Man found guilty in slaying of elderly Las Vegas woman

Erica D. Johnson

Thursday, April 10, 2003 | 9:02 a.m.

Jurors in District Court returned a guilty verdict Wednesday in the capital murder trial of a man charged in the killing of an elderly Las Vegas woman nearly four years ago.

Anthony Dotson, 44, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the December 1999 killing of Doris Bair, 79, in her home in the 1400 block of Bracken Avenue near 15th Street and Oakey Boulevard.

The same jurors will decide during the penalty phase of the case whether Dotson should be put to death. The penalty phase was expected to get under way today.

Prosecutors will argue for the death penalty and plan to call Bair's family members and neighbors to testify, Chief Deputy District Attorney David Schwartz said.

Jurors will also see videotaped testimony from two other elderly women Dotson was convicted of robbing and beating in California in 1983, Schwartz said.

Lorna Stevens, Bair's sister, said she plans to take the stand during the penalty phase and tell jurors how angry she feels toward her sister's killer.

"I'm going to unload," Stevens said. "I had to go through six weeks of grief counseling. It's just pure anger."

Stevens, of Lancaster, Texas, said Bair's death has taken a toll on the entire family. Bair's other sister, Inez Lehman, died in Colorado within a year of Bair's death.

"She just grieved herself to death," she said. "She had ulcers and she wouldn't eat."

But Deputy Special Public Defender Daren Richards said he and Deputy Special Public Defender Alzora Jackson will do their best to persuade jurors to spare Dotson's life.

"We anticipate a real fight in the penalty phase," Richards said. "We'll do everything we can to save Mr. Dotson's life."

During the weeklong trial before District Judge Michael Cherry, prosecutors alleged Dotson entered Bair's home intending to rob Bair and ended up beating her to death in the kitchen.

They claimed Dotson also assaulted and carjacked 90-year-old Kathryn Waldman in the parking lot of University Medical Center five days later.

Jurors heard a taped statement in which Dotson confessed both crimes to police and admitted to pawning Bair's belongings at a downtown pawnshop.

Dotson said he never intended kill Bair and meant only to rob her when he entered her home through an open door.

Defense attorneys didn't call any witnesses in the case.

H.S. Stevens, Bair's brother-in-law, identified Bair's beaten body at the morgue.

He described Bair as "feisty," and said that Bair's death has taken its toll on the entire family.

"This has been the most traumatic thing any of us have ever gone through," he said. "To lose someone you love is hard enough. But to lose them under these brutal circumstances is even worse."