Two Women Dated the Same Man and Ended Up De-ad

Two young beautiful women dated the same man three years apart and both ended up dead under similar circumstances. Despite contradictory statements, eyewitness accounts, and evidence of intimate partner violence, both cases were ruled a suicide. This is the tragic story of Sandra Stevens and Holly Sjostrom.

Sandra Stevens lived in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with her boyfriend of two months. His name has not been revealed to the public since he has not been charged with a crime. To avoid confusion, we will call him Eric.

Eric is a divorced army veteran. He met Sandra at a party in the fall of 2014 and they started dating. When Sandra, a 21-year-old cosmetology graduate who worked as a waitress told her parents that she was moving out to live with Eric a month later, they asked her to reconsider. After all, she barely knew him. But Sandra was young and in love and her mind was made up.

A month later, Sandra was dead.

On December 6, 2014, at 4:53 am, Eric made a disturbing call to the police. He calmly told the dispatcher that his girlfriend shot herself in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun. Sandra was pronounced dead at the scene.

As it turned out, this wasn’t the first time that Eric had made such a call to the police. He voluntarily told the dispatcher that just three and a half years earlier, his then-girlfriend, 22-year-old Holly Sjostrom also shot herself. Like Sandra, Holly had only been Eric’s girlfriend for two months.

Eric told the police that Sandra was on anti-depressants and that she had cut herself a week earlier, however, no signs of self-harm were found on her body and no medication was found in her system. Eric also gave the police the same story when Holly died in 2011 — that she was depressed.

Sandra and Eric lived with three roommates, a man named Caleb and a couple named Austin and Kialee. All three had only lived with Sandra and Eric for two weeks and admitted that they mostly kept to themselves. They told the police that there were no signs of physical abuse on Sandra. Based on these statements and Eric’s account, her death was ruled a suicide. For reasons that are unknown, no autopsy was conducted.

What many fail to consider is that a majority of the time, intimate partner violence goes beyond the physical, it leaves mental and emotional wounds from coercive control including threats, humiliation, stalking, and isolation. Victims often keep the abuse a secret which isn’t difficult, considering that there are no visible bruises. According to the National Library of Medicine, emotional abuse is the most common form of IPV.

Sandra’s parents insisted that she was a happy, positive person who never would have taken her own life and had never even handled a gun before. They claimed that she had no history of mental health issues. While it’s true that most parents don’t know everything about their children, Sandra did open up to hers about her relationship with Eric before she died.

Mere hours prior to her death, Sandra visited her parents and told them that she was going to break up with Eric because he was emotionally abusive, and wanted to move back home. According to Sandra’s parents, they encouraged her to leave Eric and said that their door was always open.

However, Sandra’s roommate Austin had a different story. He claimed that after she returned from visiting with her parents, she told him that they refused to let her return home. He said that Sandra was upset because she felt like she had nowhere to go, contradicting her parent’s statements.

If Sandra wanted out, it seems unlikely that she would get upset over the break-up and take her own life. However, if she truly felt like she had nowhere to go, she might have felt desperate enough to do so. Both sides have stuck to their stories since and it’s unclear who was telling the truth.

Austin and Kialee’s bedroom was right next door to Sandra and Eric’s. Kialee told the police that she slept through the gunshot while Austin said he was startled awake by it, at which point he ran into the hallway and found Eric talking to Caleb about whether the police would find it suspicious that the shotgun belonged to him. Eric first spoke to his roommates about what had happened and then dialed 911.

Could someone really have slept through an hour-plus-long argument and a gunshot coming from right next door? It seems almost too far-fetched.

Eric told Austin that he got into an argument with Sandra after he accused her of being unfaithful. Upset, he slept on the couch. Eric said that Sandra woke him up at 3 am and they continued arguing in their bedroom until he went to the garage to have a smoke. Shortly after, Eric heard the gun cock and ran to their bedroom to stop Sandra, only to find her dead.

It’s unclear how Eric would have heard the gun cock from the garage and not the living room — which is where he told the police (and everyone other than his roommates) he was when Sandra allegedly shot herself. When interviewed years later, Austin insisted that Eric said he was in the garage.

