Lauren Semanchik did not know who had keyed her car, but she could think of only one person who might want to do so: Lt. Ricardo J. Santos of the New Jersey State Police.
He was her ex-boyfriend. Dr. Semanchik, a veterinarian, reported the vandalism to the local police, telling an investigating officer that Lieutenant Santos “did not take the breakup well,” according to a police report.
The officer noted that he called Lieutenant Santos at 8 p.m. that night and “apprised him of the situation.”
“I advised Ricardo that in the future he should avoid all contact with Lauren as to not escalate the situation any further,” the officer wrote. “Ricardo stated that he understood.”
Seventy-four days later, on Aug. 1, 2025, Dr. Semanchik and her new boyfriend, Tyler Webb, were shot to death outside her home in rural Pittstown, N.J. Lieutenant Santos, who was found dead shortly afterward in an apparent suicide, is the only suspect in the murders, prosecutors say.
It was the first time an off-duty trooper had been at the center of a double murder in the history of the century-old force. The killings shocked the region and increased scrutiny of the law enforcement community in which Lieutenant Santos, 45, had made his living for two decades.
He had distinguished himself within the State Police, New Jersey’s largest and most prestigious law enforcement agency, serving for years in elite units where he was trusted to guard prominent officials. That role came with privileges — credit cards for expenses, out-of-state security junkets — and required discretion that was enforced by confidentiality agreements.
But records obtained by The New York Times show that Lieutenant Santos had been repeatedly warned about logging excessive overtime hours, which had inflated his pay while creating what his supervisors described as a safety risk. Interviews with former colleagues suggest that he also harbored professional resentments that seemed to intensify in the final months of his life.
Other records, along with interviews with people close to Dr. Semanchik, detail her concerns about her ex-boyfriend, whose persistent attention made her more anxious because he was a state trooper, as well as her efforts to seek help from the police before she was killed.
‘Not the high standards expected’
Payroll records suggest that Lieutenant Santos’s career began with promise, in 2005. Hard-working and eager to please, he frequently volunteered for extra shifts.
He won a coveted spot in the executive protection unit, where he provided security for at least three former governors — Philip D. Murphy and Chris Christie, while they were in office, and Brendan T. Byrne, after his term ended.
Mr. Christie had no comment about Lieutenant Santos. But Ruthi Zinn Byrne, who was married to Mr. Byrne until his death in 2018, remembered her encounters with Lieutenant Santos a decade ago fondly. “Polite, efficient, knowledgeable, responsible — everything good,” she said in a recent interview.
Over time, however, the officer’s work habits became a cause for concern.
By 2019, he was working so much overtime that he was able to double his annual take-home pay. Supervisors warned him more than once that his time sheet suggested he was either fraudulently reporting overtime or working dangerously long hours.
“It not only created a safety issue for yourself, but it also put others at risk,” a Dec. 1, 2020, performance memo cautioned, noting that he had reported working 29 hours in a 32-hour period. “These actions are not the high standards expected.”
At the time, Lieutenant Santos was part of a unit that provided round-the-clock security at then-Governor Murphy’s estate on the Navesink River in Middletown and at Drumthwacket, the state’s Executive Mansion in Princeton. That New Year’s Eve, shortly after midnight, a 911 call from inside Drumthwacket offered a rare window into the demands of a policing job that is, by necessity, typically veiled in secrecy.
Mr. Murphy was there ringing in 2021 when a woman, speaking to the 911 dispatcher, sounded out of breath, according to a frantic, 21-second recorded call.
“Dad, don’t you dare!” another woman shouts.
“Dad, shut the door,” the caller says twice. Both women sound as if they are observing something taking place in the distance.
Two state troopers from the governor’s security detail were already posted outside the house. Lieutenant Santos was one of them, records show.
Officers from the nearest local police department — Princeton — were dispatched to investigate. After arriving, they waited outside while a trooper, identified by three former colleagues as Lieutenant Santos, went into the house to find out more. All three had worked for years with Lieutenant Santos, but asked to remain anonymous to discuss interactions with a deceased former co-worker now at the center of a criminal investigation. They identified him by his voice after listening to body-worn camera recordings obtained by The Times from the Princeton Police Department through a records request.
