Story Archive

Small landlords face big risks

As complexes screen for felons, individual owners also advised to

Saturday, Aug. 30, 2008

Pity the poor landlords. No, not those who manage massive apartment complexes, but the little guys, the residential landlords, the grandmas and single moms and second-home owners who rent out a room or an investment property on the side.

Assault case takes shine off DNA testing

Certainty of evidence has come into question

Friday, Aug. 29, 2008

Recently, small chinks in the armor of DNA evidence have been starting to show, casting pinholes of harsh light on a science people like to think is infallible.

Gary Telgenhoff

A CLARK COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER, MUSICIAN

Monday, Aug. 25, 2008

Gary Telgenhoff is a dark human being. He’s also a doctor. The Clark County medical examiner does autopsies by day and writes morose heavy-metal music by night, as the front man of band Skinner Rat.

Bike saddle study: What sits on the ‘nose’ suffers

But few want seat that may prevent impotence

Friday, Aug. 22, 2008

The world is cruel to a bicycle cop.

Misdial casino, you may get Mr. Refund

Calls meant for Vegas-based company go to accountant accused of playing tricks

Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008

At least on the surface, this is a fight about a number: 7.

Mystery cat woman is on mission; what is it?

She prowls at night to help — and maybe more

Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008

The plan was to wait in the shadows until she showed up. And when she did, to signal a photographer to jump out and catch evidence of the crime: illegal trespassing with the intent to feed cats.

Rape still a crime where victim can share blame

State ‘contributory conduct’ rule used to deny financial assistance

Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008

Susan woke up with this guy all over her like an animal. By the time she realized what was happening, he had stopped. He let go of her shorts, looked at her and said, “I messed up real bad, didn’t I?” Then he told her to make him breakfast.

Metro turns up heat on metal thievery

Recycler raided; restrictions on the industry in works

Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008

Daily metal exchange rates are posted outside ABC Recycling on an erasable white board that explains just how much a scrap seller will get for whatever he drags in: clean aluminum, 65 cents a pound; dirty aluminum, 10 cents a pound; copper grades 1-5, $1.25 to $2.95 a pound, and the list goes on. It’s the Nasdaq of junk.

As economy drops off, so do robberies

Thank Metro Police, or supply and demand

Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008

The Taco Bandit’s reign is over. The robber pleaded guilty to holding up 10 Mexican restaurants. Now he’s spending at least 15 years in prison.

David Weddle

WRITER, “CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION”

Monday, Aug. 11, 2008

Rolodex in hand, writer David Weddle walked off the set of the hot science fiction show “Battlestar Galactica” last month and across the TV lot to his new gig, writing for “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” He was so nervous he broke a sweat.

Cops' answer to road hogs messy, mostly

Decade-old law aimed at aggressive drivers is rarely used because it’s tough to enforce

Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2008

Prepare yourself for some Las Vegas logic: Here, in a city certain its motorists are the worst, getting a ticket for aggressive driving is almost impossible. Not because it doesn’t happen, but because it’s hard to fit the bill.

Constables deliver bad news at their peril

Sunday, July 27, 2008

It’s like a sick sort of game show: What’s behind Door No. 1? Abandoned furniture? A man with a gun? A rabid bichon? A housewife wielding a frying pan?

When renter pays, owner doesn’t: You’re out, tenant

Sunday, July 27, 2008

The six senior citizens were strung to IV drips in a Henderson home converted into a geriatric care facility.

Basketball campers left in lurch

Check for equipment was cashed, but nothing, not even net, was delivered

Friday, July 25, 2008

Welcome to basketball camp at Innovations International Charter School of Nevada, where you will learn to dribble, pass and defend, all without ever playing a full-court game.

Eye-opener with a pitch

TV news program tries product placement as revenue source

Monday, July 21, 2008

Oooooooh, they’re calling out your name.

Would-be Vegas hitman’s story ends in Irish jail

Card dealer’s strategy: Double-cross clients

Sunday, July 20, 2008

We all nurse private ambitions. Essam Ahmed Eid, a 53-year-old Egyptian man living in Vegas and dealing poker at the Bellagio, dreamed of becoming a hit man.

Check this account: Invitation puts monkey in the middle at bank

Saturday, July 19, 2008

So, a guy and a spider monkey walked into a bank. The smaller of the two primates was wearing a diaper, with a hole cut out for its tail, which made the monkey’s 10-minute dash through Washington Mutual on Valle Verde Drive at Paseo Verde Parkway in Henderson on Thursday all the more amusing.

Polygamy refugee steps into storm over church

Henderson woman tells of abuse, becomes vocal critic of the sect

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Clyde Mackert and his wives must have put on their best faces for the flashbulb. This was Life magazine, after all, coming to photograph them canning corn, and singing hymns, and scrambling eggs for breakfast, and all they had to do was show the world polygamy isn’t bad.

No single vein fits all serial killers

Friday, July 11, 2008

The serial killer is so misunderstood.

