Police seek clues in two slayings

Karen Zekan

Monday, June 8, 1998 | 11:42 a.m.

Metro Police homicide investigators are working with few leads today in solving the Sunday night murders of a tourist at the Stardust hotel-casino and a Las Vegas man outside his southeast valley apartment.

Several hotel guests heard the single deadly blast that killed the 43-year-old tourist shortly after 11 p.m., though police have found no one who saw the gunman, said homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen.

Police found the man dead, a gunshot wound in his chest. He was laying in a well-lit portion of an alleyway between the west side of the hotel's convention area and the two-story motor lodge, Petersen said, declining to release the man's hometown.

The man was midway through his stay at the Stardust, having checked in June 3 with a scheduled check-out on June 11. Petersen said the man was apparently staying at the hotel alone, and was found with money in his wallet.

"Where we start is by checking on the background of the victim and who he associated with to see if there is anything in his personal history" that could lead police to the motive, and, ideally, to the killer, Petersen said.

About an hour earlier, police were in the 3200 block of South Sandhill Road collecting clues to the slaying of a 63-year-old Las Vegas man just steps from his apartment door.

The man and his wife had returned home to the Carefree Sandhill apartment complex about 9:50 p.m. when the man was shot once in the chest with a handgun.

"They live on the second floor and (the wife) was a few steps ahead of her husband, heading up the stairs," Petersen said.

The woman remembered hearing her husband talking to someone at the bottom of the stairs, an argument ensuing, and then "hearing her husband ask, 'do you live here?' She heard more arguing and then the shot."

The woman wasn't able to see the gunman, remembering only one man who had been standing in a grassy area of the complex when she and her husband walked to the stairs.

The description of the man she saw matches that of the image other residents saw fleeing the complex seconds after the gunshot.

The man police are looking to question is described to be in his 20s, who was wearing a dark jacket or parka, Petersen said.

The identities of both victims have been withheld until relatives are notified.