DA has next move in Gibbons assault case

Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006 | 6:57 a.m.

Metro Police were putting the finishing touches Wednesday on their investigation into a Las Vegas woman's claims that Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons assaulted her last month.

"Detectives are in the final stages of wrapping it up, and it will then be turned over to their chain of command for review," Deputy Chief Greg McCurdy said.

From there, McCurdy said, the evidence gathered by police will be given to the district attorney's office for a final decision on whether any criminal charges should be filed against Gibbons.

That handoff is expected to occur no later than next week, McCurdy said.

The investigation, which is focusing on possible misdemeanor battery charges, has been completed a month after Chrissy Mazzeo, a 32-year-old single mother and cocktail waitress, asked detectives to reopen the probe she once asked them to drop.

The alleged late-night incident occurred Oct. 13 at a Hughes Center parking garage across the street from McCormick & Schmick's restaurant, where Gibbons, his campaign consultant Sig Rogich, Mazzeo and three other women had been drinking.

Mazzeo told police after the encounter that Gibbons grabbed her arms inside the parking garage, threw her up against a wall and tried to force himself on her sexually.

But Gibbons, a retiring five-term Republican congressman who will be sworn in as governor in January, insists that no assault occurred. He contends that he was helping Mazzeo find her truck outside the parking garage when she slipped, and he grabbed her arms to break her fall.

Persistent reports coming out of the police department as the investigation winds down hold that detectives believe Mazzeo's allegations cannot be substantiated.

Mazzeo and Gibbons do not appear on garage surveillance tapes - initially said not to exist - that mysteriously surfaced 11 days after the encounter. And Mazzeo has given conflicting accounts of exactly where she was in the garage at the time of the alleged assault, which occurred about 10 p.m.

Top Metro officials believe the tapes are authentic. They show others, including Rogich, who had been drinking with Mazzeo and Gibbons that night, walking to their cars.

Detectives also were unable to find bar patrons at McCormick & Schmick's whom Mazzeo claimed were taking cell phone photos of Gibbons flirting with her while they were drinking.

Police are considering submitting their evidence to the district attorney's office without making a recommendation, sources close to the case said.

Typically, police recommend prosecution when they forward a case to the district attorney. But there are occasions when police acknowledge that they do not have a strong case.

If police do not make a recommendation in the Gibbons-Mazzeo matter, it will leave whether to file charges against the governor-elect up to District Attorney David Roger.

Roger said Wednesday he intends to review the police evidence himself.

"That's my job," Roger said. "I was elected to make this type of difficult decision."

Mazzeo first alerted police to her claim of being assaulted by Gibbons in three 911 calls between 10:23 p.m. and 11:14 p.m. on Oct. 13. She eventually gave a formal statement to detectives at 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 14.

The following afternoon Gibbons told Metro detectives he did not assault Mazzeo. Less than an hour later, after being informed that no videotapes existed inside the garage, Mazzeo told detectives she did not want to press criminal charges against someone as powerful as Gibbons. She did not, however, recant her allegations, which continued to haunt the Gibbons campaign in the closing weeks of the governor's race.

After Gibbons held a news conference the following week, at which he issued a strong public denial, Mazzeo leveled new allegations that the Gibbons camp - through telephone calls from her friend, Pennie Puhek, one of those drinking that night with Mazzeo and Gibbons - had tried to coerce her into dropping the charges and keeping silent as the election neared.

The next day Hughes Center security officers turned over surveillance tapes from cameras inside the parking garage.

Although the tapes did not show Mazzeo or Gibbons, experts interviewed by the Sun have questioned whether police would be able to authenticate the video footage, which had been out of police custody for 11 days.

After Mazzeo asked police to reopen the investigation, Puhek and Rogich were among those questioned for the first time by detectives, who also subpoenaed telephone records from everyone in the Gibbons drinking party that night. Gibbons also was interviewed for a second time, as was Mazzeo.

Puhek acknowledged in a brief interview with the Sun that she called Mazzeo several times in the days after the incident, but denied that she was attempting to broker Mazzeo's silence on behalf of the Gibbons campaign.

Despite political fallout from the investigation, Gibbons defeated his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Dina Titus, on Nov. 7.

Two days later Titus, who had stood silent on the assault allegations in the closing weeks of the campaign, called for an independent probe.

Saying the "credibility of the whole case is shot," Titus suggested that Sheriff Bill Young's connections to Gibbons and Rogich would raise questions about whether Metro could conduct an impartial investigation. Young had endorsed Gibbons days before the Oct. 13 incident, and Rogich also is one of the retiring sheriff's top political advisers.