LV woman pleads guilty to second-degree murder

Friday, March 20, 1998 | 10:10 a.m.

A Las Vegas woman whose conviction and life prison sentence for her role in the 1994 slaying of a jewelry salesman were overturned last year by the Nevada Supreme Court has pleaded guilty and will return to prison.

But this time, Claudia Canada, 26, will be eligible for parole after five years, not the 20 years she would have served for her prior conviction on first-degree murder charges.

Canada pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder for her part in the June 26, 1994, slaying of 69-year-old Harold "Dice" Goodwine.

Her co-defendant, Gary Scherer, 45, is scheduled to stand trial on open murder charges Sept. 14. He also had been convicted of first-degree murder at the original trial but was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The pair's convictions were overturned because a juror had withheld information from trial attorneys that his father had been a murder victim.

A third defendant, 32-year-old Ann Schuck, had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder early in the case and became a prosecution witness.

She had testified that she was with Canada at Goodwine's apartment in the Country Club Towers, 850 E. Desert Inn Road, and saw her hit the man with a frying pan and then stab him to death while holding a pillow over his face.

Scherer, Goodwine's business associate who was alleged to have orchestrated the slaying, was in a Henderson bar at the time of the murder.