Do you know who murdered Jack? Jack Sartin, a 45-year-old white male, lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and moved in circles that, according to police records, included drug trafficking. On a March day in 1997, he was alone in his upstairs apartment at 6723 South Lewis Avenue, Apartment 165, a modest complex in south Tulsa. Sometime before dawn on March 8, something went violently wrong behind that apartment door.
When officers and responders arrived, they found Jack shot multiple times inside his home, his wounds so severe that he was already beyond help.
What investigators learned about Jack's background shaped how they approached the scene. Official summaries describe him as being involved in trafficking drugs, a detail that immediately raised the possibility that the gunfire in his apartment was tied to the illicit trade he was connected to—perhaps a dispute over money, product, or loyalty that spilled into lethal violence. The confined space of the apartment, the multiple gunshot wounds, and the lack of any suggestion that he survived long after the attack all pointed to a focused, targeted killing rather than a random break-in. Genealogical records identify him as Jack W., or Jack Wayne, Sartin, born in October 1951 and only in his mid-forties when his life ended in that small south Tulsa unit.
From the beginning, detectives treated the case as a homicide with a likely drug nexus. They looked at the people around Jack, the network he moved in, and the disputes that might have been simmering beneath the surface. But despite those obvious avenues of inquiry, public records paint a picture of an investigation that never managed to crystallize around a single suspect. The official city cold-case listing simply notes that he was discovered deceased in his apartment, involved in trafficking drugs, and shot several times, and then pivots directly into a plea for anyone with information to contact the Tulsa Police Department's Cold Case Unit—an indication that no arrestable suspect ever emerged from the early leads.
Years later, the outlines of the case remain stark and unresolved. Jack's name appears on Oklahoma cold-case and Tulsa Police Department homicide lists, a bare entry among many other unsolved killings from that era. Modern crime-archive sites and community-run cold-case projects repeat the same core details: he was found murdered in Tulsa on March 8, 1997; he had been shot multiple times inside his apartment; and the case has never been cleared. In online forums attached to these case listings, people reflect on the silence that has surrounded his death, wondering whether fear of retaliation or a culture of not talking to police in drug-tangled neighborhoods has kept crucial witnesses from stepping forward.
Through all of this, one fact has never changed: no one has ever been publicly named, arrested, or charged for killing Jack Sartin. The official summaries still label his homicide as a cold case and continue to solicit tips from the public. Decades after the shots were fired in Apartment 165, his story is preserved mostly in brief database lines and appeals for information—evidence that the investigation remains open, but also that whoever pulled the trigger has, so far, managed to avoid the reach of the law.
