Suspect in slot-scam killing still locked up

Bill Gang

Thursday, Feb. 19, 1998 | 10:21 a.m.

Vito Bruno, one of two defendants indicted in the 1990 execution-style slaying of a whistle-blowing computer programmer for a gaming machine company, has been ordered to sit in jail until his trial.

The second defendant, Soni Beckman, has been free on $200,000 bail but may find herself back behind bars if Deputy District Attorney David Roger has his way.

"These are two people who are very dangerous," the prosecutor said Wednesday at a District Court bail hearing.

Bruno's attorney had asked District Judge Joseph Bonaventure to release his client on bail until the trial, but Roger argued that the actual gunman has implicated both defendants in the plot to kill 49-year-old Larry Volk.

"It's not often you have the actual killer testifying," Roger said, explaining that David Lemons "found religion and came forward to cleanse his soul so to speak."

Lemons had been tried for the murder in 1993 but was acquitted by a jury and can't face charges again because it would constitute double jeopardy.

Roger listed numerous bits of other evidence linking Beckman and Bruno to the shooting death of the computer programmer who told authorities that he had been ordered to alter games to cheat players. That evidence, without Lemons' testimony, was considered by prosecutors to be insufficient to bring the pair to trial.

Roger said he will file a motion to have Beckman's bail revoked and return her to jail.

That issue is expected to be argued when the defendants return to Bonaventure's courtroom for arraignment on March 10.

Beckman, 52, was arrested in early November in a town northwest of Victorville, Calif., and Bruno, also known as John Sipes, 37, was apprehended a week later in Phoenix, Ariz.

Prosecutors said the break in the case came in September when Jean Prison inmate Lemons admitted that he was the one who fired the single bullet into Volk's head as he worked on his car in front of his mobile home.

Lemons told authorities that Beckman and Bruno were the ones who funneled $5,000 to him for the murder.

Volk apparently became a target after informing gaming authorities that the operators of American Coin Co. had instructed him to alter the computer chips in video poker machines to prevent the largest payoff.

After Volk told authorities of the computer chip scam, the company was closed and the gaming licenses of the owners -- Rudolph and Rudy M. LaVecchia and Frank Romano -- were surrendered in a deal that required them to pay a $1 million fine to the state in the February 1990 deal.

At the time, American Coin was the state's fourth largest slot route operator with more than 1,000 machines in various Las Vegas locations. It was alleged that 300 machines were altered.

Beckman and Bruno, her nephew, were said to be friends of the LaVecchias.

Although Romano's license was revoked, it was not alleged that he was part of the computer chip scam.

Roger said Wednesday that Beckman and Bruno had talked to Lemons at one time about murdering Romano, although no such attempt was ever made.