‘Dateline’ takes an unvarnished look at Vegas crime

Kirk Baird

Friday, April 5, 2002 | 9:57 a.m.

When it comes to solving a murder case, there are usually three time frames.

"There are some where the suspect is caught at the scene and the case is solved immediately; some that take several months, like the Ted Binion case; and some, unfortunately, that remain forever unsolved," said Lt. Wayne Petersen, who spent five of his 22 1/2 years with Metro Police in charge of homicide.

When you are a network filming homicide detectives as they try to solve crimes for a TV special, the former and latter types of cases will not work. You need something in between.

So last spring when NBC worked out a deal with Metro to film its homicide detectives on the job, the network was hoping to find a case that would be wrapped up in a matter of weeks.

Life is seldom that easy, as NBC found.

The network's efforts, however, were worth it, judging from the "Dateline NBC" episode airing tonight at 9 on KVBC (Channel 3).

Titled "Death in the Desert," tonight's show devotes its entire hour to Las Vegas detectives Jeff Rosgen and Mark McNett, allowing them to narrate the story as they unravel clues in the murder case of Loretta Beechler.

The 49-year-old woman was found dead, the victim of strangulation, lying fully clothed in an undeveloped spot of land at 2312 Bledsoe Lane, near Nellis and Lake Mead boulevards.

The incident occcured on May 24 and Beechler had just moved to Las Vegas a few weeks before, to care for her ailing 73-year-old father, Kenneth Moore, who owned the property and lived in a small home nearby.

Moore spent most of his time in a wheelchair, and often required the use of an oxygen tank. At first glance, the elderly man is much too frail to be given any serious thought as a potential suspect in the murder case. Even the detectives initially tended to focus on other leads to the killer or killers.

But as the clues and circumstantial evidence begin stacking against Moore, the old adage, "it's the one you least suspect" becomes frighteningly real.

Although the Moore trial and subsequent conviction never received the type of media coverage of more high-profile homicides, such as Binion, watching "Death in the Desert" is proof almost any case can make for compelling television.

This is due, in large part, to the near unrestricted access NBC had to the Metro investigation.

Using small, hand-held cameras, the show's producers were able to trail the two detectives at almost every turn -- including filming them at home, as they spent time with their families or late nights at the kitchen table poring over clues to solve the case.

"NBC wanted to show the personality of the people who do these investigations, and the dedication of the detectives that are assigned to homicide investigations," said Petersen, who has a roughly two-minute appearance on the program. "Those investigators live with that case through the entire investigation. They're married to a case once assigned to it."

"Dateline" also uses its access wisely, showing, for example, a behind-the-scenes strategy session between the detectives and the District Attorney's office as they attempt to build a case that, even Petersen acknowledged, clearly lacked a smoking gun.

"It was really a circumstancial case," he said. "Not that we don't convict people of circumstance, we do that all the time. But it would have been a challenge for the District Attorney's office."

(On Jan. 17 Moore was sentenced to five years in prison, after a no-contest plea to voluntary manslaughter in December. He is serving his time at medium security High Desert State Prison and is eligible for parole in August 2003.)

Oddly enough, Petersen, who switched job titles and departments in November -- to administrative lieutenant in traffic -- has yet to see the "Death in the Desert" episode of "Dateline." In fact, he was not even aware of which case NBC was using for tonight's show, since the program's producers filmed several detectives and investigations over a period of many months.

"(The network was) looking for a case that had some appeal to a TV audience. They were looking for something that was intricate and took some time to solve and had some mystery or suspense," Petersen said.

Petersen did say that "Dateline" had returned to Las Vegas to film more investigations, in addition to the hours and hours of footage they have already recorded.

"Obviously there is a lot of interest by the public in police work and how we do things as evidenced by the number of police shows on TV," including the top-rated weekly CBS drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," which is also set in Las Vegas.

"I certainly think it's good that they see how police work is really done and it's not all Hollywood," he said. "The vast majority of police work can be mundane and boring and tedious, and it's not all like 'Adam 12,' where they solve 12 different cases in an hour program. Police work takes longer than that.

"Unfortunately, the public bases a great deal of their opinion of the police on what they see on TV."

In the case of tonight's "Dateline," the truth is better than fiction.

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