Ex-GOP official, friend indicted in dual slayings

By Matt Pordum

Thursday, June 30, 2005 | 9:50 a.m.

The former treasurer of the Clark County Republican Party and his friend were indicted by a grand jury on Tuesday in the stabbing deaths of his ex-wife and her father last August.

Certified public accountant John Douglas Chartier, 36, and his friend and data entry clerk, David Lee Wilcox, 42, are scheduled for arraignment before District Judge David Wall on July 6.

Both face two counts of murder with use of a deadly weapon and one count of conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of 43-year-old Rachel Bernat and her 65-year-old father, Carlos Aragon.

Prosecutors said the case will be sent to the district attorney's office death penalty review committee to determine if Chartier and Wilcox will face the death penalty.

Chartier and Wilcox remain in custody at the Clark County Detention Center on no bail.

The victims were killed about 4:15 a.m. on Aug. 18. Police found Bernat and her father stabbed to death in the driveway of their home in the 5800 block of Willard Street near Boulder Highway and Tropicana Avenue. Both were barefoot and wearing pajamas, police said.

Autopsies showed Aragon had been stabbed twice and slashed once. Bernat had been stabbed 14 times -- with most of the wounds in the left chest -- and slashed 11 times.

Chartier had been engaged in a custody dispute with Bernat, according to police records, and he had allegedly threatened to kill her. Chartier and Wilcox were arrested after investigators discovered that blood found at the crime scene matched Wilcox's DNA.

The medical examiner said he felt the attack suggested "personalized rage and/ or overkill by Bernat's attackers," the police report says.

Ezekiel Chartier, the 4-year-old boy at the center of the custody battle, is now living with relatives in Southern California, acquaintances said. Chartier had been given full custody after Bernat's death.