Lieutenant Santos had initially told the Princeton officers that “somebody inside fell over or something.” And as they waited, the officers can be heard on the recordings discussing putting an ambulance on standby.
Lieutenant Santos came back outside about eight minutes later and assured them that would be unnecessary.
A drinking game, he said, had gotten “a little spirited.”
“That’s all,” he said. “Everything’s good. I was just up there.”
Lieutenant Santos later complained about being placed in an awkward position with the Murphy family and having had to work on the holiday, according to one of the three colleagues.
Mr. Murphy has never explained the events of New Year’s Eve. The former governor, whose term ended in January 2026, declined to answer questions about the 911 call or his relationship with Lieutenant Santos.
‘Significant safety concerns’
Despite having been warned about excessive overtime, the trooper continued to log long hours. And for the next two years, his paychecks grew.
In 2021, he earned $359,321, up from $234,507 the year before. In 2022, his pay soared to $403,978. Much of it was overtime. Between 2018 and 2025 Lieutenant Santos collected $1.2 million in overtime alone, records show.
But in December 2022, his supervisors began clamping down with a stern warning about the “importance of getting the proper rest between shifts.”
He was removed from the governor’s security detail and temporarily barred from most overtime assignments. The violations raised “significant safety concerns” for him, his co-workers and the dignitaries he protected, a supervisor wrote in a Dec. 15, 2022, disciplinary memo.
The memo noted that the trooper, who at the time was a sergeant, had also met to discuss the problematic behavior with Lt. Colonel Sean Kilcomons, who was then the agency’s second-in-command. State Police officials, including Lieutenant Colonel Kilcomons, have declined to respond to questions about Lieutenant Santos’s disciplinary record, citing ongoing investigations.
Lieutenant Santos was transferred to what is known as the dignitary protection bureau. The bureau provides security and drivers to certain lawmakers and other prominent state officials (though not sitting governors). People close to him said he resented the transfer, which he considered a demotion.
Still, the friction over his overtime habits did not stop the agency from promoting him to lieutenant in June 2024. He no longer qualified for certain overtime shifts, yet he gained status and power within the department hierarchy.
The relationship between Lieutenant Santos and his superiors at the State Police is hard to fully parse from the available information. In his final months, he began ranting about being bullied and harassed by supervisors, so much so that a colleague filed a report with the attorney general’s office, worried that his complaints were justified. It was a theme echoed in a suicide note found at his home, according to people familiar with its contents who were not authorized to discuss evidence that is part of an ongoing investigation.
One thing that was not in the records reviewed by The Times was any sign of violence. One incident, however, does stand apart from the others.
In September 2021 a woman complained that Lieutenant Santos had, while he was on duty, cursed at her angrily outside a Wawa convenience store in Hamilton, N.J., leading to a performance review.
“The complainant said she felt threatened,” an incident memo states.
The trooper assured a supervisor that he did not remember using foul language and the case was closed.
‘I FEEL THREATENED’
Dr. Semanchik, 33, had dreamed since childhood of being a veterinarian. She graduated a semester early with honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where college roommates remembered her as magnetic, determined, and prone to wearing playful earrings and adopting injured animals.
When she met Lieutenant Santos online, in early 2024, Dr. Semanchik was the injured one. She had broken both of her feet when she jumped off her roof after a ladder fell while she was cleaning the gutters.
Lieutenant Santos at first doted on his new girlfriend, who was using a wheelchair and temporarily unable to work, her friends and relatives said. The relationship began to fray, they said, soon after Dr. Semanchik returned to her job at a New Jersey animal hospital.
The two split up in less than a year, but he continued to text, call and send flowers.
When he expressed thoughts of suicide, she contacted one of his colleagues at the State Police, worried as much about her ex-boyfriend’s safety as she was about her own, her mother said.
By last spring, Dr. Semanchik felt his attention had turned into something darker. She confronted him in a text message.
“I FEEL THREATENED. I am a single small female who recently had water in her gas tank, a recording device in my room,” she wrote in a message she shared with her sister.
