Pal detailed Strohmeyer’s play with girl

Bill Gang

Friday, Aug. 15, 1997 | 9:39 a.m.

Jeremy Strohmeyer's high school buddy detailed for a Clark County grand jury how a playful episode with a 7-year-old Los Angeles girl suddenly turned deadly.

But David Cash Jr. said he initially was concerned only "to a small degree" about the safety of Sherrice Iverson, who he said he saw in Strohmeyer's grasp in a women's restroom at a Primm casino.

As the minutes ticked by and the 18-year-old Strohmeyer didn't emerge, Cash conceded, "I probably feared the worst."

Cash said after Strohmeyer finally came out alone, he admitted, "I killed her."

"I was shocked, very shocked at that point, and I didn't really know what to think," Cash said, according to a transcript of the grand jury proceeding that resulted in the Aug. 1 indictment of Strohmeyer. The transcript was released Thursday.

Cash added that Strohmeyer admitted sexually assaulting the second-grader and snapping her neck after strangling her. However, Clark County Medical Examiner Sheldon Green testified that the girl's neck never actually was broken.

Strohmeyer's ex-girlfriend, Agnes Lee, revealed to the grand jury that Strohmeyer had a penchant for young girls.

"He said he likes to date women who looked very young," she said, recalling that he had asked her to dress in a school uniform and braid her hair in pigtails.

When asked by District Attorney Stewart Bell if she complied, Lee responded, "Not on my life."

Lee also told the grand jury that Strohmeyer confessed to her that he had killed the girl, but named Cash as the one who molested her.

Lee told of watching news broadcasts after talking with Strohmeyer and recognizing him and Cash on the security videotapes from the Primm Valley hotel-casino of the early morning hours of May 25.

She said she told her father and he called police. Strohmeyer was arrested a short time later. Cash has not been charged with any crime.

The videotapes showed that the man identified by Cash as Strohmeyer was in the restroom with Iverson for 24 minutes while Cash was inside only two minutes.

Cash testified that Strohmeyer and Iverson had been playfully throwing wads of wet paper towels at each other in the video arcade and the game moved into the women's restroom.

The witness said when the girl threw a plastic "wet floor" sign, Strohmeyer grabbed her, putting a hand across her mouth to muffle her cries, and took her into a toilet stall.

Cash said he told Strohmeyer to let her go but "he didn't care what I was saying" and Cash decided to leave the restroom.

"I knew at that point that the little game they were playing kind of crossed the line," he said.

As they left the hotel a short time later, Cash said he asked his friend, "What happened? I mean you were in there a long time."

"He looked at me very directly and said, 'I killed her,'" Cash said.

They drove from the hotel at the California-Nevada border to Las Vegas with Cash's father, and stayed there one day before returning to Long Beach, Calif.

Although Cash admitted he had been curious about why Strohmeyer had killed her and sexually assaulted her, he said he never asked.

While in Las Vegas, Cash said they talked about the likelihood they would be apprehended because of the security video cameras and the number of people they had talked to at the Primm casino.

He said Strohmeyer planned to tell authorities he had only been playing hide-and-seek with the girl and then left.

Cash said they also discussed using the four beers Strohmeyer bought at the hotel as an excuse and claiming "temporary insanity."

In Long Beach, Cash said he asked Strohmeyer, "Do you regret doing it now?"

"He told me that he did now," Cash said.