Rapist gets 20 years to life in prison

Bill Gang

Wednesday, Dec. 1, 1999 | 10:40 a.m.

Todd Honeycutt didn't learn his lesson the first three times he was convicted of felonies.

Now he will have at least the next 20 years to ponder his wayward course.

For his fourth felony conviction -- kidnapping and sexually assaulting a tourist from Canada he had met inside the Hard Rock Cafe -- Honeycutt was sentenced Tuesday by District Judge Michael Douglas to 20 years to life in prison.

Included in that sentence was punishment for a failed murder-for-hire plot to silence the victim before she could testify at Honeycutt's second trial in October.

Honeycutt met his victim May 1998 inside the nightclub on Paradise Road and offered to give her a lift to the Luxor hotel-casino where she was staying, according to court records.

The 32-year-old victim had testified against Honeycutt at a preliminary hearing and then at the defendant's October 1998 trial on the kidnapping and rape charges, but that trial ended with the jury hung 11-1 in favor of conviction.

Honeycutt, 28, told a fellow inmate at the Clark County Detention Center that a guilty verdict was likely at a retrial if the woman returned to testify, according to Deputy District Attorney Teresa Lowry.

In an apparent agreement to cooperate, the inmate arranged for Honeycutt and another inmate to meet and formalize the murder-for-hire deal.

That inmate, however, was an undercover police officer who testified he was offered a $500 down payment and another $4,500 once the deed was done.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Honeycutt passed along the victim's home and work addresses, her Social Security number and a detailed description.

"It was everything a killer needed to know," Lowry said.

Honeycutt took the witness stand in his own defense and testified that the sexual encounter with the Canadian woman that led to his original arrest was actually consensual sex in the back of his van in the Hard Rock Cafe parking lot.