Two men were found dead at the GreenTree Inn on Cerrillos Road within the first two months of 2021—both in rooms rented via housing vouchers aimed at helping homeless people through the pandemic. Virgil Tortalita, 50, was found in a bathtub in room 237 on Jan. 4. It appeared his body had been there for several days.
Then, on Feb. 21, a cleaning crew found Arthur Loretto, 52, lifeless on the bed in room 137. There were signs of alcohol consumption and a fight. Both deaths had signs of foul play and were investigated as homicides, though police don't believe they are connected.
While police arrested a suspect in Tortalita's case, detectives are still looking into Loretto's death.
The men are among the four people suspected to have been murdered within the Santa Fe city limits in just the first two-plus months of the new year. It's a quick increase in comparison to the entirety of 2020—the pandemic year saw three homicides, marking a return to Santa Fe's longtime average after significant spikes in the death toll in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
The Santa Fe Police Department believes the decrease in human interaction during the pandemic could partially explain last year's numbers.
But COVID-19 hasn't impacted the work of detectives; the number of homicides solved has stayed steady and just above the national average for the last few years at SFPD, including 2020, according to data provided by the department.
Capt. Anthony Tapia wasn't necessarily surprised that homicides decreased in 2020. He tells SFR it was "an oddball year" for everyone because of COVID-19, and that lockdowns and social distancing decreased personal interactions. He believes it could have had an impact on homicides, returning them to the city's longer-term average of three per year.
Police are watching to see whether reopening measures lead to more violence, Tapia says.
"When it came to homicide and crime in general, [2020] was very unique," Tapia tells SFR. "We had shutdowns, lockdowns, people who were quarantining, so we didn't have the normal interaction of people….We are concerned that we're in February and we're already at four."
The city of Santa Fe has not historically been plagued with murder like its neighbor, Albuquerque, which counted 76 homicides in 2020 and 80 in 2019. Crime reports for Santa Fe show yearly homicides dropped significantly in 2011 after reaching a decade high with 13 in 2009. In 2016, the city had just one homicide, but that grew to four in 2017, five in 2018 and seven in 2019.
Yet, SFPD has seemingly done a strong job of clearing homicides through arrest, according to data Tapia provided. In 2019, the national solve rate was 61%—that dropped to 59% in 2020. Santa Fe has matched that slight decrease: It had a 72% solve rate in 2019 and 66% in 2020, but still stayed above the average of the rest of the country.
Tapia expects the 2021 percentage of solvability to increase for the department as detectives continue to work on the murders of Frank Pete, who was shot to death at an apartment complex on Hopewell Street on Jan. 8, and Loretto, the second man found deceased at the GreenTree Inn. Tapia tells SFR there are "persons of interest" in both cases and he hopes to make progress on them this year.
"We've been tracking a little above [the national average]," Tapia says. "The 2021 [percentage] will probably level out a little more as 2021 goes on because investigations do take time to solve."
Along with the two murders that have already been closed by arrest in 2021, SFPD also made arrests in two high-profile killings of adolescents by their peers in 2020: Aiko Perez, allegedly stabbed to death by his friend Matthias Hutt on June 5, and Ivan Perez, allegedly shot in the chest on the Southside by 17-year-old Mario Guizar-Anchondo on July 15. Ivan and Aiko are not related.
An employee at 1520 Paseo de Peralta discovered Michael Sheffield dead in the courtyard of the business park on Jan. 2, 2020. He had been stabbed multiple times. There have been no arrests.
The number of murdered adolescents in the city could have easily been higher—Ivan's attacker also shot another boy standing next to him that night, hospitalizing him, though he survived. Ivan died at the scene.
And just last week on Feb. 23, two teenagers shot at other teens who are part of a local group known as the Southside Goons at Las Acequias Park, wounding one young man in the leg.
Tapia says the shooting at the park and the death of Ivan Perez have both been linked to local gang violence. Members of the so-called Southside Goons have refuted participating in gang activities, and insist they are a music group.
"We've shifted our efforts," Tapia tells SFR. "We've created an impact team that is focusing on gang violence in these youthful offenders and we've already made quite a bit of progress on that with their proactive outreach and activities."
Leah Cantor contributed to this report.
