Former spy shop owner gets life in prison

Tuesday, May 16, 2000 | 2:22 a.m.

The former owner of a spy shop was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for killing a 20-year-old entertainer in the back of his store.

John Flowers, 29, will be eligible for parole after serving 20 years and also was sentenced to five to 13 years on a battery charge. The sentences will run one after the other.

Flowers pleaded guilty but mentally ill last month to first-degree murder and battery with intent to kill.

Ginger Rios disappeared after walking into Flowers' Spy Craft store on April 4, 1997, to buy a book on improving credit reports. Her husband waited outside for her, but she never came out.

Four months later, Flowers' wife led police to Rios' body in the desert outside Tucson, Ariz. She told police her husband told her he killed Rios after she "got in his face."

"We appreciate our family even more so because we don't know from day to day what's going to happen," Rios' father, George Rios, said at Tuesday's sentencing. "Our daughter went shopping and she didn't come home."

Authorities believe Flowers is also responsible for the death of an unidentified woman found buried near Rios' body.

Flowers owned and operated Spy Craft bookstores in Las Vegas and Tucson.