Story Archive

Metro CSI truck packs gee-whiz stuff

Investigators’ tools range from hair spray to high tech, not to mention grisly

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Up until seven months ago, if there was a homicide somewhere in Clark County, Metro’s crime scene investigators would pile into an RV — the kind your grandparents dream of driving across the country, but a little more beat up — and head to the scene like it was some kind of creepy family trip, the cabinets stocked with body fluid test kits instead of hamburger buns

Kill your lawn. Artist gives old adage a water-conscious-in-’08 meaning

Statement that contradicts suburban ideal is for him a point of pride

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Robert Curry gave up. He got tired of drowning his lawn with water, then paying gardeners to groom it, then balancing his checkbook only to find it was warped by the weight of the $225 he spent monthly just to keep the grass alive.

Turnabout puts DA in hot seat in possible hit man conflict

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

David Roger sat solemn in a suit and a tie, hands folded before him, head pitched forward, waiting to play ball. Here he is, the district attorney of Clark County, and he’s sitting on the stand, getting grilled instead of doing the grilling.

Haunted by his prison job

Former guard compelled to write about it, and it’s not pretty

Monday, June 30, 2008

The inmates run this place. Not the staff. That’s the reality of it.

Sparks fly after court Taser demo for children

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Two months ago, a taser demonstration at District Court was supposed to be some kind of educational moment for the children of court employees. Since then, it has become a point of heated contention.

Metro Police to pitch new digs

Force envisions campus-style headquarters uniting departments, top brass

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Sheriff Doug Gillespie confirmed late Wednesday that Metro Police will propose building a headquarters in Las Vegas, consolidating for the first time many departments and functions spread across the valley in more than 60 locations, at a public meeting Monday.

To one man, Bellagio’s waters beckoned

Impact leaves him bleeding, with possible broken arm

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

It must have been a glorious swan dive: the bridge, the lapping blue below, the aghast audience, the drunken derring-do of it all — a Vegas legend born, and broken. Jumping head-first into lake of the fountains at the Bellagio is a dazzling mistake, a mistake someone made Friday.

Own a business? Be vigilant, thieves are lurking

Nevada’s corporate filing practices part of problem

Monday, June 2, 2008

Corporate identity theft — stealing a business out from under its owner — is the criminal cousin of classic identity theft. There are endless variations, but many involve stealing someone’s company by filing bogus paperwork. In Nevada, where we woo people to incorporate in our lax-tax, minimal-disclosure state, the problem is probably worse than elsewhere.

Flash! Stealing electricity is risky business

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Before the live wire carrying stolen electricity disappeared into the thief’s house, the line snaked past community mailboxes — putting moms, toddlers and everyone else in the neighborhood at risk of electrocution.

Bon appetit!

Prison inmates can't be tortured in America, but they can be served the behavioral management loaf

Monday, May 26, 2008

In the oven, a half-baked “institutional loaf” wafts something almost appetizing. Sweet, even. But not for long. When it’s done, when the lard stops bubbling up the sides of the bread pan and the top springs back firm on your finger, an institutional loaf looks and smells like vomit resurrected.

Slots quiet as Macau observes 3 minutes of silence

Memorial for earthquake victims may have cost up to $2 million, expert says

Thursday, May 22, 2008

For three minutes, Macau stood still. They held their dice, their chips and maybe their breath. They bowed their heads and stood in solemn rows. They clasped their hands, looked at their feet, and didn’t say a word. Not one word. For 180 seconds, all bets were off.

Officers are people, too

Policeman/author hopes to get prisoners to see cops in new light

Monday, May 12, 2008

So you’re sentenced to life in prison in the Nevada Department of Corrections. Your cellmate is a guy named Zeke who reeks. The guards caught you sneaking a spoon out of the cafeteria, so now they’re evil-eyeing you everywhere. You got in a fight with some freak in the yard, and now you’re locked down 23 hours a day, counting cockroaches like sheep before sleep. Randy Sutton has you right where he wants you. The Metro lieutenant just released his third book, a compilation of true stories about life on the police beat, written by officers across the country, and he wants you, prisoner, to read it. He wants you to see that police — you remember them, those people who put you behind bars — are human.

