Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs is, after all, only the latest high-profile fugitive apprehended in the Las Vegas Valley.
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The international criminal career of Doris Payne ended here last year. Payne, a thief for 50 of her 75 years, had stolen jewels in Paris, Monaco and Rome before she was nabbed by police at the Neiman Marcus store in the Fashion Show mall on the Strip.
About a year before Payne was arrested, Las Vegas police arrested the "Ohio Sniper," Charles McCoy, wanted for more than a dozen shootings along Ohio highways. McCoy was arrested after a local man saw him at the Stardust on the Strip. McCoy was arrested when he was going to his room at the Budget Suites motel nearby.
Buford Furrow had killed a postal worker and fired a barrage of about 70 bullets at a Los Angeles-area Jewish community center, wounding 5- and 6-year-old boys, before surrendering at the FBI's office in Las Vegas in August 1999.
But according to state archivist Guy Rocha, the most notorious fugitives ever caught in Las Vegas remain the ones arrested here in 1959: Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. They had killed the Clutter family in Kansas and later were profiled in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood."
"In my opinion, nothing exceeds Smith and Hickock. That story had captured the nation," Rocha said. "What made it big, in my opinion, was the kind of high-profile violent crime in the '50s versus high-profile violent crime today."
The slayings of the Clutter family in a small Midwest town shocked the nation in a way that many crimes nowadays do not, Rocha said.
Fidencio Rivera, deputy chief U.S. marshal for Las Vegas, said many fugitives are caught in Las Vegas, but they just don't have the marquee appeal of Jeffs, who was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.
Many of the lesser publicized arrests are of fugitives who are much more violent than Jeffs, however.
"We have seen that the greater portion of violent fugitives are coming in from out of state," said Rivera.
Rivera said many of the fugitives he is seeing are coming from Southern California. Because it's close to Las Vegas, he said, many think of Las Vegas as a distant suburb of Los Angeles. But he also said fugitives might think they can commit crimes in Las Vegas because they aren't known here.
"They come here for the opportunity," he said.
In April, for example, Jesus Alex Olivas, wanted in connection with a homicide in California, was arrested in Las Vegas after he shot a man in the arm at a local Kmart.
In March, 36-year-old Jason Scott Kelly, wanted in Utah on charges of distributing Ecstasy and methamphetamine in that state, was arrested in Henderson.
That arrest led to the discovery of marijuana growing operations in three houses in the Las Vegas Valley.
In January, Las Vegas police shot and killed 46-year-old Santana Baca, wanted in connection with a triple shooting in New Mexico.
Notorious or infamous people also have come to Las Vegas for noncriminal opportunities.
Jennifer Wilbanks, the "runaway bride" who was the subject of a national search after disappearing from Georgia last year, spent a night in Las Vegas before she was found in New Mexico.
And the 9/11 hijackers led by Mohamed Atta were in Las Vegas just before the 2001 attacks.
Then there have been high-profile cases that wind up having connections to Las Vegas in other ways, such as that of Andrew Cunanan. Cunanan was already on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list as a suspect in a handful of killings before he claimed his most famous victim, fashion designer Gianni Versace, in Miami. The national manhunt for Cunanan ended in 1997 when he committed suicide on a Florida houseboat that belonged to a Las Vegas businessman.
