By Cathy Scott
Murder. It's personal. And when a case is unsolved, it can haunt family and
friends for the rest of their lives. In police homicide divisions, it comes with
the territory. Slayings affect them too, investigators say - some cases more
than others.
The Las Vegas Valley has its share of unsolved murders - some of the most
notorious of which have occurred in the last decade or so. But for Las Vegas
Metropolitan Police Lt. Tom Monahan and his team of detectives, there is no such
thing as a "notorious" case.
"We treat them all the same," Monahan explained. "Highest profile is a function
of publicity from the media."
But the families of the victims don't always see it that way.
"Many families of victims, while they acknowledge that theirs is not the only
murder we're investigating, like us to treat it like it is," said Monahan. "Not
only are detectives working their family member's case, but they're going to
court to testify and also working on other cases. I wish there was something we
could do to minimize that."
Metro's homicide solve rate in 2001, the most recent statistic available, was 61
percent, Monahan said. That rate is in line with the national average for cities
of similar size.
"That means 60 percent of the people are happy with us and 40 percent are not,"
he said.
Former homicide Sgt. Bill Keeton, who investigated 560 cases before retiring in
1998, said one of the more grisly cases of his career was the unsolved murders
of three still-unidentified Asian women. Their bodies were found seven years ago
stuffed in plastic trash bags and buried in shallow graves at Government Wash on
the east side of the Las Vegas Valley.
Two of the women died from strangulation, police said, the other from a
fractured skull and suffocation.
On a windy afternoon on March 27, 1996, the first woman's body - unearthed by
wild dogs or coyotes - was discovered by off-road riders alerted by a foul odor.
Police said the bodies probably had been in the desert about a month. They
rested in a shallow grave dug into the side of a ravine near Hollywood Boulevard
and Vegas Valley Drive - in what Metro Detective Dave Hatch, who investigates
cold cases, called "beehive graves."
The Clark County Coroner determined that one of the women was Asian and about 30
years old, with shoulder-length dark hair. The other two victims, who were also
Asian, were much shorter and were probably teenage girls or young women, police
said.
Crime-scene analysts lifted fingerprints from each victim. Then detectives ran
the prints through a national database. What was unusual, Keeton said in 1996,
was that nothing came back. The women had never been fingerprinted. So police
issued a nationwide bulletin alerting authorities and Metro checked with other
law enforcement agencies in the area to see if there were missing persons
reports for the women. Again, nothing.
It was as if the women never existed, Keeton said.
That led detectives to believe the women were brought to Las Vegas as illegal
immigrants to work either as prostitutes or in a slave trade.
The murders remain unsolved.
A particularly sad unsolved homicide that occurred Halloween night in 1994
nearly destroyed a North Las Vegas family. Seven-year-old Tony Bagley, who was
dressed in a skeleton costume, was out trick-or-treating with his family when he
was shot to death. Three members of his family were also hit with gunfire, but
survived.
It happened at 6:15 p.m. on the 2200 block of Engelstad Street, near Carey and
Revere. A man wearing a hooded sweat suit ran into the street and opened fire on
Tony and his family. Witnesses told police the gunman jumped into a waiting car
and left the area with the headlights off. The only description of the shooter
was that he was a 5-foot-8-inch black male who was wearing a dark-colored
jogging suit.
Tony's 11-year-old sister Shanell Bagley, his mother LaShelle Cooper and an
unidentified aunt were also hit by bullets. Shanell required surgery to remove
part of her liver. Tony was dead on arrival at the hospital.
The killer vanished, leaving a cold trail behind him. Theories varied, the most
prominent of which was that a family member had been the intended target. That
theory, however, never panned out and investigators were stumped. Detectives
even called on a psychic for help. Tony's mother flew to Los Angeles with a
police detective to talk to the psychic, said the boy's grandmother, Carolyn
Landers.
"The psychic told them where the gun was, in an abandoned building," Landers
said. "It seemed good at first. But when police went to the building, there was
no gun."
The Bagley family said they found hope when Tony's story was broadcast four
months later on "America's Most Wanted." But Ivey Van Allen, a publicist for the
program, said afterward: "We didn't get any calls."
On the first anniversary of Tony's death, gambling mogul Bob Stupak offered a
$100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Tony's
killer. Nine years later, no arrests have been made. According to North Las
Vegas Police spokesman Mark Martin, there are no new leads.
Perhaps the most publicized homicide in recent years was the fatal drive-by
shooting of rap and film star Tupac Shakur on Sept. 7, 1996, two blocks off of
the Las Vegas Strip.
Shakur, his record producer Marion "Suge" Knight and associates were in town for
the Mike Tyson/Bruce Seldon heavyweight boxing match. The Strip was crowded that
night. But despite the gridlock on Flamingo Avenue and Koval Lane, a shooter in
a white Cadillac pulled up beside Shakur's BMW and opened fire on the passenger
side (where Shakur was sitting), riddling his body with bullets.
Shakur died six days later in the trauma unit at University Medical Center.
Seven and a half years later, the case is cold and remains unsolved.
Las Vegas police said their investigation stalled, not for lack of police
efforts, but because witnesses refused to cooperate. Also, a witness named Yafeu
"Kadafi" Fula, who told police he could identify the shooter, was killed two
months later before detectives could interview him. Police said Fula's murder
was unrelated to the Shakur case.
