Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Mazzeo wants case reopened

Amid questions over the authenticity of just-discovered video surveillance tapes from the night Chrissy Mazzeo alleges Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons assaulted her, Mazzeo has decided to ask authorities to reopen their investigation.

The tapes, which surfaced over the weekend, two weeks after the Oct. 13 incident outside a Hughes Center restaurant, purportedly do not show either Mazzeo or Gibbons in the parking structure where she alleges he assaulted her.

"I thought Rose Mary Woods died last year," said Richard Wright, Mazzeo's attorney, referring to President Richard M. Nixon's White House secretary, who claimed that she accidentally erased 18 1/2 minutes of Oval Office audio tapes - tapes many believed could have implicated Nixon in the Watergate scandal.

"If the police have tapes that mysteriously appeared and there is nothing at all on the tapes involving Chrissy and the congressman - whether an assault or Chrissy tripping and the congressman catching her - they clearly have the wrong tapes," Wright added.

Questions raised Sunday over the tapes' timing and content solidified Mazzeo's determination to see the investigation - halted at her request because, she says, of concern over publicly tangling with a powerful figure like Gibbons - reopened.

"She's going forward with it 100 percent," Wright said late Sunday. "It's the only way she knows how to get the truth out... She knows what happened and will cooperate as she has said over and over in the investigation."

Wright said he plans to speak with Clark County District Attorney David Roger today to arrange for Mazzeo, a 32-year-old single mother and cocktail waitress, to be re-interviewed by investigators.

The surfacing of the tapes - two weeks after police reported being told by a security guard the night of the encounter that there were no recordings - is the latest bizarre twist in a politically charged case riddled with discrepancies.

"I have questions about how these tapes could have mysteriously appeared when two weeks ago Metro Police, according to the sheriff, investigated this more thoroughly than any other similar case and concluded that there were no tapes," Wright said.

At a news conference Thursday Sheriff Bill Young urged Mazzeo to "bring it on" and talk to police about the possibility of reopening the investigation into her allegation that Gibbons assaulted her and tried to force himself on her inside the parking structure following an evening of drinking at the nearby McCormick & Schmick's restaurant.

Gibbons and Mazzeo were among six people - a group also including top Gibbons advisor Sig Rogich and three other women - who were drinking together in the restaurant's bar prior to the incident.

Young conceded at the news conference that officers made only a minimal effort to find the tapes after the incident.

But what Young did not tell reporters was that police had obtained tapes from that Oct. 13 evening just before the news conference.

No one in local law enforcement, however, had reviewed the tapes before Young and Roger met with reporters, Undersheriff Doug Gillespie said Sunday.

Sources close to the case said the nearly 14 hours of tapes turned over to police do not show Gibbons and Mazzeo inside the five-story parking structure.

Beyond what they do or don't show, there are a number of other key questions about the tapes, including whether they were time-stamped and provide a continuous, uninterrupted view or time-lapse footage.

The tapes, sources said, were turned over by Kirk Lenhard, a Las Vegas attorney representing Crescent Real Estate Equities, the Texas-based real estate investment company that owns and manages Hughes Center. Lenhard could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Police reports show that the night of the incident, a Metro patrol officer contacted a Hughes Center security officer who said that while video cameras monitored the parking structure, the cameras were not recording at the time of the incident, which occurred about 10 p.m.

Police made no further effort to find the tapes, and the next morning Mazzeo told detectives that she did not want to take on a high-profile public figure like Gibbons. She told reporters last week that she felt threatened and pressured into dropping the case by the Gibbons camp, a charge the Gibbons camp strongly denied.

Attorney Don Campbell, who represents Gibbons, did not return calls Sunday.

Harold L. Collins, a Los Angeles lawyer and friend of Mazzeo, called for an analysis of the authenticity of the tapes and what they were capable of recording.

"Have they been altered? Are they legitimate? Can they verify the time and the date these tapes were made?" Collins asked.

Gillespie, who said he expected to be briefed about what's on the tapes today, said officers would investigate why they were told there were no recordings the night of the incident.

He also offered a new version Sunday of the possible explanation.

"The security guard out there was not aware that they do record those tapes," Gillespie said.

Both Young and Roger declined comment.

Las Vegas defense lawyer Charles E. Kelly said the sudden appearance of the tapes "raises more questions than it answers."

"The history behind why these tapes took so long to come forward is intriguing in itself," said Kelly, a former federal prosecutor with no ties to either side of the case. "If you believe her side of the story, this permits the imagination to run wild.

"You don't know who to believe or what to believe. It's like peeling an onion, one layer at a time."

Gibbons and Mazzeo have given different versions of events to police and the media regarding exactly where the incident occurred, which makes the discovery of the tapes all the more important if Mazzeo's claim that it occurred inside the garage is true.

Gibbons told police during his Oct. 14 statement that Mazzeo tripped and almost fell, causing him to catch her and stand her up, "right at the entrance of the parking structure." He has denied entering the garage.

Mazzeo, however, told police that she distinctly remembered walking down steps and into the parking structure before being physically accosted and sexually threatened by the congressman.

In one of three 911 calls that she made that night, Mazzeo said three times she hoped that police would discover videotapes from the garage - because they could only bolster her story.

At a news conference last week, Wright said police told Mazzeo on the night of the incident that they would soon have the tapes within their possession. But later that day, as police interviewed her for a second time, Wright said officers told Mazzeo that there were no videotapes, "and it will be his word against your word."

Soon after, Mazzeo told police that she had decided against pressing charges.

On Oct. 14, when two Metro detectives canvassed an area including the five-story garage, they found one camera in the southeast area of the first floor of the garage but could not locate any other exterior cameras in the area, they wrote in their reports. The reports make no mention of additional cameras inside the garage.

There are 11 cameras inside the structure, the Sun has found, including one directly at the bottom of the staircase that Mazzeo most likely was referring to, at the southern corner of the structure off Hughes Center Drive. That camera faces the garage and would appear to capture any pedestrian coming or leaving from the staircase.

Farther into the garage heading north, another overhead camera is aimed at an elevator. But the camera is far enough back from the elevator that it appears capable of capturing images off to its side.

If Mazzeo's version of the incident is accurate, at least one of those two cameras - perhaps both - should have captured her and Gibbons.

Robert Clavier, the director of security at the Hughes Center, did not return calls to his home and office Sunday. He has declined comment in the past, instead referring calls to Crescent spokeswoman Jennifer Terrell, who did not return a call to her office.

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