Transgender killer torn with guilt, searching still for identity

Life story riddled with abuse of alcohol, hidden tendencies

Thursday, May 8, 2008

The hairdresser who bleached Raven Navajo’s roots in jail wasn’t given much time or many tools, so the result was more mine shaft canary than blond — dingy yellow hair fried so thin it seemed to float on static electricity.

Prosecutors drop charges against Selimaj

Concern for children of slain ice cream truck driver cited; widower still may pursue suit

Saturday, May 3, 2008

All it took was one quiet court filing, a few papers slipped to a clerk Thursday afternoon, and the charges against Zyber Selimaj were dropped. The motion for dismissal is only a few pages long, but it may signal the Selimaj family’s move out of the courts and out of public consciousness.

We do caffeine, but not much hard stuff

‘Community urinalysis’ reveals we also ingest lots of nicotine, ephedrine but few illicit drugs

Monday, April 28, 2008

In Clark County, we take our coffee with cigarettes and ephedrine.

Chief defends cleared officer

Friday, April 18, 2008

Against his attorney’s advice, Henderson Police Chief Richard Perkins is visiting newspapers to talk about the shooting of the ice cream truck driver that has turned his department into a piñata for the past two months.

They’re strangers, and bedfellows

Seeking intimacy, diverse group gathers for Las Vegas’ first Cuddle Party

Thursday, April 17, 2008

A Cuddle Party is exactly what it sounds like. Adults getting together to cuddle. To sprawl on the floor and spoon in ratty sweats. To pile on one another like pound puppies. To satiate their “skin hunger.”

Shooting justified, inquest determines

Decision follows one hour of deliberation, two days of testimony

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Seven Henderson officers testified during the second day of the inquest. While each presented a slightly different version of events, their testimony was uniform on one point: a person wielding a knife and moving toward a police officer should be shot.

Haunting testimony, many firsts

Young sons describe mom’s killing on tape, and details police kept quiet are revealed

Friday, April 11, 2008

Arber Selimaj didn’t know how to spell his last name, and whispered most of his answers to a woman who, in a private room of a Henderson Police station, asked the 5-year-old boy what he remembered from the day he watched his mother die, and whether she had a knife — another word Arber didn’t know.

They saw Selimaj shot

Coroner’s inquest begins today in Henderson officer’s fatal shooting of woman

Thursday, April 10, 2008

When a courtroom fills this morning for the opening of a two-day coroner’s inquest into the Feb. 12 police slaying of a 42-year-old ice cream truck driver, 10 witnesses interviewed by an investigator working for the victim’s family will be wondering whether they’ll wind up on the witness stand.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Police guard trove of gangster monikers, often the only names by which suspects are known

Monday, April 7, 2008

Being little is big on the mean streets. Just ask Lil’ Capone, Lil’ Mizz, Lil’ Crook, Lil’ Crazy, Lil’ Ump, Lil’ Shiester, Lil’ Sweat, Lil’ Nutty, Lil’ Wee Wee, Lil’ C Rag, Lil’ Spit, Lil’ Mookie, Lil’ A, Lil’ B and Lil’s C through Z. This is just a small sampling, a lil’ sampling, really, of the thousands of nicknames Metro Police’s Gang Crimes Bureau keeps in its moniker file — a computer database of aka’s and street pseudonyms.

Juvenile sex offender laws struck down — for now

Sunday, April 6, 2008

If Judge William Voy’s courtroom were the major leagues, Friday’s constitutional challenge case would be an exhibition game. That’s how the judge explained it.

