Court effectively ends murder case v. man

Kim Smith

Thursday, March 22, 2001 | 11:19 a.m.

A Nevada Supreme Court decision has dealt a death blow to the George Warner arson and murder case after 12 years of legal wrangling.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger announced Wednesday that the Supreme Court declined to review District Judge Jeffrey Sobel's decision to exclude certain key evidence.

Without that evidence, Roger said the chances of proving Warner's guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" would be slim. As a result, the district attorney's office dismissed the charges against Warner.

Warner's attorney, John Watkins, was delighted with the decision.

"I'm extremely happy they looked at the case and realized that it is one that should not be prosecuted," Watkins said.

Warner, now 63, was arrested in August 1989 and charged with first-degree arson and murder in connection with the death of his wife, Carol Ann Warner.

Prosecutors believe Warner, at the time a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper, poured more than a gallon of gasoline on his fifth wife as she slept nude in a chair in their mobile home. He then set her ablaze.

Watkins has suggested the fire was an accident, possibly caused by a family pet chewing through the cord of a lamp.

The case has been dismissed repeatedly by district judges on both procedural and evidentiary issues, but prosecutors were always able to have the case reinstated after appealing to the Nevada Supreme Court.

There have been other problems with the case throughout, Roger said.

An arson investigator prepared two reports on the fire, one saying it was an accident, the other saying it was arson.

In addition, debris samples from the fire were lost, Roger said. As a result, prosecutors may not have been able to prove that a flammable liquid was used. Moreover, police didn't seal off the alleged crime scene until the victim died 15 days after the fire. The scene could have been contaminated.

The age of the case has also proven to be a problem in recent years, Roger said. Two of the state's key witnesses are now 86 and 80.

The final blow to the case came this week, when the state Supreme Court decided not to look at Sobel's decision to exclude the fact that another of Warner's wives barely escaped a mobile home fire in 1981.