Probation given in murder-suicide pact

Bill Gang

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2000 | 10:51 a.m.

A 61-year-old man who killed his wife in what was supposed to be a murder-suicide pact but couldn't kill himself because the gun jammed has been freed on probation.

Raymond Gordon had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the September death of his ailing 55-year-old wife, Lois Gordon, in their southeastern Las Vegas home.

Deputy Public Defender Kedric Bassett said the man likely will return to the home to live with the couple's son. Gordon has been housed in the Clark County Detention Center since the incident.

"It's a real tragedy, a sad case," Bassett said, explaining that Gordon had chronic and painful back problems and Lois Gordon suffered from stomach problems that were the result of cancer 10 years earlier.

The couple had vowed to die together, but the plan went awry, Bassett said.

District Judge Donald Mosley granted probation Tuesday after hearing how the couple's family and friends described the defendant as a kind and soft-hearted person who cared deeply for his wife.

During the year before her death, the woman had written several suicide notes, but didn't act on them, apparently because of the vow. The notes were discovered in the home near Tropicana Avenue and Nellis Boulevard after the death.

"He didn't want to be left behind," the attorney said of Gordon. "The irony is that now he has been left behind."

After the woman was shot to death and the gun jammed, Gordon called his doctor's office to report the event. The office called police, who found Gordon sitting on his back porch crying.