Suspect in Rios killing faces new hearing

Bill Gang

Wednesday, June 16, 1999 | 10:35 a.m.

John Flowers had been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial on murder charges in the slaying of Las Vegas singer Ginger Rios, but a court date will now be set for a preliminary hearing.

Flowers has been returned to Las Vegas from the state's mental facility at Lake's Crossing, near Reno, where he was sent last year after psychiatrists determined he was unfit for trial.

One psychiatrist, however, said there was the possibility that Flowers was just faking it -- a suspicion shared by the victim's family.

Her father, George Rios, said at the time that the murder "left a hole in our lives, and it's not healing."

There had been concern by the Rios family and Deputy District Attorney Gary Guymon that Flowers could be declared too infirm mentally to ever stand trial and would be dispatched to a long-term mental facility.

But Flowers, who also is known as Craig Jacobsen, will be in Las Vegas Justice Court on June 24 for the setting of a preliminary hearing.

Guymon told District Judge Michael Douglas at a hearing for Flowers last year that "this guy is good for two murders." He was referring not only to the murder of Rios, whose body was found buried in a grave in a southern Arizona desert, but to the death of a still-unidentified woman whose body was buried nearby. Both graves were concealed beneath concrete caps.

Rios was killed April 4, 1997, after her husband, Mark Hollinger, drove her to the Spy Craft store, 3507 Maryland Parkway, managed by Flowers.