Joseph Earl Sneed was only 19 when he found his parents shot to death in their Silver City home on August 18, 1964. His father was Joseph Alvie Sneed, 46, and his mother was Ella May Sneed, 41.
The autopsy found that the couple had been shot with a .22 handgun that has never been recovered. Both had been shot three times, twice in the body and once in the head. They were still in bed, wearing pajamas, with the radio playing.
The shooter shot from a few feet away at the foot of the bed. Ella May died within seconds; Joseph Alvie died within half a minute, giving him time to crawl toward the bathroom and collapse in the hallway amid a massive amount of blood. There were no signs of struggle or forced entry, though Joe Sneed claimed the back door and back gate of the house were open when he found the bodies. Nothing obvious had been taken.
A neighbor, Pauline Hicks, reported hearing six shots around 11:30 pm August 17, but when she went outside to check, she saw the lights off at the Sneeds and she didn’t see any cars or persons in the vicinity. She decided not to report anything because she often heard gunshots or cars backfiring in the neighborhood.
The next morning, young Joe Sneed arrived at her house, agitated and frantic after finding his parents dead. She followed him into the home and saw the father lying in the hallway in a pool of blood. Joe Sneed asked her to check on his mother, so she did and she found Ella May lying in bed, dead.
The couple had one son, Joe, and two daughters, Mary Romano of Albuquerque and Dorothy Weiblen of Denver. Mary Romano said she spoke to her parents on the evening of the 17th around 9:30, when her father called to ask if she had heard from Joe. Joe had gone on a trip to California recently and had not touched base with his parents.
Joe Sneed claimed that he arrived from Las Cruces on the morning of the 18th to find his parents dead. He reported the gruesome finding to police around 8:10 am and they arrived at the scene at 2201 Cactus St. around 8:22 am. Sneed then went to a relative’s home, leaving his car at his parents’ home.
Sneed was asked to come to the station for questioning, so he obliged. He was first interviewed by Officer Garcia, who happened to be his friend. Then Officer Garcia left and he was questioned by two other officers, Officer Ingram and Officer Tow. Tow happened to also be his friend, while Ingram was not.
Officer Ingram asked Sneed about his car and Sneed said he was concerned because it was still at his parents’ home, so he handed over his keys. Officer Ingram assured him that he would bring the car to the city hall. Officer Ingram then unlawfully searched the vehicle and found two pieces of damning evidence used against Sneed in his trial.
The first piece of evidence was a receipt from a Las Cruces Surplus City for 55 cents. The only 55-cent items available at that store at that time were shaving cream or short .22 bullets, the exact type used to kill the couple.
The second piece of evidence were receipts for hotel rooms in Oceanside, CA, and Yuma, AZ in the name of “Robert Crosset” at “Box 210, Deming, NM.” Employees at both motels positively identified Joe Sneed as Robert Crosset, a meticulously neat and clean man who stood out to them. Those receipts were particularly damning because on August 17, 1964, a .22 handgun had been purchased at a Las Cruces pawn shop by a “ Robert Crosset, Box 210, Las Cruces, 5 feet 9 inches, brown hair and brown eyes.” Oddly, this description perfectly matches Sneed, and the name Robert Crosset was not in the phonebook for Las Cruces or matched to that address. The pawn shop employee was not able to positively identify Sneed, but nevertheless, this was enough to get Sneed convicted of first-degree murder.
At the murder trial, a Las Cruces store owner testified that Sneed had purchased gloves and a flashlight at his store a few days prior to the murder. This could explain why the home was dark when the shots were fired and why no fingerprints were found. Police also discovered that Joe Sneed possessed a key to his parents’ home, which he denied owning in interrogations. They were unable to verify his claim that he had spent the entire night of the 17th in the Penguin Motel in Las Cruces. Firemen staying at the motel said his car was gone from the parking lot around 10 pm but was there in the morning of the 18th.
