More killers are dumping bodies near Boulder City

Monday, Nov. 3, 2003 | 11:15 a.m.

The widespread residential and commercial development of the once vast and pristine Las Vegas desert apparently has made it difficult for killers to find a decent secluded place to dump a body, local homicide experts say.

Boulder City Police say that is a key factor in the discoveries of six homicide victims in their jurisdiction this year compared to just one in the prior five years. Five of this year's homicides are believed to have been committed in other jurisdictions with the bodies taken to Boulder City, police say.

Boulder City residents have always taken pride in the fact that their town is different from the nearby Las Vegas Valley. They consider their city of 15,000 to be more family-oriented with small town values. To try and keep it that way casinos are banned, and the city limits growth.

For this relatively peaceful town, six homicides is a lot. In contrast consider that Metro Police for the last two years has had 12 homicides per 100,000 population. The investigations in Boulder City this year translate to 40 per 100,000 or more than triple that of Metro's jurisdiction per capita.

"With the growth of the Las Vegas Valley we are getting a splash-over because there are not enough remote places left to hide bodies in Las Vegas," Boulder City Police Detective Jeffrey Lomprey said.

"I absolutely agree with that assessment," said Metro Police Homicide Lt. Tom Monahan, whose detectives worked with Boulder City police to solve one of its multi-jurisdictional cases.

"We don't have the data to support (Lomprey's theory), but based on my 19 years here, I can say we definitely have fewer bodies dumped in the desert in Las Vegas now because we simply don't have as much desert as we used to have.

"If you drive along West Sahara Avenue or Charleston Boulevard you find Summerlin where there once was desert. It's urban sprawl."

And while Metro has 24 detectives, four sergeants and a lieutenant to investigate homicides, Boulder City has no one dedicated to homicide investigation full-time. The Boulder City Police Department does have one sergeant and two detectives who do other types of investigations in addition to homicides, and they're kept fairly busy with all kinds of different work because the whole Boulder city Police department consists of 29 officers and 12 reserves.

"We wear a number of hats, but we have the exact same training as Metro homicide detectives," said Lomprey, who also is a certified fire investigator. "We are forensically trained, and we become the homicide team when there is a dead body. Smaller agencies generally have cross-trained officers.

The three-man Boulder City part-time homicide team consists of Lomprey, Jerry Stone, a certified crime scene investigator, and Slade Griffin, who has 20 years police experience, and oversees the two. Lomprey said there are no plans to create a specific homicide unit in the wake of the recent number of killings.

"If this is the way it is going to be in the future with bodies dumped in our jurisdiction, it will pose a problem we will have to address," Lomprey said. "There have been a lot of homicides to investigate and a wide area to patrol with our limited resources."

Boulder City has been lucky so far that all but one of its homicides this year started in other jurisdictions. That gave Boulder City police plenty of outside help with the cases.

If a homicide occurs in one jurisdiction and boils over into another, either or both of the police departments whose jurisdictions were involved can participate in the investigation, Monahan explained.

That cooperation, Monahan said, can include either agency giving the case to the other, both agencies working on it in both jurisdictions together or each entity working within their own jurisdictions and later comparing findings.

Henderson Police have worked on some of the Boulder City cases because the homicides took place in Henderson. Curiously, though Henderson also has a good measure of undeveloped land, this year it hasn't been a dumping ground for homicides that occurred elsewhere.

"All eight of our homicides this year have occurred in Henderson," Officer Shane Lewis, the Henderson Police spokesman, said. "There is no rhyme or reason to it. The two years that we had our record of nine homicides were followed by years in which we had two or less homicides."

Boulder City residents also question whether what is happening locally is an anomaly.

"I think it's probably a fluke or a glitch in the statistics," said Steve Osborne, who for the last year and half has operated the Boulder Bowl, an eight-lane bowling center on California Avenue near City Hall.

"I'm from Texas where homicides are a daily thing so I may not be as outraged as longtime Boulder City residents. Still, regardless of those murders, I still love it here."

Wayne Goble, a longtime Boulder City resident who for 20 years has owned the Central Market on Arizona Street, said that while the statistic "is disturbing" he does not see it as a sign that crime in general is significantly increasing in Boulder City.

"I hadn't realized there were that many (homicides) this year," he said. "But there is nothing we can do to stop it.

"I don't think this is an indication that crime is on the rise in Boulder City because we are a pretty close-knit community. People are pretty much aware of what is going on in their neighborhoods."

The most recent of the record number of Boulder City homicide cases occurred on Sunday when a family riding all terrain vehicles found the body of a man in a shallow grave in the southwest part of the Eldorado Valley dry lake bed.

The Clark County Coroner's office has not yet been able to identify the remains that Lomprey said had been out in the desert 10 to 20 days, were partially decomposed and had been partially unearthed by wild animals.

The death has been classified as a homicide, though details of how the man may have been killed have not yet been divulged by investigators.

Lomprey said this slaying also appears to have occurred somewhere else with the body being taken to Boulder City. He said that whoever buried the victim lacked the knowledge of the terrain. He said it was likely that a local person would have buried the body differently based on greater knowledge of the area.

Lomprey also said that evidence left at the scene has made it possible for detectives to follow up several leads.

Here are the other homicides in Boulder City this year:

The last Boulder City homicide prior to this year was a man found beaten to death in a downtown alley in 1999. He was identified as Randy Elliot. There were no homicides in Boulder City in 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2002, Lomprey said.