Witnesses say shooting by officer wasn't fair

Sunday, March 30, 2008

One is certain she saw a knife. Another says he watched an officer put his boot to her neck and hold it there. A third thinks the EMTs who responded to the officer-involved shooting were disturbed by how police handled the body. In the month and a half since a Henderson police officer fatally shot ice cream lady Deshira Selimaj, private investigators hired by the Albanian woman’s family have found and interviewed 10 witnesses who contradict the police department’s contention that Selimaj attacked a cop and thus had to be shot.

Juvenile sex offender laws muddy waters

DA, public defender take interpretation problems to Family Court

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The debate over Nevada’s juvenile sex offender laws landed in Family Court last week, where one thing about the controversial legislation quickly became clear: Nothing is clear at all. As it turns out, everybody was wrong about the new laws.

Bone-dry dreams of a body farm

Hope for a site in the desert to study decomposing corpses is dead, for now

Monday, March 24, 2008

When a coroner daydreams, it isn’t pretty. Mike Murphy has a regular morning routine: He spends an hour eating a breakfast sandwich and reading the paper in his pajamas before he changes into one of his sharp suits, drives to work in his black beast of a county car, parks in his special spot, and walks through a back door of a low building and into the lively world of Vegas’ dead.

Web sites offer advice to Ecstasy users, complicating cops’ fight against drug

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Connoisseurs take Ecstasy tablets the way wine aficionados sip reds — seriously and always with an opinion. And in this modern age, the Web-saavy can use Internet forums to share their opinions on their illegal purchases.

Club scene to get a p’s and q’s lesson

Law enforcement seminars a refresher course on rules

Monday, March 10, 2008

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Some Metro cops, DEA agents, Gaming Control officers and Strip nightclub owners walk into a room.

Meet the mysterious Roger Von Bergendorff

He filed for bankruptcy, had a history of health problems and kept a vial of ricin

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

He had some clothes, some cash and some vintage graphic art — and some $190,000 in debts.

Remember this face?

Computerized caricatures might jog witnesses’ memories better than sketches

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Composite sketches, those shaded pencil drawings of shadowy crime suspects plastered in post offices and police stations, are, as it turns out, practically useless. The solution, Frowd and fellow academics say, is caricatures.

Close-knit community offers comfort

Friday, Feb. 29, 2008

The funeral service for Deshira Selimaj was spare — a wooden casket facing folding chairs, a few wreaths of flowers and her remaining family: three boys and their father, their crying buried by a tinny recording of Islamic prayers.

News helicopter no-fly zone in shooting arouses suspicion

Saturday, Feb. 23, 2008

A fatal police shooting that seemed strange to some of the witnesses on the ground was also, it turns out, unusual from the air above.

Chief: Answers have to wait for inquest

But he defends officer who fatally shot mother of three at her ice cream truck

Friday, Feb. 22, 2008

Stepping to the microphone, Henderson’s police chief tried to clarify what happened when one of his young officers shot and killed an ice cream lady. Instead, he only verified what the public already knew: The police account of the events is wildly different from those of the victim’s family and other witnesses.

How he saw it

Husband of woman shot to death last week as her children watched tells a story that dramatically contradicts police version

Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008

Of this fact, Zyber Selimaj is certain: No matter what Henderson Police say, his wife was not carrying a knife when an officer shot her last week, killing her next to the ice cream truck she drove for a living, and in plain view of her children.

Code red

If the remnants of past indiscretions on the Internet threaten to send your reputation up in flames, a few companies are there to douse the fire

Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2008

Cheating on his wife was not Steve’s first or worst mistake. His real problem was he had married a woman whose brother had a flair for revenge.

Students rage about flighty helicopter school

2,000 nationwide on the hook for tuition

Friday, Feb. 15, 2008

Some students of Silver State Helicopters, Jerry Airola's bankrupt flight school, say they're out as much as $70,000. Airola had helicopter flight schools in 18 states, where it’s estimated that more than 2,000 students were locked into student loans.

