Family hears last words of victim before killing

Daniela Mohor

Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2001 | 9:44 a.m.

Beth Peters said she never liked the man her mother married.

The first time she met him was at the hospital, where her mother, Eldona Huston, was recuperating from two broken legs. The couple had been married just four months.

Although Fred Huston said he had accidentally run into her mother with his car, Peters never believed him.

That was four years ago. On Tuesday Peters, a Los Angeles resident, watched as Huston was bound over for trial on charges that he shot her mother to death on Sept. 24.

Huston, 81, will be arraigned Nov. 15 by District Judge Michael Douglas on an open murder charge.

"I don't like him; no one in the family likes him," Peters said after Huston's preliminary hearing at Goodsprings Justice Court. "But she loved him, she really loved him."

Police allege Huston shot his 80-year-old wife in the left eye in their Sandy Valley home while she was on the phone with a 911 operator.

A tape of the conversation, which Deputy District Attorney L.J. O'Neale played during the hearing, records the 20 minutes Eldona Huston spent on the phone with the 911 dispatcher before she was shot.

During the conversation, the woman was able to inform the dispatcher that her husband was pointing a gun at her and was threatening to kill her and himself.

"I'm not ready to die, and you aren't either," Eldona Huston said on the tape. "You're a fine person, Fred. Please don't do that."

When she wasn't speaking with the dispatcher, Eldona Huston tried to calm her husband, alternating between a reassuring demeanor and an irritated one.

Huston can be heard in the background. He apparently struck her with the gun on at least two occasions and at times threatened to squeeze the trigger. He also would begin a countdown, during which he begged his wife to say goodbye.

Seconds before the fatal shot, Eldona Huston, said "Ouch ... "

When asked by the dispatcher what happened, she replied, "He waived the gun at me."

Those were her last words.

As the sound of the gunshot coming from the tape recorder resonated throughout the courtroom, about a dozen of Eldona Huston's family members and friends emitted a collective gasp.

The tape ends with a conversation between the dispatcher and Huston, who told the dispatcher he had killed his wife.

Huston stayed on the line until police arrived.

Peters and her brother, Ray Campbell of North Las Vegas, hadn't heard the tape before Tuesday, but they said they were not surprised by their mother's composure.

"My mother was a strong woman, and when faced with a problem she tried to overcome it, " Peters said.

Sun reporter Kim Smith contributed to this story.