“This one will not be unsolved,” said Torrance County Sheriff, Ron Grist. Famous last words. Because Dorothy Jean Sturges was shot in her living room in Estancia on December 6, 1990, and her death is still unsolved all these years later.
Dorothy Jean Sturges, better known as Jean, was found by her cleaning lady the morning of December 7, 1990. She was wearing her housecoat and slumped forward in a cushioned armchair, dead. Newspapers and magazines were strewn on the table in front of her; a few of the magazines had torn pages. Her TV was still on.
The killer had shot her through the back of the chair; there was a small hole in the chair and a slug in the fireplace in front of Jean. Jean also had injuries on her chest, neck, and head, suggesting a beating had taken place before she was killed. There was evidence of forced entry at two doors, suggesting the killer had attempted to break in one door before giving up and going to another, or two people entered from separate doors.
Jean Sturges had been alone the night of the 6th while her husband, Charles Sturges, was away in Santa Fe on a business trip. Charles had called Jean at 9:00 pm and talked to her for a while. She died sometime after that. I’m not sure when her bedtime was, but her position in the chair and the papers in front of her suggest she may have still been awake and reading when the killer broke in.
The motive for the murder appears pretty clear. There were empty prescription pill bottles strewn about her bathroom floor. Jean’s dresser had been ransacked. Over eight hundred dollars of cash, a valuable Spanish medallion necklace, and a gold piece worth $20 were missing from the drawers. Interestingly, various guns and valuable jewelry items worth over $800 were left untouched, suggesting the robber was in a frantic hurry.
If two people were involved and one person lost control of Jean and shot her, then they may have panicked and bolted. The robbers also probably wanted something easy to pilfer and fence – jewelry – whereas guns are more difficult to sell and more traceable. Jean Sturges was obviously the victim of a robbery gone wrong. But who did it?
At first I thought the killer may have broken in without Jean knowing and then snuck up behind her and shot her. But her injuries suggest that her killer beat her before killing her. Did he break in, and when she confronted him, he beat her into submission and then had her sit down before he stepped behind her to shoot her? That makes no sense. The only thing I can think of is that there was more than one person involved. The intruders beat Jean and forced her into the chair, and then one person stood behind her with a gun, threatening her into silence and submission, while the other person robbed her. Maybe she didn’t comply, which is why she was shot.
The fact she was shot could mean that she recognized the robber’s face. He shot her from the back, suggesting he felt cowardly and couldn’t bear to look her in the face as he executed her. But if you go with the two-person theory, then she may have been shot because she was getting out of the chair to call the police while the other individual pilfered her home.
In a robbery like this, the suspect pool is pretty big. Anyone who knew the Sturges family would probably know they had pills and jewelry. After all, most couples in their sixties have at least a few prescriptions, and most sixty-one-year-old women like Jean Sturges have a decent jewelry collection accumulated over the years. Women also like to wear their jewelry out in public, so robbers could easily know what they own. In a small town like Estancia, any neighbor could have guessed at the value that could be stolen from the Sturges family.
But police think the killer was known to Jean. I wonder if this is due to the fact the robbers targeted the house when Charles Sturges was in Santa Fe on business. It had to have been someone close enough to the family to know their business. However, quite a few people in Estancia may have known he would be out of town; they may have overheard him talking about it.
It seems to me that the best place to look would be people close to the family or living in the near vicinity who had active drug problems. The suspect also probably committed robbery before.
Charles and Jean Sturges operated the Sturges Roadrunner Market, the only grocery store in Estancia. Jean had moved to Estancia from Lubbock when she was only 21. She lived there 40 years and was regarded as a pillar of the community. In 1975, she was the first woman to be appointed to the Estancia Town Council, a role she served well for many years. Everyone in the town knew her and Charles Sturges. They had a son, Frank L. Sturges, who had moved away from Estancia before his mother was murdered.
Charles Sturgis died in 2016.