Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Hatch’s cases

MARCH 25, 1996: The bloody remains of three Asian women were found wrapped in plastic bags and buried in a shallow grave 25 yards from the Government Wash off Hollywood Boulevard. Two women were 25 to 35 years old, and the other could have been 50. The case remains unsolved.

MAY 21, 1994: Sara Lynn Halsey, 20, the daughter-in-law of Metro Lt. Bill Cavagnaro, was shot to death outside the Shark Club at 75 E. Harmon Ave. A car had driven up next to her as she and friends walked from a dirt parking lot to the club. A woman sitting in the passenger seat asked Halsey for a cigarette. As Halsey reached into her purse, the passenger grabbed it and the two struggled. It ended when the driver pulled out a gun and shot her once in the throat. The case was never solved and remains open.

JULY 23, 1992: Larry Whittaker, then 20, was convicted of beating to death his 5-week-old baby boy. The infant's head was crushed when his father swung him by his legs and hit him against a wall. Whittaker pleaded guilty in 1994 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

MARCH 1984: 41-year-old Nancy Menke, a Saks Fifth Avenue clerk and wife of a retired Air Force colonel, was raped, kidnapped and murdered. Children walking to school found her body in her car in a ravine the next day. She had been shot to death. Scott Alan Sloane, then 17, was arrested and charged with the murder. He was convicted and sentenced to five life terms.

APRIL 7, 1980: The homicide of Nathaniel "Buster" Wilson, a former Coasters singer, was Hatch's first investigation in the homicide unit. Wilson was was shot three times in the head at a Las Vegas home, his legs and arms were sawed off, his throat was slit, his fingerprints were removed with acid, and his body was dumped in a canyon near Modesto, Calif. His body was found 34 days later. Patrick Cavanaugh, 60, was convicted of murder in 1984 and sentenced to death.

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