A Denton County jury found a former Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy guilty of murdering his girlfriend, laying to rest a highly complex case on Tuesday.
Artist Leslie Hartman, 46, was shot in her home in the 2400 block of Robinwood Lane in Denton on August 26, 2020.
Her live-in boyfriend of six months, Jay Rotter, then 36, called 911 and claimed that she had shot herself through the temple using his service weapon, according to the Denton Record-Chronicle. The victim — a wheelchair-bound paraplegic — had been suicidal after longstanding physical and mental issues, Rotter claimed.
However, the medical examiner’s report of Hartman’s autopsy, audio recordings of the shooting taken that night from a neighbor’s surveillance camera, and testimony from family and friends suggested her death was a homicide. Moreover, messages sent by both Hartman and Rotter that evening told a different story of the incident than that relayed to authorities by Rotter.
For instance, Hartman texted a friend at about 10:32 p.m. — her fatal shooting was believed to have occurred sometime after 11 p.m. — that Rotter was “in a mood” and suggested he was “falling around the house” due to drugs, according to the DRC.
Around the time of Hartman’s death, Rotter sent several messages to a chat on Discord — including a photo of himself holding a gun — suggesting he had shot her.
“I TOLD HER. LISTEN. ONE SHOT ONLY. THEY CALL IT IN AFTER AND THEY CAN,” he wrote in a draft message at 11:13 p.m. that was recovered from his phone. “I just sent a 9 millie in this f**kin hippy,” read a draft message from 11:14 p.m.
After reportedly making an attempt on his own life that left him hospitalized, Rotter was arrested on September 14, 2020, on first-degree murder charges. However, a district judge declared Rotter’s trial in October 2022 a mistrial due to the defense’s alleged receipt of “mitigating and exculpatory” video evidence from the state that had not previously been disclosed.
Rotter’s attorneys claimed that the new evidence would have changed their strategy in the case.
The new trial, which was held this month, saw the jury being presented with an array of evidence and expert witnesses.
Arguing that Hartman had committed suicide, the defense pointed to there being no history of domestic violence between Rotter and Hartman and stressed Hartman’s depressive state of mind. The defense also claimed Rotter’s messages that night had been referring to a bottle of milk he shot in the backyard, not Hartman.
After deliberating for approximately three hours, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Rotter was sentenced on Wednesday to 30 years in prison.
Fatal incidents of domestic violence — or even “family annihilation” — have been happening at an alarming rate in Texas, as reported by The Dallas Express.
In Dallas, there have been 12,284 family violence crimes committed so far this year, according to the City’s crime analytics overview dashboard. The vast majority of the offenses were assaults, clocking in at 11,959 incidents. Twenty-three of these crimes were criminal homicides. However, the overall murder rate in Dallas is on the rise.
Efforts by the Dallas Police Department to get crime under control have been dampened by a lack of resources in recent years. The department has been significantly short-staffed, fielding fewer than 3,200 officers when a City analysis indicates that at least 4,000 officers are necessary to properly maintain public safety in a city the size of Dallas.
The effects are most clearly seen in Downtown Dallas, which sees significantly higher crime rates than Fort Worth’s downtown area. While police in each city have been struggling with officer shortages, Fort Worth has a specialized police unit assigned to its city center that monitors the neighborhood alongside private security guards.