Major witness in Floyd case missing

Bill Gang

Friday, Jan. 14, 2000 | 11:16 a.m.

The only person who can talk about Zane Floyd's state of mind in the hour before he is alleged to have walked into a supermarket and shot four people to death has vanished.

Deputy District Attorney Bill Koot said Thursday a material-witness warrant has been issued for the outcall entertainer with a heart tattoo on her ankle who turned 21 years old on Jan. 5. A wanted poster is being distributed nationwide for the woman who was last in touch with the district attorney's office on Nov. 18.

The woman has said she was summoned through the Love Bound outcall service to Floyd's home about 4 a.m. on June 3 and was sexually brutalized by him for an hour before he let her go.

During that time, she told authorities, Floyd told her he had 19 shotgun shells and planned to kill the first 19 people he saw.

As the woman fled, she said Floyd began walking toward the Albertson's market at Sahara Avenue and Valley View Boulevard where he is charged with indiscriminately shooting five people, killing four of them.

One woman was killed as she pleaded for her life. A man was chased down and shot in the back. Other terrified employees hid in storage areas to escape the gunman, while police surrounded the store.

Although Floyd surrendered and confessed in two statements, details of the minutes before the massacre can only be related by the missing witness, who Koot said may be pregnant with Floyd's child.

Because the woman was a key witness but had a checkered past, prosecutors asked District Judge Jeffrey Sobel for permission to take a videotape deposition under oath that could be shown to the jury at Floyd's March trial if she vanished.

But Sobel denied the request and instead ordered the woman to check in weekly with prosecutors, which Bell said she did for several months.

"We wanted a deposition or we wanted her in custody," Koot said Thursday. "The judge wouldn't give us either, so the inevitable happened."

He said that other district judges have routinely granted permission to take sworn depositions from witnesses in criminal cases whose promises to appear for trials are also questionable.

Koot said the disappearance of the outcall entertainer was precipitated by an apparently violent breakup with her boyfriend, who worked as a driver for the outcall service.

Koot added that another warrant was issued for her arrest Dec. 8 on charges of domestic violence and failing to change her registration as an ex-felon. Koot said she was convicted in Oregon on felony drug charges. Yet another warrant has been issued there on probation violation charges.

The woman, according to Koot, suffered "an abusive childhood" and seldom has had contact with relatives, making her even more difficult to track down.

Bell had argued to Sobel at an August hearing that before the young woman was arrested and returned to Las Vegas in July as a material witness, she had been difficult to locate at times and failed to check in on a regular basis.

The woman always had been a reluctant witness and victim -- she initially reported her sexual assault to the outcall service dispatcher but not to police. The dispatcher notified authorities about three hours later when details of the Albertson's massacre were broadcast on television.

The 5-foot-4, 130-pound woman with brown hair and hazel eyes actually had gotten as far as the Bahamas in July before she was tracked down and returned to Las Vegas.

"We had her (after the murders) then we lost her then we found her again," Bell said at the August hearing, obviously frustrated by the witness's proclivity to disappear. "We've got her back. She says she wants to testify, and she means it when she says it, but ..."

Sobel asked her why she continued to leave town.

"I don't like Las Vegas," said the woman who was being held in the Clark County jail at the time as a material witness.

The woman said she was not trying to run away to avoid testifying and vowed, "I will be here."

"Is there anything you can say to this court to assure us you will be here?" Sobel asked.

"My word," she said.

Sobel then denied the request for a videotaped deposition on the grounds the reason didn't fit the criteria for its use. Videotaping testimony is generally reserved for those who can't appear, not for those who prosecutors fear won't appear, the judge ruled.

Sobel made the witness promise to check in with the district attorney each week until the March 6 trial date, and warned her that if she failed to do so a warrant would be issued for her arrest.

The woman's disappearance complicates the case because the sexual assault charges that resulted from her story were going to be part of Floyd's murder trial. If the 23-year-old ex-Marine and nightclub bouncer is convicted of first-degree murder, the jury will be asked to give him the death sentence.

Killed in the rampage at Albertson's were store employees, Thomas Michael Darnell, Dennis Troy Sargent, Carlos Chuck Leos and Lucille Alice Tarantino.

A fifth employee, Zachary Emenegger, was shot but survived after spending days in a hospital.