Witnesses in conflict on Lobato mutilation story

Kim Smith

Friday, May 10, 2002 | 9:50 a.m.

A Panaca man told jurors Thursday he overheard Kirstin Blaise Lobato tell his girlfriend she mutilated a man who tried to attack her. The girlfriend, however, said Lobato never told her that.

Lobato is on trial in connection with the July 8 slaying of Duran Bailey, a 44-year-old homeless man who was beaten and stabbed to death. An autopsy revealed Bailey had been sexually mutilated after death.

Lobato, 19, was arrested 12 days after Bailey's body was found when police learned she had told a former teacher about severing the penis of a man who had tried to attack her in Las Vegas.

Upon her arrest, Lobato told police a similar story.

The teenager is now claiming, however, that she was in Panaca on July 8. The small town is 165 miles north of Las Vegas in Lincoln County.

Lobato's attorneys told jurors during opening statements Wednesday their client was actually attacked by someone other than Bailey in May. It was then, they said, that Lobato fought back with a knife.

Paul Brown, a friend of the Lobato family, said he overheard Lobato speaking with his girlfriend, Michele Austria, around July 13.

"She said that she was attacked by a man and she defended herself with a knife," Brown said. "She said she reached down and cut off his penis."

Brown said he let the comment "slide" because he'd often heard Lobato exaggerate.

Brown took the stand immediately after Austria, who denied Lobato said anything about mutilating a man.

Despite telling police last year that Lobato confessed to "slashing" a man's penis during an attack, Austria said Lobato never said that.

"I don't remember that conversation happening," Austria said.

"Is it that it did not happen or that you can not recall that conversation?" asked Deputy District Attorney Sandra DiGiacomo.

"It did not happen," Austria said testily.

Austria told DiGiacomo she couldn't remember when she and Lobato had the conversation about the attack. She told Deputy Special Public Defender Gloria Navarro, however, that the conversation was before Bailey died.

Also testifying Thursday was Clark County Chief Medical Examiner Lary Simms, who provided jurors graphic details of Bailey's numerous wounds.

Simms told Special Public Defender Phil Kohn one wouldn't expect a woman to participate in a sexual mutilation.

"This type of case is traditionally male-on-male," Simms said. "In the literature there is usually a homosexual connotation to it."