Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Correctional officer suspected in ex-girlfriend’s murder found dead in Idaho

When the 9-year-old girl went to bed late Friday in a southeast Las Vegas townhouse, her mother was on the phone and her father watching television. But when she and her twin sister woke up, the woman was dead and the man was missing, according to a Metro Police warrant.

Christopher Gerard Caggiano, a Nevada Department of Corrections officer who eluded Metro Police since Saturday morning, turned up dead Tuesday evening in a remote Idaho town, Bannock County Coroner Kim Quick said this afternoon. He had a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

His body was inside his white Nissan Rogue in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, roughly 600 highway miles north of Las Vegas, Quick said. Authorities from both states were in contact, he added.

The development came less than four days after Metro officers found his ex-girlfriend Cheri Louise Anaya, 32, lying on a blood-soaked bed in the 4600 block of Dealers Choice Way, near Boulder Highway, south of Harmon Avenue, police said. She died from a gunshot wound to the head.

First, the twins tried calling and texting their father to no avail. One theorized that perhaps Caggiano was working as a “police officer in a prison,” but “thought it strange because he never works on Saturdays.”

Then came a call to their grandfather in California, who told them to call 911, and one did just that at 8:54 a.m.

In the bedroom, detectives spotted a pillow with a hole on it, which demonstrated the killer had likely tried muffling the bullet pop; a torn-up photo of Anaya and Caggiano — who were ex-partners — showed that they had a volatile relationship, police said. A gun case was empty.

The suspect and victim had argued about a pair of step-siblings to the twins, who were picked up by their mothers on Friday, police said. Anaya told the twins “to say goodbye to their siblings because (she and the girls) were going back to California.”

Caggiano was watching TV when both girls went to bed sometime before midnight. The next morning, they found their mother face down on a bed; unresponsive, police said.

Police couldn’t contact Caggiano, which made him a suspect. On Sunday, he didn’t show up to his scheduled shift at High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs.