Before second trial, girlfriend pleads guilty in killing of bookmaker

Kim Smith

Monday, July 23, 2001 | 9:49 a.m.

A Las Vegas woman whose conviction in the death of her bookmaker boyfriend was overturned has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the case.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Ed Kane said Amy DeChant will receive a 10- to 25-year prison term when sentenced by District Judge John McGroarty in September. She had received a life sentence with no chance of parole from the earlier conviction.

Jury selection for DeChant's second trial was supposed to have started today.

DeChant, 53, and Robert Wayne Jones were convicted in 1998 in the 1996 shooting death of Bruce Weinstein, a wealthy 46-year-old bookmaker who was DeChant's boyfriend.

Jones, who supplied DeChant the murder weapon and helped her clean up Weinstein's bloody home, was given a five-year sentence.

Weinstein disappeared in July 1996, and his body was discovered in the desert two months later.

DeChant had claimed that Weinstein was killed by mobsters, who allowed her to live on the condition that she clean the murder scene and keep quiet.

The Nevada Supreme Court overturned DeChant's conviction, saying a homicide detective should not have been allowed to testify that DeChant's mob story was a "fairy tale."