Attorney: Pair of ‘97 slayings not planned

Bill Gang

Thursday, Feb. 25, 1999 | 10:47 a.m.

Lonnie Dennis shot his estranged wife in the face and slit her boyfriend's throat from ear to ear, his lawyer told a jury as the Las Vegas man's trial began Wednesday.

But lawyer Ulrich Smith, setting the tone for the defense of the 50-year-old defendant in his trial for murder, said Dennis did not premeditate the July 3, 1997, slayings of Elfie Dennis and John Ludvigson.

He promised Dennis would take the witness stand to explain how the fatal events occurred as his marriage crumbled in a quagmire of emotion.

Smith told the jury Dennis isn't guilty of first-degree murder, and he left the door open to convict him of lesser charges that wouldn't carry the potential for the death penalty or a life prison sentence.

Deputy District Attorney David Roger agreed that the emotions of a dying love played a role in the events, but he charged that Dennis took a .22-caliber pistol and pursued his estranged wife to her boyfriend's apartment for a fatal confrontation.

"A cruel heart and jealous face belonged to Lonnie Dennis," Roger said in District Judge Donald Mosley's courtroom.

Elfie Dennis' body was found in a pool of blood on the bed of the apartment near Las Vegas Boulevard South and Blue Diamond Road. An autopsy showed she had been shot at close range.

But Roger said the end did not come quickly for 37-year-old Ludvigson, who "had been in the fight of his life."

He was shot in the chest, hit in the head with a blunt object and stabbed in the face. Slashes on his arms and hands showed he tried to fend off his attacker, Roger said. The victim's body was found in the living room.

Roger contends that Lonnie Dennis had gone to the apartment with the intent to kill and gave a story to Metro Police homicide detectives that tried to minimize his role in the bloody episode.

At the same time, the prosecutor conceded that the spouses apparently still had a sporadic romantic relationship that the 47-year-old woman was trying to end while Dennis worked toward reconciliation.

When told by detectives of the double murder, Dennis sat with his face in his hands for several minutes and then admitted he was involved, Roger said.

Dennis said that when his efforts to reunite with his wife were rebuffed, he left the woman's apartment but came back two hours later and tracked her down in Ludvigson's apartment a short distance away, according to Roger.

"It is clear that Lonnie loved Elfie very much," Smith said.