Sarah Litz

slitz@rgj.com

Gene Mortarotti wasn’t late, especially when he and his wife had plans.

On March 5, 1988, he was supposed to leave work right at 5 p.m. so they could meet family for dinner in Lake Tahoe. The clock hit 5:15 p.m. and then another five minutes passed. His wife, Jennifer, tried to call the jewelry store they owned in Carson City. No answer.

The clocked ticked to 5:30 p.m. when she decided to drive down and remind her untimely husband of their dinner plans.

She arrived at Gene Hart Jewelers on North Carson Street to find the store still unlocked, the jewelry still tucked away in its cases.

She called out to her husband. Silence.

Nothing seemed awry until she found her husband.

Almost 30 years after Mortarotti’s death, crime scene photos collected by the Carson City Sheriff’s Office still depict the quiet shop nestled in the Frontier Plaza shopping center.

Jewelry was pristinely arranged in the cases – everything from diamond rings and pearls to precious stones and gold chains. A few paintings and wood paneling accented the white walls of the 10-month old shop.

No cases were smashed. No expensive jewelry was looted. Upon entering, there wasn’t anything to indicate there was a 60-year-old man bound and shot to death in his back office – what Jennifer Mortarotti found when she looked beyond the immaculate jewelry counters.

She first thought her husband had suffered a heart attack, Detective Morgan Tucker with the Carson City Sheriff’s Office recalled from her statement. Then, she rolled him onto his back to find him bleeding from the chest, his wrists bound together.

Frantically, she tried to call 911, but the phone lines didn’t work.

Tucker said she ran to a neighboring business saying to call 911. Deputies and the fire department responded shortly after 5:35 p.m., but Mortarotti was already dead.

The Reno Gazette-Journal originally reported from Sheriff Paul McGrath that Mortarotti’s death was an “apparent botched robbery attempt,” however, Tucker said detectives now believe something else may have happened that night.

“To me, looking at the pictures and reading the reports, it looks like it was a staged robbery,” Tucker said explaining that the suspect or suspects “made it look like the motive for killing (Mortarotti) was for the robbery, but it was actually for something else.”

Tucker said what makes him think this way is that the suspect or suspects didn’t take any of the jewelry besides about 20 gold chains and possibly Jennifer Mortarotti’s ring. She told deputies that when money was tight, Mortarotti would pawn her ring and buy it back later. She couldn't recall whether he recently pawned the ring or if it was missing, Tucker said.

A box filled with cash remained untouched. The suspect left alone an unlocked safe where Mortarotti stored his jewelry every night. No one smashed the cases to retrieve the treasures within.

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“If you’re going to go to that extent – tie a man up and shoot him – you better be taking a lot of stuff, but they didn’t,” Tucker said. “There wasn’t even damage to the cases. It looked really weird.”

The detective’s investigation found that Mortarotti was sitting on his office chair when he was shot one time in the heart and “died quickly,” Tucker said, also noting the bullet was found in the seat back. Tucker said Mortarotti didn’t have any other injuries besides a superficial bruise above his hairline.

“It didn’t look like they beat him into submission, so it almost looks like it was somebody that he knew that jumped him,” Tucker said.

Investigators started looking deeply into Mortarotti and his death. Tucker said their investigation took odd twists and turns.

Due to lack of records, Mortarotti was a bit of a mystery. What was known about him was mostly from business records - he lived in Utah, Idaho, California and Washington before coming to Nevada. According to records, he had several failed businesses and this was his second time opening a jewelry shop.

There were rumors Mortarotti may have had connections to “unsavory people” on the East Coast, but those leads never panned out, Tucker said.

Mortarotti also had a friend that “dabbled in new age religions,” Tucker said. On Mortarotti’s work desk, his friend’s name was the only thing written in a new notebook. Detectives looked into the friend and “don’t think he had anything to do with it,” Tucker said.

“There’s a lot of different ways this (case) is going,” Tucker said.

Without any other immediate leads, the case ran cold until an informant stepped forward.

The unnamed informant said two people – now possible suspects – admitted to killing Mortarotti. Investigators interviewed the unnamed suspects, but again, no evidence could be positively matched to place either suspect at the scene. No arrests were made.

The case ran cold until about a year later when there was another jewelry store robbery at Jefco Jewelry Distributors in Reno. Tucker said the two suspects arrested by the Reno Police Department were looked at as possible suspects in the Carson City case, however, there was no evidence to support the claim.

Throughout the investigation, Mortarotti’s marriage was also analyzed. He was married to another woman and had two children before he met Jennifer, the report said.

Statements from her family said that she gravitated toward “people that had money” and “never held a job of her own,” Tucker said. According to the report, she rarely worked at the jewelry shop she owned with Mortarotti.

The Mortarottis were “friendly with other couples,” according to former detective’s reports leading detectives to investigate whether his death may have been a “love triangle gone wrong,” Tucker said.

“Looking at the case, it looks like somebody he knew killed him, and with all the other family dynamics going on, we can’t say for sure that anybody isn’t in play in this thing,” Tucker said. “We just don’t know.”

Tucker said a previous detective on the case was able to contact Jennifer Mortarotti’s daughter and she “would not consent to providing DNA.” Tucker said they were trying to collect family DNA examples to rule family members out as suspects.

Jennifer Mortarotti has since moved from Nevada and now lives in the Midwest. Despite the Reno Gazette-Journal’s efforts, Mortarotti’s family members could not be contacted for comment.

Throughout the years, Tucker said detectives have exhausted every lead except one. Recently, one last piece of evidence was sent to the lab to be DNA tested.

“At this point, we just have to hope that something comes back on the evidence that we can follow up on,” he said. “If it does, we can develop a new lead and work it from that point forward.”

The original detectives on the case collected evidence, thorough statements and interviews, but were never able to match the pieces of the puzzle together. Throughout the years, technology advancements have made it possible to analyze smaller pieces of evidence and try to match any DNA found on it.

From there, detectives may be able to confirm who killed Gene Mortarotti in his jewelry store with a handgun.

Tucker said there is a worst case scenario: “If nothing comes back from that (evidence), we’re back at square one.”

How to help: Anyone with information is asked to contact the Carson City Sheriff's Office at 775-887-2500 or Secret Witness at 322-4900, www.secretwitness.com or text the tip to 847411 (TIP 411) keyword - SW.