Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

DOUBLE SLAYING: Witness places murder suspect

Woman tells of encounters at apartment

Juanita Curry points to Flowers in court. Curry said she encountered the suspect on the day two of her neighbors were slain. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Norman Keith Flowers, center, suspected of raping and killing two women on the same day in the same apartment complex, appears Monday in Las Vegas Justice Court between his attorneys, Scott Coffee, left, and Joseph Abood. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

A Las Vegas woman described Monday how a man suspected of raping and strangling two women in her neighborhood showed up on her doorstep the morning of the crimes, asked to use her phone, then tried to kiss her.

"He said, 'Well, you are kind of cute,' " Juanita Curry quoted Norman Keith Flowers, 31, as telling her on her front doorstep in May.

"I said 'I'm too old, I don't do stuff like that'... and he stopped, turned back and tried to kiss me," Curry said.

"I was disgusted," she said, adding, "He gave me the creeps."

At the time of the encounter with Flowers, police were already at the Silver Springs apartment complex on Russell Road, investigating the death of one of Curry's neighbors, Marilee Coote, 45. She was raped, and Flowers' DNA has been linked to her slaying.

Hours after Coote's body was found, Rena Gonzales, 24, was found dead in an apartment across the parking lot from Curry's apartment in the same complex. Gonzales was sexually assaulted and strangled with a telephone cord.

Flowers, a Nevada parolee, is charged with both slayings.

At Flowers' preliminary hearing in the courtroom of Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Tony Abbatangelo on Monday, Curry said she had briefly met Flowers through Flowers' girlfriend, a neighbor of Curry's.

The girlfriend had asked Flowers to help Curry move her stereo into her apartment.

She said on the morning of the slayings, she noticed a fire truck and ambulance at the apartment complex, then Flowers knocked at her door.

Flowers mentioned the fact he had helped her before with the stereo, and Curry opened the door.

"He was kind to me," Curry said. "As a Christian, I was kind back."

Flowers, saying he was trying to get a hold of his girlfriend, used Curry's phone.

He soon started to leave Curry's apartment, then tried to kiss her, but Curry resisted the advance.

"I may be single, but I'm not desperate," Curry said.

"We didn't have that kind of relationship," Curry said. "He used the phone."

Flowers proceeded to return to Curry's apartment on at least four more occasions, asking to use the phone.

Curry allowed him to do so, handing the phone to him from a window. But on a final occasion, Curry allowed him to use the bathroom of the apartment while she waited outside.

She said Flowers soon approached her and "asked me if I could show him the light switch in the bathroom."

Curry refused to go back in her apartment with Flowers.

"I wasn't going in there. ... I didn't feel comfortable," she said.

Defense attorneys Joseph Abood and Scott Coffee with the Clark County Public Defender's Office have said there is nothing connecting their client to Gonzales' death. Unidentified DNA was found at the Gonzales crime scene.

Regarding the death of Coote and Flowers' DNA at the crime scene, they have said that possibly Coote and Flowers were in a relationship and that Coote died during consensual but dangerous sexual practices.

In her testimony Monday, Curry said that on at least two occasions when she saw Flowers leaving her apartment, he walked directly to the entryway of Gonzales' apartment.

Las Vegas police homicide Detective Don Tremel said to find two victims dead on the same day in the same apartment complex is highly unusual.

"This is a first time for me," the investigator said.

At the time of the crime, Flowers recently had been paroled in Nevada on charges of burglary, first-degree arson and robbery.