Metro CSI truck packs gee-whiz stuff

Investigators’ tools range from hair spray to high tech, not to mention grisly

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Up until seven months ago, if there was a homicide somewhere in Clark County, Metro’s crime scene investigators would pile into an RV — the kind your grandparents dream of driving across the country, but a little more beat up — and head to the scene like it was some kind of creepy family trip, the cabinets stocked with body fluid test kits instead of hamburger buns

Kill your lawn. Artist gives old adage a water-conscious-in-’08 meaning

Statement that contradicts suburban ideal is for him a point of pride

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Robert Curry gave up. He got tired of drowning his lawn with water, then paying gardeners to groom it, then balancing his checkbook only to find it was warped by the weight of the $225 he spent monthly just to keep the grass alive.

Turnabout puts DA in hot seat in possible hit man conflict

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

David Roger sat solemn in a suit and a tie, hands folded before him, head pitched forward, waiting to play ball. Here he is, the district attorney of Clark County, and he’s sitting on the stand, getting grilled instead of doing the grilling.

Haunted by his prison job

Former guard compelled to write about it, and it’s not pretty

Monday, June 30, 2008

The inmates run this place. Not the staff. That’s the reality of it.

Sparks fly after court Taser demo for children

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Two months ago, a taser demonstration at District Court was supposed to be some kind of educational moment for the children of court employees. Since then, it has become a point of heated contention.

Metro Police to pitch new digs

Force envisions campus-style headquarters uniting departments, top brass

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Sheriff Doug Gillespie confirmed late Wednesday that Metro Police will propose building a headquarters in Las Vegas, consolidating for the first time many departments and functions spread across the valley in more than 60 locations, at a public meeting Monday.

To one man, Bellagio’s waters beckoned

Impact leaves him bleeding, with possible broken arm

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

It must have been a glorious swan dive: the bridge, the lapping blue below, the aghast audience, the drunken derring-do of it all — a Vegas legend born, and broken. Jumping head-first into lake of the fountains at the Bellagio is a dazzling mistake, a mistake someone made Friday.

Own a business? Be vigilant, thieves are lurking

Nevada’s corporate filing practices part of problem

Monday, June 2, 2008

Corporate identity theft — stealing a business out from under its owner — is the criminal cousin of classic identity theft. There are endless variations, but many involve stealing someone’s company by filing bogus paperwork. In Nevada, where we woo people to incorporate in our lax-tax, minimal-disclosure state, the problem is probably worse than elsewhere.

Flash! Stealing electricity is risky business

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Before the live wire carrying stolen electricity disappeared into the thief’s house, the line snaked past community mailboxes — putting moms, toddlers and everyone else in the neighborhood at risk of electrocution.

Bon appetit!

Prison inmates can't be tortured in America, but they can be served the behavioral management loaf

Monday, May 26, 2008

In the oven, a half-baked “institutional loaf” wafts something almost appetizing. Sweet, even. But not for long. When it’s done, when the lard stops bubbling up the sides of the bread pan and the top springs back firm on your finger, an institutional loaf looks and smells like vomit resurrected.

Slots quiet as Macau observes 3 minutes of silence

Memorial for earthquake victims may have cost up to $2 million, expert says

Thursday, May 22, 2008

For three minutes, Macau stood still. They held their dice, their chips and maybe their breath. They bowed their heads and stood in solemn rows. They clasped their hands, looked at their feet, and didn’t say a word. Not one word. For 180 seconds, all bets were off.

Officers are people, too

Policeman/author hopes to get prisoners to see cops in new light

Monday, May 12, 2008

So you’re sentenced to life in prison in the Nevada Department of Corrections. Your cellmate is a guy named Zeke who reeks. The guards caught you sneaking a spoon out of the cafeteria, so now they’re evil-eyeing you everywhere. You got in a fight with some freak in the yard, and now you’re locked down 23 hours a day, counting cockroaches like sheep before sleep. Randy Sutton has you right where he wants you. The Metro lieutenant just released his third book, a compilation of true stories about life on the police beat, written by officers across the country, and he wants you, prisoner, to read it. He wants you to see that police — you remember them, those people who put you behind bars — are human.

Transgender killer torn with guilt, searching still for identity

Life story riddled with abuse of alcohol, hidden tendencies

Thursday, May 8, 2008

The hairdresser who bleached Raven Navajo’s roots in jail wasn’t given much time or many tools, so the result was more mine shaft canary than blond — dingy yellow hair fried so thin it seemed to float on static electricity.

Prosecutors drop charges against Selimaj

Concern for children of slain ice cream truck driver cited; widower still may pursue suit

Saturday, May 3, 2008

All it took was one quiet court filing, a few papers slipped to a clerk Thursday afternoon, and the charges against Zyber Selimaj were dropped. The motion for dismissal is only a few pages long, but it may signal the Selimaj family’s move out of the courts and out of public consciousness.

We do caffeine, but not much hard stuff

‘Community urinalysis’ reveals we also ingest lots of nicotine, ephedrine but few illicit drugs

Monday, April 28, 2008

In Clark County, we take our coffee with cigarettes and ephedrine.

Chief defends cleared officer

Friday, April 18, 2008

Against his attorney’s advice, Henderson Police Chief Richard Perkins is visiting newspapers to talk about the shooting of the ice cream truck driver that has turned his department into a piñata for the past two months.

