Accused killer apparent suicide victim

Tom Gardner

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2001 | 9:45 a.m.

MINDEN, Nev. - The man accused of raping, torturing and killing a fourth-grade girl died in his jail cell from an overdose of a tranquilizer he apparently stockpiled, the sheriff's office said on Friday.

An investigation into Thomas Soria's death last month is continuing but evidence so far is "characteristic of a suicide," Douglas County Sheriff Ron Pierini said.

Authorities originally pointed toward a heart defect as the most likely thing that killed him Jan. 28.

"Although he had a heart defect at the time of autopsy which could be fatal, toxicology results show that he had a lethal dose of his prescribed medication, amitriptyline," the sheriff's office said in a statement Friday.

Pierini said it would be up to the district attorney to make a final determination of the cause of death.

Soria, 40, was found dead in his cell two days after the first witnesses testified in his trial. He faced a possible death sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of 9-year-old Krystal Steadman.

He apparently managed to hide some of the amitriptyline when it was given to him until he amassed a lethal dosage, Pierini said.

The sheriff said that jailers are trained in the administration of medication, particularly to see that daily amounts are swallowed.

"You just can't prevent everyone from doing everything," he said.

Soria was being monitored by a closed-circuit television camera but was not under a suicide watch.

Zane Horowitz, medical director of the Washoe Poison Center, declined to say exactly how much of the medication would be lethal, but said it would not be a lot.

He added that the drug, which is known by the trade name Elavil, can be fatal for people with certain heart problems.

Soria was being held in a medical isolation unit jail to keep him away from other inmates because of the charges pending against him.

Krystal, from South Lake Tahoe, Calif., disappeared March 19 from a Stateline apartment complex where Soria lived and where her mother, Elizabeth Steadman, was visiting her boyfriend.

The child's nude, battered body was found the next day down an embankment along U.S. 50, about 20 miles from where she vanished. She had been sexually assaulted and her throat was slashed repeatedly.

Prosecutors described Soria as a man obsessed with sex who kept a lurid computer file detailing fantasies of brutalizing women.

Soria wrote of wanting to terrorize young blond women and girls because that was the "only way a woman like that would ever have sex with me."

Krystal's grieving mother cried openly the first day of the trial as she identified the black pants and Tweety Bird T-shirt her daughter was wearing when she was last seen alive.

The little girl's grandfather, Les Bucknell, said prophetically the day after Soria died that having heard the tearful testimony of Krystal's mother, "perhaps he could no longer live with himself."