Cold cases go online, with respect for victims

Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008

Buried or laid out in a coroner’s industrial cooler like unclaimed luggage, Clark County’s 162 unidentified dead are lost in a slow slipping from the earth, followed by the haunting of families that have no idea — the gnawing of not knowing.

Tow predators

Ka-ching! Tow truck drivers gone bad make off with cars

Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008

Police call it rogue towing — tow truck drivers take cars that nobody asked them to and then delay reporting it for as long as possible to boost commissions and rack up fees. Like all good scams, rogue towing has landed in Las Vegas.

Bewildered, academics pore over sex-trade hysteria

They try to figure out how they got steamrolled

Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008

In September, UNLV sociologists Barb Brents and Kate Hausbeck were steamrolled by a publicity-savvy out-of-town researcher who courted the media with a crude picture: Las Vegas prostitute as poor wretch. It’s four months later, and they’re still licking their wounds.

Contemptibles’ collectibles

Items intimately linked to serial killers find a market online

Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008

Somebody is selling Jeremy Strohmeyer’s stuff, maybe with help from the murderer himself. It’s not just stuff. It’s “murderabilia” — the personal belongings of convicted killers, sold by and for fans whom sociologists have dubbed “serialphiles.” These are people who want to own a piece of infamy, like a handwritten note from Strohmeyer, who, if collected like a prize, lives on forever through his things.

In jail, TV is opiate of overcrowded masses

Thursday, Jan. 24, 2008

So here you are stuck in a concrete cell eating a bologna sandwich with 12 other guys eating 12 other bologna sandwiches, hunching and hurting on a board-stiff bench, downwind from a fermented drunk with nothing on TV besides somebody’s bad idea of a good time -- a chick flick.

Choice for some Jews: Religion or caucuses

Saturday Sabbath expected to exclude thousands

Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008

Nevada’s Saturday morning caucuses will automatically exclude a certain portion of the valley’s Jews, Orthodox and Conservative believers who observe their sixth-day Sabbath by not working, or driving, or voting, for that matter.

‘John School’ teaches men the uglier facts of life

Vegas police hope horrors of prostitution will scare them off

Sunday, Jan. 6, 2008

One guy caught a ride from his wife. She even walked him into the classroom, which caused the other students to shift in their seats and stare hard at the floor. They wouldn’t have been so painfully uncomfortable, perhaps, if this weren’t the First Offender Prostitution Program, otherwise known as “John School.”

Young, but ‘predators’ for life

New sex-offender laws, meant to protect, may instead ruin lives and increase risks

Sunday, Jan. 6, 2008

New sex-offender laws, meant to protect, may instead ruin lives and increase risks

The quest for redemption

Monday, Dec. 10, 2007

Professor Cornell Horn served time in 11 prisons, but he had an edge - he was born with his nose in a book, ceased study only to commit crimes, and always planted that nose back on the page afterward, while behind bars or once he was out.

LECTURING ON BOMBS, AGENTS HAVE A BLAST

Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007

SAM MORRIS / LAS VEGAS SUN

Fear less: Victim can learn when abuser's out of jail

Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007

Her boyfriend was slimy enough to slip through the system; he'd been arrested for domestic violence and released, arrested and released, arrested and released.

Coffee that's all about the cup size

Friday, Nov. 23, 2007

Coffee drinks at Sexxpresso come in three sizes: A, B and Double D.

Flawed sex offender tracking leads to wrong door

Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007

It's worse during the holidays. Christmas, New Year's, Halloween. That's when they really start knocking. Calling him out in the middle of the night. Showing up at his stoop in angry packs.

In foster care, siblings separated or left waiting

Monday, Nov. 12, 2007

Claire's assigned bedroom is painted pink and plastered with photographs. One picture is of her brother, smiling. (He lives across the street.) Another is of her younger sister, standing with her hair pulled back. (She moved out last week.)

Across the valley, poo bins go poof

Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007

They don't exactly scream " Steal me!"