A 39-year-old former sheriff’s deputy in Texas will spend several decades behind bars for killing his special-needs girlfriend, shooting the 46-year-old woman in the temple with his service weapon and then trying to make the death look like a suicide.
A jury in Denton County on Tuesday found Jay A. Rotter, a one-time deputy with the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, guilty of one count of murder in the 2020 slaying of Leslie Hartman, authorities announced.
According to a news release from the Denton County Criminal District Attorney’s Office, the same jury that convicted Rotter in Hartman’s fatal shooting also sentenced him to 30 years in a state correctional facility.
The Denton Police Department previously revealed that Rotter called 911 in August 2020 and reported that Hartman suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside her home in the 2400 block of Robinwood Lane. Once there, first responders found Hartman dead. She and Rotter were the only individuals at the home at the time Hartman suffered the fatal gunshot wound.
Jay A. Rotter (Denton County Criminal District Attorney’s Office)
Hartman, a popular artist in the area, was paraplegic and used a wheelchair to get around daily due to injuries suffered in a car crash when she was younger, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
About a month after the shooting, investigators took Rotter into custody and charged him with Hartman’s murder.
“We are shocked and saddened about the incident and arrest of Jay Rotter,” Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn said in a statement released after the arrest. “We believe in the criminal justice process, and the truth will prevail.”
Rotter joined the sheriff’s office in 2005 and worked his way up to becoming a detective in the narcotics unit until he was fired in 2020 following the shooting.
Court documents obtained by the Dallas Express provided additional details about the evidence that led detectives to Rotter.
The most inculpatory evidence came from data found on Rotter’s cellphone, particularly messages transcribed on the Discord app at about the same time Hartman was killed.
“I TOLD HER. LISTEN. ONE SHOT ONLY. THEY CALL IT IN AFTER AND THEY CAN,” he reportedly wrote in a message that was never sent but later recovered from his message drafts. “I just sent a 9 millie in this f—— hippy.”
At about the same time, Rotter also sent several people messages via Discord of himself holding his service weapon.
Before her death, at 10:32 p.m., Hartman sent a text message to a friend that also seemed to incriminate Rotter, the Express reported. She reportedly wrote that Rotter, who had been living with her for about six months, was “in a mood.” She also indicated that Rotter had been using drugs and was “falling around the house.”
During the trial, Rotter’s defense attorneys argued that the messages he wrote on the night of Hartman’s death were about a milk bottle he had shot in the backyard, the Express reported. They also emphasized that there was no history of domestic violence between Hartman and Rotter.
The jury reportedly only deliberated for about three hours before voting to convict Rotter.
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