Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2003 | 11:11 a.m.
Suspect goes to mental facility
The California man charged with killing a Boulder City hotel maid and dismembering her body was sent to a mental health facility Monday where he will undergo psychiatric treatment.
District Judge Kathy Hardcastle ordered 29-year-old Perry Monroe to be sent to Lakes Crossings, a state-run mental health facility in Sparks.
The ruling came after several psychologists examined Monroe and deemed him incompetent to stand trial. Monroe will remain at the facility until he is declared mentally fit to stand trial, Deputy Public Defender Curtis Brown said.
Attorneys for Monroe say their client suffers from delusions and other mental health symptoms similar to schizophrenia and that he is unable to assist in his defense.
Monroe faces one count of murder and one count of first-degree kidnapping, both with a deadly weapon, in the June slaying of Ladonna Milam, 49, an employee at the Hacienda hotel.
Milam was sent to Monroe's room to deliver towels and never returned. Her dismembered body was discovered in a fishing pond in Boulder City.
Life terms given in Wynn extortion
The man convicted of claiming he was Steve Wynn's half-brother and trying to extort the casino mogul out of $50 million was sentenced to multiple life prison terms Monday.
District Judge John McGroarty declared Donald Phillips, a nine-time convicted felon, a habitual criminal on 12 counts of extortion and one count each of aggravated stalking and dissuading a witness charges.
McGroarty sentenced Phillips, 48, to 14 life sentences with parole possible after 10 years. Eight of those sentences will run consecutively, the judge ordered.
Phillips won't be eligible for parole for at least 80 years, prosecutor Christopher Laurent said.
"He will never get out of prison," he said.
During the trial Laurent had argued that Phillips sent letters to Wynn's office and residence and left voice mails between September 2000 and June 2001, threatening to kill Wynn if he did not hand over the money.
Defense attorney Ralph Baker maintained that Phillips really did believe he was Wynn's brother. He said doctors at Lakes Crossings, a state-run mental health facility in Sparks, concluded that Phillips was delusional.
Phillips had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
High court affirms death penalty
The Nevada Supreme Court on Monday affirmed the death penalty imposed against against Daryl Linnie Mack in the 1988 killing of a Reno woman.
Mack, 45, was serving a life term for another murder when he was charged in 2001 of killing Betty Jane May at her southwest Reno home.
May, 55, was raped and strangled. More than a decade after the killing, Mack was linked to the crime through DNA evidence collected at the scene.
It was the first time in Washoe County that a murder was solved and prosecuted solely on the basis of DNA evidence.
Mack already was serving a life sentence for the 1994 strangulation of Kim Parks in a Reno motel.
Mack waived his right to a jury trial and was found guilty of first-degree murder in April last year by District Judge James Hardesty.
A three-judge panel then imposed the death penalty.
The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the sentence, noting Mack had waived his right to a jury trial, Washoe County District Attorney Dick Gammick said.
Last year the U.S Supreme Court, acting on an Arizona case, ruled that only juries -- not a judge -- can sentence someone to death.
But Gammick said ruling from the nation's high court did not address the legality of death sentences imposed by a three-judge panel.
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