Schoolteacher’s killer dies of natural causes

Tuesday, March 20, 2001 | 10:55 a.m.

SUN CAPITAL BUREAU

CARSON CITY -- A Las Vegas man sent to Nevada's death row twice died of natural causes over the weekend.

Charles Edward Manley, 53, was sentenced to die by lethal injection last year for the March 1995 death of Roxanne Logan, a 43-year-old Las Vegas schoolteacher.

That jury was the second one to reach a death penalty decision. The Nevada Supreme Court had overturned his 1997 conviction and ordered a new trial.

A spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Prisons said Monday Manley died as the result of a longterm illness.

Prosecutors contended Manley was a master manipulator with no job and no money who managed to move in with Logan the second day after he met her. When Logan began pressuring him to move out, prosecutors alleged, Manley shot her in the head.

Defense attorneys said Logan died as a result of an accident and that Manley fell on her while struggling to take the gun away from a despondent Logan. The gun then went off.

In pursuing the death penalty, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Laurent told jurors Manley had an arrest record dating back to the age of 15.