A former sheriff’s deputy convicted of his girlfriend’s murder in Denton pleaded guilty Thursday to tampering with evidence from the murder investigation.
Jay Allen Rotter, a 42-year-old former narcotics detective with the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, went to trial in 2023 on one count of murder.
A jury found him guilty as charged in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Leslie Hartman, a 46-year-old glass artist; in her Denton home on Aug. 26, 2020.
The jury sentenced him to 30 years in prison.
He received a four-year prison sentence for pleading guilty to the tampering charge on Thursday, but this sentence will run simultaneously with the murder sentence.
As part of this plea agreement, prosecutor Michael Graves’ requested that 211th District Court Judge Brody Shanklin dismiss a related felony drug charge against Rotter. Shanklin granted the dismissal.
Rotter’s murder trial was marked with interruptions, which eventually led to the delay of his conviction for the tampering charge.
When he first went to trial in October 2022, Shanklin granted a mistrial before testimony started.
His defense attorneys successfully argued that video evidence had not been disclosed to them in a timely manner.
When he did go to trial in November 2023, his attorneys motioned again for a mistrial and also motioned for some evidence to be suppressed. Shanklin denied those motions.
During the murder trial, prosecutors had not tried Rotter for the two related indictments against him: tampering with evidence and second-degree-felony drug possession.
Rotter appealed the murder conviction citing violations of his Miranda rights and that Shanklin should have granted his attorney’s subsequent motions for mistrial.
He would not plead guilty to the other two charges until the appellate court returned an opinion on his appeal, Jamie Beck, Denton County’s first assistant district attorney, previously told the Denton Record-Chronicle.
The appellate court rendered its opinion that there were no errors in Judge Shanklin’s judgment and upheld Rotter’s murder conviction.
This past May, Rotter returned to the Denton County Jail so the other two cases could commence.
The Record-Chronicle heard testimony about these cases because, while he was not on trial for them, prosecutors presented them to the jury to consider when deciding his murder sentence.
The tampering charge stems from Denton detectives accusing Rotter of deleting potential evidence from his phone while he was at the Denton Police Department for questioning about the murder.
The jury saw video evidence of Rotter manipulating his phone while detectives were out of the interview room.
Detectives testified when they collected Rotter’s phone for evidence afterward, he had factory-reset the phone, wiping it of data.
Crime scene investigators searched Hartman’s residence in the 2400 block of Robinwood Lane, where Rotter had been staying for a few months after his divorce.
There, they located 5.06 grams of psilocybin mushrooms. Prosecutors argued that text messages between Rotter and Hartman indicated the mushrooms belonged to him.
As of Monday, Rotter remained in the Denton County Jail but will eventually return to a state facility to carry out the rest of his concurrent sentences.
Rotter’s projected release date is March 2053, but he will be eligible for parole in March 2038.