They’re strangers, and bedfellows

Seeking intimacy, diverse group gathers for Las Vegas’ first Cuddle Party

Thursday, April 17, 2008

A Cuddle Party is exactly what it sounds like. Adults getting together to cuddle. To sprawl on the floor and spoon in ratty sweats. To pile on one another like pound puppies. To satiate their “skin hunger.”

Shooting justified, inquest determines

Decision follows one hour of deliberation, two days of testimony

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Seven Henderson officers testified during the second day of the inquest. While each presented a slightly different version of events, their testimony was uniform on one point: a person wielding a knife and moving toward a police officer should be shot.

Haunting testimony, many firsts

Young sons describe mom’s killing on tape, and details police kept quiet are revealed

Friday, April 11, 2008

Arber Selimaj didn’t know how to spell his last name, and whispered most of his answers to a woman who, in a private room of a Henderson Police station, asked the 5-year-old boy what he remembered from the day he watched his mother die, and whether she had a knife — another word Arber didn’t know.

They saw Selimaj shot

Coroner’s inquest begins today in Henderson officer’s fatal shooting of woman

Thursday, April 10, 2008

When a courtroom fills this morning for the opening of a two-day coroner’s inquest into the Feb. 12 police slaying of a 42-year-old ice cream truck driver, 10 witnesses interviewed by an investigator working for the victim’s family will be wondering whether they’ll wind up on the witness stand.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Police guard trove of gangster monikers, often the only names by which suspects are known

Monday, April 7, 2008

Being little is big on the mean streets. Just ask Lil’ Capone, Lil’ Mizz, Lil’ Crook, Lil’ Crazy, Lil’ Ump, Lil’ Shiester, Lil’ Sweat, Lil’ Nutty, Lil’ Wee Wee, Lil’ C Rag, Lil’ Spit, Lil’ Mookie, Lil’ A, Lil’ B and Lil’s C through Z. This is just a small sampling, a lil’ sampling, really, of the thousands of nicknames Metro Police’s Gang Crimes Bureau keeps in its moniker file — a computer database of aka’s and street pseudonyms.

Juvenile sex offender laws struck down — for now

Sunday, April 6, 2008

If Judge William Voy’s courtroom were the major leagues, Friday’s constitutional challenge case would be an exhibition game. That’s how the judge explained it.

Witnesses say shooting by officer wasn't fair

Sunday, March 30, 2008

One is certain she saw a knife. Another says he watched an officer put his boot to her neck and hold it there. A third thinks the EMTs who responded to the officer-involved shooting were disturbed by how police handled the body. In the month and a half since a Henderson police officer fatally shot ice cream lady Deshira Selimaj, private investigators hired by the Albanian woman’s family have found and interviewed 10 witnesses who contradict the police department’s contention that Selimaj attacked a cop and thus had to be shot.

Juvenile sex offender laws muddy waters

DA, public defender take interpretation problems to Family Court

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The debate over Nevada’s juvenile sex offender laws landed in Family Court last week, where one thing about the controversial legislation quickly became clear: Nothing is clear at all. As it turns out, everybody was wrong about the new laws.

Bone-dry dreams of a body farm

Hope for a site in the desert to study decomposing corpses is dead, for now

Monday, March 24, 2008

When a coroner daydreams, it isn’t pretty. Mike Murphy has a regular morning routine: He spends an hour eating a breakfast sandwich and reading the paper in his pajamas before he changes into one of his sharp suits, drives to work in his black beast of a county car, parks in his special spot, and walks through a back door of a low building and into the lively world of Vegas’ dead.

Web sites offer advice to Ecstasy users, complicating cops’ fight against drug

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Connoisseurs take Ecstasy tablets the way wine aficionados sip reds — seriously and always with an opinion. And in this modern age, the Web-saavy can use Internet forums to share their opinions on their illegal purchases.

Club scene to get a p’s and q’s lesson

Law enforcement seminars a refresher course on rules

Monday, March 10, 2008

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Some Metro cops, DEA agents, Gaming Control officers and Strip nightclub owners walk into a room.

Meet the mysterious Roger Von Bergendorff

He filed for bankruptcy, had a history of health problems and kept a vial of ricin

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

He had some clothes, some cash and some vintage graphic art — and some $190,000 in debts.

Remember this face?

Computerized caricatures might jog witnesses’ memories better than sketches

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Composite sketches, those shaded pencil drawings of shadowy crime suspects plastered in post offices and police stations, are, as it turns out, practically useless. The solution, Frowd and fellow academics say, is caricatures.

Close-knit community offers comfort

Friday, Feb. 29, 2008

The funeral service for Deshira Selimaj was spare — a wooden casket facing folding chairs, a few wreaths of flowers and her remaining family: three boys and their father, their crying buried by a tinny recording of Islamic prayers.

News helicopter no-fly zone in shooting arouses suspicion

Saturday, Feb. 23, 2008

A fatal police shooting that seemed strange to some of the witnesses on the ground was also, it turns out, unusual from the air above.