Homicide Sgt. Kevin Manning, who headed the Shakur investigation, said
detectives worked hard on the case, fielding thousands of tips and interviewing
hundreds of witnesses, during a record year of 168 homicides.
Manning has said the Shakur case received the same attention as any other
homicide.
"Witnesses did not cooperate," he said.
Two former Compton (Calif.) Police detectives, Robert Ladd and Tim Brennan,
speculated that Shakur was killed by the Southside Crips in retaliation for a
beating earlier that night of Crip member Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson. Shakur
and Knight were approached by Anderson after the boxing match at the MGM Grand.
A scuffle ensued, which was caught on surveillance videotape.
But a Metro officer and an MGM security officer who responded to the brawl did
not hold Anderson for questioning or even take down his name. Ladd and Brennan
said, when shown the security video, they gave Las Vegas police Anderson's name
and background.
A month later, Anderson was arrested by Compton police during a gang raid. Las
Vegas detectives interviewed Anderson as well, but released him because of a
lack of evidence.
Anderson was killed 18 months later in a gang shooting at a Compton carwash.
Police said the killing was unrelated to Shakur's.
Lt. Monahan said Shakur's case is no more important than the cases of victims
who are lesser known.
"The effort we put into each case is the same," he explained. "The amount of
effort doesn't vary. What varies is the media play."
Phyllis Thomas, wife of murder victim Ulysses Thomas, doesn't believe that
investigators treat all cases the same. She said a teenager fingered her
husband's killers, and yet police did not arrest them. That left her and her six
grown children and step-children wondering why.
On Oct. 25, 1999, Ulysses Thomas - a 36-year-old Sunrise Hospital employee -
drove to a 7-Eleven at Pecos Road and Washington Street to buy some beer on his
way home from work, Phyllis Thomas explained. He walked to a phone booth at the
convenience store to call his wife. Two teenagers approached; one shot Thomas in
the back.
"Ulysses ran inside the store and told the clerk, 'I think I've been shot.' He
didn't know what hit him," his wife said.
When she arrived at the hospital, her husband of one year was on a ventilator.
"He was already gone," she said. "You always think you'll have time to say what
you need to say to those you love, but you never do."
A teenager was on the phone next to Ulysses Thomas when Thomas was shot. He told
police he knew the assailants, who lived nearby.
"Police went to their house and talked to them," said Phyllis Thomas, a
teacher's aide for the Clark County School District.
But the police did not arrest them.
"I was told by a detective that the boy did not want to testify, so they never
made an arrest," she explained. "That's what [the] Secret Witness [program] is
about. People give the police the information, then the police do their job. I
feel short-changed."
Monahan said that working a case is not as simple as it appears.
"Oftentimes, we're waiting for witnesses to come forward, and they don't," he
explained. "Unfortunately, it's not at all that uncommon."
Unsolved cases continue to haunt Detective Hatch, who retired in 1996 but still
investigates part time. He said he can't forget the double murder of Lloyd and
Gladys Gannon. The Minnesota couple was killed in February 1980 in their motor
home, which was parked at the Union Plaza hotel-casino. He called it "a vicious
murder."
"We have no idea who did it," he said.
Hatch said the murder of 17-year-old Cathryn Tighe, who disappeared Feb. 6,
1983, while walking home from high school, also still haunts him. Her body was
found a month later.
"It was one of those cases where it started and ended right at the scene," said
Hatch. "She was raped and murdered. Whoever did it put cardboard over her body
like she was a piece of garbage and left her on the side of Boulder Highway.
We've never come up with anything on it.
"She was just a kid walking home from school and never made it."
Maria Salvoti made sure the nation knew about her husband's Las Vegas murder on
Sept. 15, 1997. She went home to Monaca, Pa. and held several news conferences,
telling reporters the streets of Vegas were unsafe.
Ernest Salvoti was walking with his wife, sister-in-law and brother-in-law near
the Ramada Vacation Suites (behind the Imperial Palace), when he was fatally
shot in the chest.
The foursome, after arriving late from the airport, decided to walk to the Maxim
hotel-casino to get something to eat, police said. As they returned, at 2:25
a.m., a gunman in a late-model Cadillac pulled up, jumped out and grabbed one of
the women's fanny packs. Ernest Salvoti was shot as he stepped between his wife
and the gunman, in an attempt to thwart the robbery.
On Christmas Eve 1992, Harvey Oles - co-owner of Adult Superstores with Dean
Love - was shot in a Main Street alley as he walked from his business' warehouse
to his car.
Love told police that three men, wearing ski masks and rummaging through the
trash, shot Oles.
An FBI agent, working in concert with Metro, said Oles' body was "pumped with
multiple bullets." The case remains unsolved.
FBI spokesman Daron Borst said the agency's case "is closed, as far as we're
concerned. But Metro may still be working on it."
Indeed, Metro's homicide investigations are never closed until they're solved,
Monahan said.
"They remain open until we secure a conviction," he said.
Cathy Scott is a Las Vegas-based freelance journalist and author of such
titles as The Killing of Tupac Shakur, Death in the Desert: The Ted Binion
Homicide Case, and Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Life and Tragic Death
of Susan Berman