Suspect in prostitute murder won’t get media kept from trial

Bill Gang

Thursday, Jan. 27, 2000 | 11:44 a.m.

Justice of the Peace Jennifer Togliatti today rejected a bid by attorneys for murder defendant Ronald Collins to close a preliminary hearing and other proceedings to the media.

Deputy Special Public Defender Joseph Sciscento argued that prospective jurors could be tainted by coverage, and banning the media would keep Collins' child from being traumatized by details of the bizarre killing of a Las Vegas prostitute.

Togliatti noted that the way to prevent trauma to the child would be for adults around her simply not to show her newspaper articles or let her watch television news shows.

Deputy District Attorney Ed Kane noted that the case already has garnered wide publicity.

He said that had the defendant wished to avoid trauma to his child, "it would have been a good first step not to deposit the body of a dead prostitute in his kitchen."

The defense motion to seal the courtroom to the media has become a standard legal maneuver for the special public defender's office, which handles many of the murder cases in Clark County with indigent defendants.

No preliminary hearing has ever been closed on such a motion.

A preliminary hearing had been set for today but attorneys said it will be postponed because the coroner who performed the autopsy on the victim is ill and unavailable to testify.

Collins, 30, is charged with murder in the Jan. 11 stabbing death of Agnes K. Ready, a 37-year-old Las Vegas woman with a history of prostitution arrests in the downtown area since May 1998.

Ready's body was discovered in Collins' townhouse in the 4000 block of Castle Cove Drive when his wife returned home after having left several hours before because of a domestic dispute.