Taylor DeSantis, a longtime friend, said Dr. Semanchik grew especially uneasy about her own safety after Lieutenant Santos began badgering her about private details of her life. “Part of the concern was: How is he getting access to the information that he has?” said Ms. DeSantis, a lawyer, who advised her friend to install security cameras, worried that the trooper was using policing tools to surveil her.
Records show that Dr. Semanchik sought help from the police near where she worked in Washington Township on May 19, 2025, after she left work to find that her Toyota Tacoma had been keyed. The officer took her report and advised Lieutenant Santos to avoid contact with her.
The next day, Dr. Semanchik contacted a second police department, in Franklin Township, near her home.
First, she went in person. No officer was available to talk to her, so she called later that day and left a message.
“I was looking to file a police report or potentially even a restraining order against my ex-boyfriend, who has been harassing me,” Dr. Semanchik said on the recording. “He placed recording devices in my home and has continued to text me and call me and then I just came out last night from work and my car had been keyed, and I have no idea who did it, but I don’t have anybody else in my life with any animosity.”
She mentioned that the ex-boyfriend was a state trooper, which made the situation especially uncomfortable.
“If you could give me a call back when you have a moment,” she added, “that would be great.”
No one, her relatives said, called her back.
“She was failed,” her mother, Jennine Semanchik, would later say, “by every single law enforcement agency that she went to for help.”
Police officials in Washington Township did not return calls from The Times for this article. Commanders in Franklin Township, which was temporarily taken over by the Hunterdon County prosecutor’s office in the aftermath of the killings, declined to comment.
‘There were warnings’
Under New Jersey law, stalking, harassment, trespassing and criminal mischief are among the 19 acts considered domestic violence. Had Lieutenant Santos been accused of domestic violence, he would have been required to surrender all weapons, according to State Police policy.
“Whenever an officer is involved in a domestic violence incident, either as an alleged perpetrator or as a victim, internal affairs must be promptly notified,” the policy states. “Where the officer was the alleged perpetrator, investigating officers must seize their service weapon or any other weapon possessed.”
Most final restraining orders also lead to a surrender of weapons, according to the New Jersey Coalition to End Domestic Violence.
Dr. Semanchik’s outreach to the police did not lead down that path.
Around that time, she began dating someone new: Mr. Webb, 29, a volunteer firefighter who owned an automotive shop. They shared a love of music and had met at a concert at the Jersey Shore.
On the first Friday in August, Mr. Webb pulled into the driveway of Dr. Semanchik’s secluded, split-level home. She was inside.
But the couple was not alone, prosecutors would later say: Someone was in a wooded area near the house.
Neighbors began calling 911 less than a half-hour later to report screaming and the sounds of gunshots.
A Franklin Township officer who was dispatched to investigate stopped at an A.T.M. before going to the area, according to prosecutors, and then failed to locate anything amiss.
It was Dr. Semanchik’s father who found his daughter’s body outside her house the next day when he arrived to pick her up for a planned outing.
Mr. Webb’s body was discovered on a back deck.
“Blood everywhere,” a police report noted.
The state hired a law firm to lead an independent review of actions taken by police officials before and after the murders, and a criminal inquiry by Hunterdon prosecutors remains active. The State Police also conducted an internal investigation that led to an overhaul of the dignitary protection bureau.
The Semanchik and Webb families have initiated lawsuits that could intensify scrutiny of both the State Police and the way Dr. Semanchik’s concerns were handled. “There were warnings,” said David Mazie, a lawyer for the families, “that Trooper Santos had personality issues and was a danger to others.”
The officer who initially responded to the 911 calls, whom prosecutors say left the area and went to a pizza place without speaking to two of the three callers, was suspended without pay and charged with official misconduct. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer, who has noted the high number of 911 calls for gunshots in the rural county, said he was being “scapegoated.”
The cameras that Dr. Semanchik had installed in her truck to protect herself were useful only forensically: Prosecutors used the footage to determine that a white Mercedes S.U.V. had followed the veterinarian as she drove home from work.
Authorities found the Mercedes S.U.V. the next day, 30 miles away. Lieutenant Santos’s body was inside. They also found a gun: a semiautomatic weapon like the one he had carried for 20 years as a trooper.
Kirsten Noyes and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
The post He Provided Security to 3 Governors. Then He Snapped. appeared first on New York Times.
