kevin Jensen had tried to volunteer at Big Brother Big Sisters. Thankfully, they denied his application. On that application, he claimed that he let neighborhood boys sleep with him in his bed when they had bad dreams. During his psychiatric evaluation in jail, he claimed that he had raised 15 kids, though none of them were under his legal guardianship according to court documentation. It appears that he was a pedophile with a long list of victims before Robbie Stroup.
Someone Got Away with Murder
It blows my mind that Robbie Stroup died a horrible, violent death and was dismembered and cast around a cornfield – yet all they got his killer on was child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Stroup’s shoe and sweater were even located by a water tank near Jensen’s home. It seems pretty obvious who did it.
Yet Stroup’s death is “unsolved.” Why is this?
Police claimed that the medical examiner’s report was not conclusive enough to charge anyone with homicide – they couldn’t even determine a cause of death. Police also claim they don’t have the evidence to build a solid murder case. It is understandable that police won’t charge someone when there is a chance that a jury will find them not guilty. But I really think the investigation must have been pretty shoddy to not glean enough evidence to convict Jensen on homicide charges.
There is even conjecture that Jensen was framed of Robbie Stroup’s murder, according to District Attorney Clint Wellborn and his team. They believe that the shoe and sweater from Stroup’s body were deliberately staged near Jensen’s home. They also claim that murder doesn’t fit Jensen’s profile and that it doesn’t make sense for a pedophile to kill his intended target. Never mind there are many homicidal pedophiles who get off on murdering kids.
That theory sounds like ludicrous bullshit to me. The man fled to Kansas when authorities asked him for fingerprints; he was actively grooming Stroup; and he was the last person seen with Stroup. You figure it out.
But let’s run with the setup theory. If Jensen didn’t kill Stroup, then who did? Who knew Stroup was at Jensen’s house that night? Who was able to target him after he left the house to walk home? Other than Ben Wetherill and Stroup’s parents, we don’t know who knew he was there. That leaves a huge suspect pool.
Then one has to ask – why would someone want Robbie Stroup dead? He wasn’t a particularly hated or bullied kid; in fact, most people thought he was a sweet and good kid. There doesn’t seem to be any clear motive in his death. The only person who might have motive would be Kevin Jensen, who seemed to have intent to sexually abuse Stroup.
Finally, one has to ask who would be able to do this. A very calculating and methodical person would have had to lie in wait for Robbie Stroup to leave Jensen’s house, then abduct him without anyone hearing him scream, kill him, dismember him, and stage the scene to make Jensen look guilty. That would have taken a lot of planning and forethought.
I am not saying no one is capable of this. There are plenty of clever psychopathic criminals capable of such an organized crime. But that is fairly rare; most people are killed by people they know. Thus, it seems far more likely that the killer is not some clever psychopath, hiding in the shadows, but rather someone close to Robbie Stroup. And Kevin Jensen was indeed close to Stroup, and had questionable intentions toward him.
The body parts were dumped right by Sunset Acres and found relatively quickly. A clever killer would have concealed the body better in order to avoid forensic evidence from being collected at a fresh crime scene, don’t you think? There are plenty of places to hide a body indefinitely in New Mexico. Dumping the body where it could be found so quickly and combed for forensic evidence seems idiotic. So it seems to me that this was not a meticulously planned crime scene, carefully staged to frame Jensen; it seems more like this was a sloppy crime scene, committed by a stupid person near the area. Jensen would fit the bill of a stupid person. Pure luck with scavenging animals and justice system loopholes are what allowed Jensen to get away with it.
Jensen obviously was not very bright, especially considering he admitted to taking kids into his bed on his Big Brothers Big Sisters application. He didn’t even hide his weird intent toward kids from others, like the Rice family. His stupidity would jibe with the crime scene – a body hacked into pieces and dumped near Sunset Acres, the victim’s clothes carelessly dropped near his trailer. It would also jibe with the way he let kids view porn on his computer while he never used a proxy. He told police he had never visited those child porn sites on his browsing history and that Robbie Stroup had simply walked away from his house alive the night of October 27 – all stupidly unbelievable stories. He was also found hiding out at his sister’s house in Kansas – the first place law enforcement would look.
I think that Jensen was grooming Stroup and Wetherill. On October 27, after Wetherill left, Jensen made his move on the fifteen-year-old. Stroup probably freaked out and tried to fight Jensen off. This made Jensen snap and kill him. Alternatively, he gave Stroup too much to drink and the teen succumbed to alcohol poisoning. To take the heat off himself, Jensen tried to dispose of him in a manner that would obfuscate his cause of death.
The Aftereffects of the Murder
Robbie Stroup was a good kid according to people who knew him. He worked as a busboy at the Jenks Cafe and he was a dependable hard worker. He was studying tae kwon doe at a local dojo, and he did chores for his instructor to pay for his lessons. His friends said that he loved to help others and volunteer his time. His aspirations were to join the military and he was in junior ROTC at his high school. He also was the team father for his baseball team, the Braves. At home, he liked to hunt, fish, work on cars, and chase hot air balloons with his dad. After riding in a hot air balloon once, Robbie wanted nothing more than to become a pilot one day. But he tragically never got that chance.
The community suffered deeply after he died and people packed the school gym for his memorial. Parents stopped letting their kids go outside unsupervised. Barbara Rice tearfully told KOAT that Jensen posed as a friend and “worked his way into your life.” The community of Moriarty felt shocked and betrayed when they discovered their neighbor was a creep hiding in plain sight. The smallness and peace of Moriarty made people too trusting; they naively believed that their children were safe. But evil lives everywhere and children are in danger just for existing.
John Stroup, Robbie’s dad, cried at Jensen’s sentencing and said that he wished Jensen had gotten life. He was deeply hurt at how Jensen didn’t even show remorse for what had happened. Robbie’s mother, Bea Stroup, had a heart attack shortly after the trial because of all of the grief and stress she had had to endure. She was unable to hold down a job while coping with Robbie’s death, and the couple were evicted from their home in Moriarty. They no longer live in Moriarty. I’m sure the entire town served as a painful reminder to them of their son’s tragic death.
As of now, the murder case is still open.
https://www.koat.com/article/fbi-takes-evidence-in-moriarty-teen-s-death/5014542
https://www.koat.com/article/memorial-service-held-for-robert-stroup/5014624
http://nmsoh.org/scripts/unsolved_display.asp?report=murder_date&B1=GO
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/nm-court-of-appeals/1393358.html
https://www.koat.com/article/robbie-stroups-2002-murder-case-still-open/4409276