Sneed filed a motion to suppress this evidence because he had never consented to a search of his car. He also claimed that he had never been read his rights and his statements had been obtained without the advice of legal counsel. But the courts decided that the evidence was admissible because Officer Ingram claimed Joe Sneed had given him consent. They also found that Sneed had been informed of his Fifth Amendment rights multiple times in the initial interrogation. At one point, Sneed had even insisted he didn’t need a lawyer because he had nothing to hide. As a result, his murder trial moved forward. The state sought the death penalty.
At the murder trial, a handwriting expert testified that the handwriting on the receipts bore several similarities and also some dissimilarities to Sneed’s, based on Sneed’s transcription of the Gettysburg address.
A mathematician named Dr. Edward O. Thorpe was called to the witness stand as well. He claimed that based on the law of probability, analyzing the number of times the name “Robert” and “Crosset” appeared in the phonebook, there was a one in 240 billion chance “that it was our suspect who was responsible for this series of numbers in the pawnshop, as opposed to some person coming in and accidentally implicating him. This is the application of this thing to criminalistics.” Somehow, using math, he determined that Robert Crosset had to be Joseph Sneed.
Sneed’s ex-wife, Kathey Storey, attempted to testify that Sneed had a “vicious disposition.” But her testimony was not allowed by the judge due to the fact she had remarried. He ruled that she could only testify if his character was used as evidence, which did not happen. But this still indicates that certain people out there thought he was capable of this crime.
The defense presented the fact that Sneed had cooperated with police and gone to El Paso for a polygraph. The polygraph determined that Sneed was “in the clear” and didn’t know anything about who killed his parents. We now know that polygraphs are unreliable and not admissible in court.
The defense also presented the fact that Sneed had consented to a paraffin test of his hands, which only found a little bit of gunpowder in a smear pattern. Note that paraffin tests are no longer used, but they were pretty accurate at capturing traces of gunpowder or other metals from a gun on a person’s hands. However, it is easy enough to wash your hands really well with soap and water and remove the residue. An expert at his trial noted that gunpowder residue is usually found in a puncture pattern on someone’s hand when they shoot a gun, while the nitrate on Sneed’s hands left a smear pattern. I’m not sure what that means; could it indicate he washed his hands well and that created the smear pattern?
Nevertheless, the jury couldn’t shake the sense that Joe Sneed and Robert Crosset were the same person. Sneed was found guilty and given life. He went to Santa Fe State Penitentiary to serve his time. While there, he filed an appeal and his conviction was overturned in May of 1966.
During the appeal, the court found that the probability science used in the first trial was not necessarily applicable to forensics and that guilt could not be reasonably ascertained that way. The jury decided that mathematical probability could not be admissible in court, creating a case precedent. They also refused to accept the handwriting samples, and they raised the issue that Sneed had never consented for his car to be searched, rendering the receipts inadmissible in court. As a result, the appellate court overturned Sneed’s first-degree murder conviction.
Joe Sneed only did 7.5 years in prison. While in the infamous Santa Fe State Penitentiary, Sneed made the best of things. He attended a college program called Project Newgate, where he was able to attend college and live at La Salle Hall outside of prison. At one point, he became the assistant director of Project Newgate.
Once released, he became a state employee. All appeared well, until Sneed was convicted of embezzling in 1977. He had signed up two fake employees for a nonexistent juvenile program and collected their payroll checks for himself. He paid back the money and returned to prison for 1-5 years. After that, he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
Meanwhile, the Sneeds were buried together at the Memory Lane Cemetery in Grant County. They left behind two daughters and a grandson. They had lived in Silver City for 25 years and had worked as newspaper deliverers.
I think it is pretty obvious that Sneed killed his parents. But there is just enough of a sliver of doubt that he was able to get off on a technicality. Why did he do this? At his murder trial, the prosecuting attorney stated he had a vicious temper and disposition capable of murder. But what drove him to that point? His later larceny conviction suggests greed may have motivated him. In the end, Ella May’s brother was executor of their estate, and Joe Sneed didn’t get anything but prison time.
This is not the only story of a son getting away with murdering his parents. Read about Doug Foote and the corpse under the rosebush here.
https://law.justia.com/cases/new-mexico/supreme-court/1966/7996-0.html