Friday the 13th could be unlucky for slaying suspect

Kim Smith

Monday, May 13, 2002 | 8:46 a.m.

The fate of a Panaca woman accused of killing and sexually mutilating a Las Vegas homeless man may come down to this: There was only one Friday the 13th last year.

Jurors in the Kirsten Blaise Lobato case listened Friday to a 27-page statement the 19-year-old gave to police two weeks after Duran Bailey, 44, was found dead behind a trash bin off West Flamingo Road last July.

An autopsy revealed Bailey was beaten and stabbed to death July 8 and he was sexually mutilated after death.

Although Lobato now claims she was home in Panaca the night Bailey died, she told police July 26 that she slashed a man's penis when the man tried to sexually assault her.

In the days leading up to July 8, Lobato said, she was on a weeklong methamphetamine binge and on the night of the attack she had danced nude to get drug money.

After the attack, Lobato said she stayed in Las Vegas for a while before deciding to go home to Panaca, which is 165 miles north of Las Vegas in Lincoln County.

"I came home on Friday the 13th to get clean," Lobato said. "I mean I stayed away from it for like two weeks while I was down there (in Las Vegas), but it was hard 'cause I knew where to go to get it. I had to come home."

The fact that the only Friday the 13th in 2001 fell in July is crucial to prosecutors because Lobato's attorneys told jurors Lobato was attacked over Memorial Day weekend and it is that attack she spoke of to police.

Jurors also heard on Friday that Lobato allegedly bragged about killing Bailey.

Convicted robber Korinda Martin told jurors that Lobato shared details of the slaying with her and other Clark County Detention Center inmates on eight to 10 occasions.

"She said that she was there for murder and that she'd cut a man's penis off and shoved it down his throat," Martin said. "She said that she was worried about blood being found in her car. She said that she had hit the man in the face and his teeth had come out."

Although Special Public Defender Phil Kohn showed her newspaper articles providing details of the crime, Martin insisted Lobato had ripped all of the newspaper articles pertaining to her case out of the paper before the other inmates had a chance to read them.

Martin acknowledged that she was desperate to get out of the jail at the time that she went to prosecutors with her story, but denied that she would lie. She said she came forward because Lobato boasted she was going to put on a "poor me act" and claim Bailey had tried to rape her.

"I didn't feel that was right," Martin said. "I'm sure somewhere out there he had a family."

Now in prison serving three to 14 years, Martin said she hopes prosecutors will write a letter to the parole board on her behalf.