Murder suspect guilty in retrial

Bill Gang

Friday, Oct. 8, 1999 | 11:16 a.m.

As was his fate at his first trial in 1995, Michael J. Silva has been convicted by a District Court jury of first-degree murder.

The jury deliberated six hours before reaching its verdict Thursday on the guilt of the man who had defended himself from charges he participated in a 1992 bar robbery and the murder of a bartender.

Silva was convicted in part because of his confession to police, although he contended the confession was the result of police threats and coercion.

During the trial, the defendant claimed he wasn't at the Wagon Wheel Bar, 1695 Nellis Blvd., on March 12, 1992, when bartender Howard Gibbons, 62, was stabbed.

Brian Loehr, who was a karate student of Silva's at the time of the incident, pleaded guilty in 1993 for his role as the knife-wielding bandit and was sentenced to life in prison with parole possible after 20 years.

But Deputy District Attorney Valerie Adair noted that a bag of the bar's cash that was dropped by the robbers before they fled carried the fingerprints of both Silva and Loehr.

Silva will be sentenced on Nov. 19 by District Judge John McGroarty, but the sentence already has been set by law at life in prison with the possibility of parole after he serves 20 years. He already has served a third of that.

Silva's earlier conviction was overturned by the Nevada Supreme Court in 1997 when the justices agreed with attorneys for Silva that District Judge Sally Loehrer erred when she permitted Loehr to testify at the trial.

Loehr, however, refused to say anything other than that he pleaded guilty. He was cited for contempt 17 times.