Thursday, May 29, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
An 18-year-old Long Beach, Calif., man has been arrested in the Memorial Day weekend rape and murder of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson at a Primm hotel-casino.
Jeremy Joseph Strohmeyer, a high school senior, was arrested at his home Wednesday evening after several people called Long Beach police.
On Wednesday afternoon, another 18-year-old, a friend of Strohmeyer who was seen in surveillance videotape with Strohmeyer and Sherrice at the Primm Valley hotel-casino, turned himself in to La Palma, Calif., police, said Metro Police homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen.
His name was not released. He was not arrested, and police said he is cooperating in the investigation.
Strohmeyer and a friend told two teenage girls in Long Beach about the killing, the girls told their parents and their parents called authorities, police said today.
Long Beach police set up surveillance outside Strohmeyer's house and arrested him as he was leaving his home through a side door.
Homicide Sgt. Bill Keeton and Detectives Phil Ramos and James Vaccaro arrived in Long Beach Wednesday night and will be interviewing Strohmeyer today.
Petersen said he didn't know whether Strohmeyer would be extradited to Nevada. That would depend on whether he waived his rights to extradition.
"He's cooperating so far," Petersen said today. "He may not fight extradition."
Metro plans to charge Strohmeyer with murder, kidnapping and sexual assault, Petersen said. He didn't know Strohmeyer's criminal background, although he noted that Long Beach police had a current booking photo of Strohmeyer, indicating he had been arrested before.
The case on the second man was being submitted to the Clark County district attorney's office "and we'll see what they say" about charging him in the murder, Petersen said.
Sherrice was seen playfully talking with both men at the Primm Valley resort, 50 miles southwest of Las Vegas, early Sunday.
Sherrice and her 14-year-old brother, Harold, had gone to Primm with their father, 57-year-old LeRoy Iverson. The family arrived at Primm Valley about 12:30 a.m. from South Central Los Angeles, where they live. The children, however, had left the casino and had gone to Buffalo Bill's across the highway. Sherrice's father was paged by security when they found the girl wandering in the casino by herself. Her brother responded to the page and was told by security to leave and not return without an adult, Petersen said.
Security guards had warned Sherrice's family three times that night not to leave her alone in an arcade while they were gambling, a source connected with the casino said. The source spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Our security found the young girl alone at 1:33 a.m. and paged her family, and her older brother came and got her," Primadonna Resorts Chief Operating Officer Chris Gibase said in a statement earlier this week. "Tragically, she was left alone again later that night."
But Iverson's attorney, Eddie J. Harris, denied that the girl was unsupervised. Harris called Iverson a "conscientious parent" who let Sherrice out of his sight only once when she went to the restroom.
Repeated phone calls to Iverson's Los Angeles home Wednesday went unanswered and an Associated Press staffer who went to the home was told by a woman he was unavailable for comment. The woman would not give her name.
At 3:48 a.m., Sherrice is seen on the videotape playing hide-and-seek in the casino's arcade with a man resembling Strohmeyer. Sherrice then darts into a nearby restroom, and the man follows her in. Twenty-five minutes later, the man is seen leaving the restroom alone.
The girl's father was gambling in the casino upstairs.
The second man can be seen approaching the restroom. He told police he saw Strohmeyer struggling with the girl. Investigators don't believe the suspect was armed with a weapon at the time of the attack.
"(The second man) actually did go into the women's restroom," Petersen said. "He saw Strohmeyer go into the restroom. He saw what was happening." He noted that the man has been cooperating with police.
Before that, the men were engaged "in a playful act" with the girl, Petersen said.
"You see (Strohmeyer) lean over and talk to her," he said. "At one point it looks like he was handing her something. If you look at the entire tape, it doesn't look like she's afraid of him. He spent some time with her, gaining her trust."
Blood evidence was found at the scene, including her undergarments, which were in the toilet, Petersen said.
For the 25 minutes she was in the restroom, "several people" walked in and out, but apparently didn't know a crime was being committed because the killer had taken Sherrice into a closed stall, Petersen said.
About 10 minutes after exiting the restroom, both suspects can be seen on the videotape leaving Primm Valley through the swimming pool entrance, Keeton said. The resort doesn't have surveillance cameras in the parking lot or pool area, so police don't know where they went after that.
At 5:30 a.m., a security officer found Sherrice's body sitting on a toilet in a closed restroom stall. The girl had been raped, hit and choked to death.
Iverson was investigated for possible child abuse in 1993 after he brought his 2-year-old son to a hospital with severely burned hands, but he was not charged because evidence was inconclusive, said Deputy District Attorney Susan Powers. The child's mother is dead, according to records on file in the DA's office, Powers said.
THE ASSOCIATED Press contributed to this report.
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