Witness in Floyd slayings case will be freed from jail

The pregnant outcall entertainer who said she spent a terror-filled hour with Zane Floyd before a deadly shotgun assault on a supermarket last June will be freed from jail but will have to spend some time in a halfway house.

District Attorney Stewart Bell today agreed with the move that will guarantee the availability of the key witness in the quadruple murder case and put the 21-year-old woman in a facility where she can better get prenatal care.

The woman has told authorities she was dispatched to Floyd's apartment through her outcall entertainment service, and was raped repeatedly by the man who threatened her life and told her of his plan for mass murder.

There is speculation the child she carries is Floyd's.

Her attorney, Chip Siegel, has said that she wants to help authorities and testify against Floyd. Siegel has complained that the woman's arrest and incarceration in the Clark County Detention Center as a material witness has further victimized her.

Siegel sought her release on house arrest pending Floyd's murder trial in the shotgun slayings of four people and wounding of a fifth at the Albertson's supermarket at Sahara Avenue and Valley View Boulevard.

In today's conclusion, the state will not give up custody of the witness, but will put her into a less structured environment.

She was being held on $50,000 bail, but even if she had managed to post bail she would not have been released because of a probation violation pending against her in Oregon. The woman had been convicted of a drug charge.

In court documents, Siegel complained his client "suffered a horrendous sexual assault by the defendant before he started his murderous rampage" and "cannot receive the necessary counseling that a rape victim deserves."

Prosecutors, however, want to keep the woman in custody because she left the country once after the incident and then in November reneged on a promise to keep in close contact with authorities.

Siegel noted in his court motion that prosecution concerns can be addressed by taking a videotaped deposition of the woman to preserve her story should she be unavailable for Floyd's trial.

Prosecutors had asked for permission to take such a deposition early in the case, but District Judge Jeff Sobel denied the request, although in a past case he has granted such a request when it came from the witness involved.

Siegel said the woman wants to testify at Floyd's trial and her lapses in contact with authorities have never resulted in the trial having to be postponed.

While he concedes that the woman seemingly was unavailable, she remained in Las Vegas.

"This hardly suggests an uncooperative witness on the lam," Siegel stated in his motion to Sobel. The halfway house placement was a compromise between the state's desire to keep her in custody and Siegel's desire that she be free.

"The woman does not seek her unrestricted freedom," Siegel said. "She asks that the state and the court recognize the trauma she has suffered, the physical condition that she is in and the counseling that she needs."

She is considered a key witness because she is the only person who can talk about Floyd's state of mind in the hour before the June 3 shooting at the Albertson's.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Floyd, an ex-Marine and nightclub bouncer whose activities in the market were captured on surveillance videos and who was arrested as he walked from the store carrying his shotgun.

The woman has told authorities that during the time she was raped and threatened by Floyd, he revealed his plan to commit the massacre. She said he showed her his shotgun and 19 shells and told how he intended to kill the first 19 people he saw.

When the rampage ended, four people were dead -- Thomas Michael Darnell, Dennis Troy Sargent, Carlos Chuck Leos and Lucille Alice Tarantino.

A fifth employee, Zachary Emenegger, was shot but survived after spending days in a hospital.

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