Progress seen in solving murder of local singer

Metro Police say today they are pleased by the progress of their investigation of the slaying of a local singer, but they have nothing to corroborate claims by a former employee of the suspect.

Homicide Sgt. Bill Keeton declined to talk about a statement made by a former employee of Craig Jacobsen, the owner of the Spy Craft store on Maryland Parkway, who is being held in California on unrelated charges and is considered the prime suspect in the slaying of 20-year-old Ginger Rios.

"We don't have one iota of support for what he (the former employee) said," Keeton said. "We have nothing to back it up and won't comment about it until we do."

What the former employee alleged was that Jacobsen, 26, bragged about using the vast Southwest desert as a graveyard, that he paid people to take photos of unsuspecting brunettes in local casinos, and that he had found at least three women's wedding bands in the glove compartment of Jacobsen's truck.

And although an unidentified woman's body was found in the same area as Rios' body in the Arizona desert in May, police are not ready to positively link the crimes. Nor have they found evidence to link Jacobsen to a string of women's bodies found in the desert in recent years.

Meanwhile, the Rios family is still waiting for Arizona authorities to finish tests and release Ginger's body for services. She was a singer in the local band Salsa Machine.

"We were hoping it would be last week, now we are hoping it will be this week," George Rios, Ginger's father, said today. "We are thinking about the services now, but everything is pending until they release her to us."

He said reports further linking Jacobsen to the killing satisfy the family and at the same time frustrate them.

"We're just hoping all of this information that is coming out is useful," George Rios said. "And we hope it is something that can't be used by the defendant to get a plea or make it more difficult to prosecute."

He said the family takes comfort in the possibility that the probe into the killing of their daughter may help solve similar crimes and bring relief to other families looking for answers in the slayings of their daughters.

Jacobsen, also known as John Flowers, became a suspect earlier this month after his wife, Cheryle Ciccone, led police to Rios' grave near Tucson, 6 1/2 miles west of State Route 177 just off the Florence-Kelvin Highway, a dirt road linking Florence to Kearny City.

Ciccone turned in her husband because she feared for her life, according to an affidavit supporting Jacobsen's arrest.

Ciccone said her husband told her Rios "got in his face" at the store and that's when he hit her. She told U.S. Customs agents that she had seen the body and she "checked her body for vital signs and found none."

Police believe Rios was killed at the Spy Craft on April 4. She was taken to the desert and buried in a shallow grave, police said.

Jacobsen was arrested last week in Los Angeles. He is awaiting extradition to Tampa, Fla., for a parole violation on counterfeiting charges.

Keeton said he has "no timeline" on how soon Jacobsen can be brought to Las Vegas to face charges.

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