The police found Sandra slumped against the wall on the floor of their bedroom with a 12-gauge shotgun next to her body. The only blood on Eric was on his right hand which he claimed was from when he checked her pulse. There is no information available online regarding whether gunshot residue was found on Eric’s hands or whether they were even tested.

After Sandra’s mom Sylvia was informed of her death by two police officers, she called Eric wanting to see her but he flat-out refused. According to Sylvia, he was very cold and told her that she wouldn’t want to see Sandra because “she blew her head off and her brains are all over my bedroom.”

After Sandra’s death was ruled a suicide, Sylvia began her own investigation with her other daughter, Jackie. Jackie logged into Sandra’s Facebook account and found disturbing messages between Sandra and Eric in which he accused her of being unfaithful, tracked her via GPS, demanded proof of her whereabouts, and threatened her after she gave a male co-worker a ride home writing, “Me and you are about to have a fucking problem. Guess you didn’t learn your lesson last time. I’ll be sure to step it up a notch.”

Sandra told her co-workers that Eric was obsessive and they reported that he often stalked her at work, showing up to make sure she was there.

Shortly after Sylvia created the Justice for Sandra Stevens Facebook page, she received a message from Holly’s mother Colleen Sjostrom who also had suspicions that Eric was involved in her daughter’s death as well.

Holly was a 22-year-old single mom who worked at a diner. She had just completed treatment for a painkiller addiction and had been baptized, telling loved ones she was looking forward to brighter days with her son. She lived in Oklahoma City with Colleen, her son John and an older sister.

On May 21, 2011, Eric called the police and told them that Holly shot herself in the head. Colleen was out shopping when she received a call that Holly was in the hospital. When she returned home, she found spots of blood in the living room and a cleaning solution that had been left out on the bathroom sink. Eric told the police that Holly was smoking a cigarette in the backyard when she shot herself but Colleen found a pack of her daughter’s cigarettes and her lighter in her bedroom.

Tragically, Holly would succumb to her injuries the very next day.

When Colleen looked through Holly’s phone, she found abusive messages from Eric, similar to the ones he would send Sandra 3 and 1/2 years later. Like Sandra, Holly told loved ones that Eric was stalking her at work, and monitoring her social media accounts. She too was trying to leave him.

After Holly’s death, Eric called Colleen and asked if he could pick up some things he had left behind. Holly’s phone was charging in the living room. After Eric left, Colleen noticed that all of the messages between Holly and Eric had been deleted. When questioned by the police in June, Eric denied deleting the messages. Holly’s death was ruled a suicide shortly after.

Julianna Keeping, a reporter for the Oklahoman who conducted a 5-part series about Sandra and Holly called Suspicious Suicides in 2017 discovered that Eric had a history of abusive behavior. An ex-wife once accused him of beating her and although she never reported it to the police, she showed loved ones photos of injuries. Not only that, while Eric was accusing Sandra of cheating on him, he was stalking and messaging an ex-girlfriend online. She obtained a restraining order against him three days after Sandra died.

Among many vital pieces of information that Julianna was able to uncover during her investigation was the fact that the medical examiner who worked on Sandra’s case was not informed that she was dating a man who had once been in a relationship with another woman who also died the same way. This would have been an important factor when determining whether to classify Sandra’s death as a homicide, suicide, or unknown.

Loved ones never believed that Holly or Sandra committed suicide. Neither left a note and both argued with Eric before they died. Statistics say that the most dangerous time for someone in an abusive relationship is when they are trying to leave and that seems to have been the case with both women.

Thanks to Julianna’s coverage in Suspicious Suicides both cases were re-opened in June 2017, however, by October, the authorities announced that Holly and Sandra did indeed take their own lives. Both cases were closed but no further explanation was given as to why that decision was made.

Loved ones have been fighting to have the cases re-opened or at least be re-classified as Unknown in the hopes that if an arrest is ever made, prosecution will be possible. Write a letter to the District Attorney’s Office and help Holly and Sandra get the long-awaited justice that they deserve.