Lobato denies killing attacker

Kim Smith

Thursday, May 16, 2002 | 8:53 a.m.

Despite an intense grilling from a prosecutor, a 19-year-old Panaca woman steadfastly denied killing and sexually mutilating a Las Vegas homeless man last summer.

Kirstin Lobato told jurors Wednesday that when she described trying to cut off the penis of a potential rapist she was referring to a Memorial Day weekend incident and not an attack by Duran Bailey, 44.

"Duran Bailey never attacked me," Lobato told Deputy District Attorney William Kephart.

"That's your position now," Kephart said.

"That's always been my position," Lobato responded.

Prosecutors allege Lobato beat and stabbed Bailey to death sometime between 4:45 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. July 8 -- possibly after he demanded sex in exchange for drugs. They say that statements made to friends and police point to her guilt in his death.

Bailey's mutilated body was found behind a trash bin in the parking lot of a Nevada State Bank branch on West Flamingo Road. An autopsy showed he had been mutilated after he died.

Lobato was arrested 12 days later, when it was learned she had told a former teacher that she had cut off the penis of a man who had tried to attack her on West Flamingo Road.

Lobato told police the man tried to attack her while she was on a weeklong methamphetamine binge and she cut him with a butterfly knife she had in her skirt pocket.

Although the teenager told police the attack happened near the Budget Suites on Boulder Highway near Nellis Boulevard and Flamingo Road, police attributed the difference in locations to drugs and a lack of familiarity with Las Vegas.

On Wednesday Lobato said she was attacked at the Budget Suites over Memorial Day weekend and she was in Panaca from July 2 until July 9.

When she told police she left Las Vegas for Panaca on July 13, Lobato said, she neglected to say that she made two trips to Panaca after the May attack -- one on July 2 and one on July 13.

Jurors saw a phone bill that Lobato said shows she made five calls from Panaca to a friend in Las Vegas beginning at noon on July 8. She denied killing Bailey in the early morning hours and driving back to Panaca in time to make the first call.

Lobato also said that the four people who testified she told them she mutilated a man misunderstood her, saying she severed the penis, "not that I cut it off," Lobato told Kephart.

She told her attorney, Phil Kohn, she didn't think she was successful in severing the organ.

Lobato said she didn't report the May event because she once reported being raped and was "blown off" by police. Lobato told jurors she was molested at the age of 6 by her mother's boyfriend, raped at 13 by a former boyfriend and raped at 17 by her best friend's father.

As a result of the incidents, Lobato said she began using methamphetamine and marijuana at the age of 13.

The trial was to continue this morning before District Judge Valorie Vega.