Defendant charged with killing 10-year-old, slashing blackjack dealer: ‘I’m a battered woman’
Brenda Stokes Wilson, who recently admitted to killing a 10-year-old girl and slashing a casino blackjack dealer before unsuccessfully trying to pull back on a plea, called herself a longtime victim of domestic violence.
“I am a battered woman,” she told a Review-Journal reporter this week. “I have a battered woman syndrome. I’m fighting that still today.”
The 53-year-old expected to spend the rest of her life in prison is speaking publicly for the first time since her arrest.
She did not deny her role in the slaying of 4-foot-tall, 102-pound Jade Morris or the Bellagio attack, but she refused to talk about the December 2012 crimes in advance of her formal sentencing next month.
In January, Stokes Wilson agreed to life behind bars without the possibility of parole on a count of first-degree murder. She also is expected to be ordered to serve an additional 51 years for attempted murder, first-degree kidnapping, burglary and mayhem, along with deadly weapons enhancements.
Prosecutors agreed to drop the death penalty only after Stokes Wilson agreed to a maximum sentence on each charge.
“I can’t speak to Brenda Stokes-Wilson’s unsubstantiated claims of abuse,” Assistant District Attorney Robert Daskas wrote in an email. “I am absolutely confident, however, in stating that the abuse Brenda Stokes now claims she suffered throughout her life pales in comparison to the abuse she inflicted on defenseless, 10-year-old Jade Morris in death.”
Jade’s body was found in a desert area of an undeveloped North Las Vegas neighborhood by a man walking a dog.
Stokes Wilson had dated Jade’s father, Philip Morris, and had a close relationship with the girl for several years.
Jade suffered 40 sharp-force wounds across her body from a large knife, according to a medical examiner. Some of her injuries — the most serious on her head, chest and abdomen — were so severe that she was likely unconscious within minutes.
Stokes Wilson had picked up the girl from the home of her mother, Tejuana Reeves, at 4:50 p.m. Dec. 21, 2012, saying they were going Christmas shopping.
Jade was wearing blue jeans, a blue “My Little Pony” T-shirt with a white shirt underneath, black shoes and a brown coat the last time her mother saw her.
Stokes Wilson said she would return the girl before 9 that night. By 10 p.m., Reeves started to grow very concerned. She called Stokes Wilson’s phone every hour through the night and sent repeated text messages.
In the morning, she phoned hospitals and went to the police station to file a missing person’s report.
The same evening Stokes Wilson kidnapped the girl, police said at the time, she approached a Bellagio blackjack table and began slashing the face of a dealer, 44-year-old Joyce Rhone. Stokes Wilson mistakenly believed Rhone had started dating Jade’s father, according to authorities.
In her half-hour conversation with a Review-Journal reporter, Stokes Wilson labled Rhone, a former friend and colleague of about seven years, as “a snitch” who was envious of her material possessions.
“She was one of the ones I told a lot of my business to,” Stokes Wilson said, adding that because she had confided things about Phillip Morris, “my very life was in jeopardy.”
Stokes Wilson said she “dated” or had an “affair” with several men in late 2012, but denied that she was “scorned” or trying to enact revenge on Jade’s father, who then lived in Montana.
She said she told Philip Morris she was suicidal.
“We were not really together,” Stokes Wilson said. “We were talking about reconciling only because he threatened that I could never really leave him and have anyone else.”
Morris testified in early 2013 that he talked with Stokes Wilson “every single solitary day.”
Her former lawyer, Special Public Defender David Schieck, acknowledged that Stokes Wilson had “a long life history that includes a number of circumstances that were traumatic to her.”
Schieck could not speak directly about Stokes Wilson’s defense but said that the battered woman syndrome is a “complicated legal principle that does not apply to all factual situations.”
Recently appointed defense attorney Christopher Oram — expected to appeal this week’s ruling from District Judge Kathleen Delaney rejecting Stokes Wilson’s attempt to withdraw her plea — said he plans to file a sentencing memo that includes “the difficulties she endured during her life.”
Stokes Wilson said she was pressured into pleading guilty. Her former lawyers testified this week that they believed she would receive the death penalty if she had gone to trial.
“I was coerced,” Stokes Wilson said. “There’s a lot of things they’re trying to sweep under the table, things they didn’t want to be exposed, they didn’t want to deal with … I want to expose some truth in the media between here and the time I’m sentenced.”
She deflected direct questions about Jade’s death or whether she felt remorseful.
“All that will be discussed at sentencing, and I’m sure you’ll be there,” Stokes Wilson said. “I’m just not going to discuss that today. I’m not going to self-incriminate myself by saying the wrong thing. I’m probably saying too much as it is already.”
Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker
