In the early morning hours of December 6, 2014, the life of 21-year-old Sandra Stevens, a White/Caucasian female, came to a tragic and violent end in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Just before 5 a.m., her boyfriend placed a 911 call, calmly telling the dispatcher that his girlfriend had shot herself in the face. When police arrived at the home they shared with roommates, they found Sandra in the bedroom, dead from a shotgun blast.
A 12-gauge shotgun lay beside her.
Initially, law enforcement considered the case a homicide, but after interviewing witnesses and examining the scene, they reclassified her death as a suicide. The boyfriend, an Army veteran, told investigators that he and Sandra had been arguing because he suspected her of cheating. He claimed that after they talked in the bedroom, he went to smoke and heard the sound of the shotgun being racked. He said he rushed back into the room to find Sandra deceased. He further stated that she had been drinking, using drugs, and was dealing with emotional issues, even claiming she had self-harmed a few days prior. Based on his account and initial statements from roommates who reported no signs of a physical struggle, the case was closed.
However, Sandra's family never believed she took her own life. They described her as a vibrant cosmetology graduate who was making plans for her future. She had told her parents she was preparing to leave her boyfriend of two months and move back home. Her family discovered text messages revealing the boyfriend's controlling and obsessive behavior, including tracking her location with GPS and making threats. They insisted Sandra had no history with firearms and was not depressed. Their suspicions deepened when they learned a chilling fact: another of the boyfriend's partners, 22-year-old Holly Sjostrom, had also died from a gunshot wound under similar circumstances in 2011, a death also ruled a suicide.
The family's relentless pursuit of justice, along with a newspaper's investigative series titled "Suspicious Suicides," brought renewed attention to the case. A key development arose when one of the roommates recanted his initial statement, admitting he did hear the gunshot, which contradicted his first account to police. Despite these troubling inconsistencies and the disturbing parallel to a previous girlfriend's death, Sandra's case was eventually re-examined by a cold case investigator but ultimately remained closed as a suicide. No suspects have been named, and no arrests have been made in connection with her death, leaving her family with unanswered questions.
