Question of location Chrissy Mazzeo said she was assaulted by then-gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons in the Hughes Center parking garage. Abutting that garage is the Marriott parking garage, which is the structure Gibbons said he walked Mazzeo to. Some have speculated Mazzeo got the two garages confused in her interviews with police.
Graphic by Mike Johnson.
Forrest Darby talks to a reporter in his Las Vegas home Tuesday. Darby, a retired electrician, suggested in a letter to Chrissy Mazzeo and her attorneys that perhaps she had identified the wrong garage as the site of the alleged attack by Jim Gibbons. Photo by K.M. Cannon.
Chrissy Mazzeo said she was assaulted by then-gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons in a parking garage. But is it possible she identified the wrong garage?
When asked by police which garage she was assaulted in, Mazzeo repeatedly identified the Hughes Center garage directly across the street from McCormick & Schmick's restaurant. Later surveillance video from that garage failed to support her allegation.
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Attorney Richard Wright acknowledged this week it was possible that his client, a 32-year-old cocktail waitress and single mother, simply got confused and incorrectly identified a similar, adjacent parking garage.
"That is a plausible, possible explanation," Wright said. If Mazzeo had identified the wrong garage, it might explain why the videotape didn't corroborate her story of what occurred the night of Oct. 13. The adjacent garage does not have video cameras.
According to police reports, the question was raised months ago by a volunteer for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dina Titus, who at the time was seeking to discredit Republican nominee Gibbons, who was elected governor Nov. 7. Forrest Darby, a retired electrician and self-described liberal, suggested in a letter to Mazzeo and her attorneys that perhaps she had identified the wrong garage.
In the letter later obtained by police, Darby suggested the incident in question happened at the smaller Marriott hotel parking garage right next to the Hughes Center garage.
This was the garage Gibbons said he'd walked Mazzeo to that evening, though it was not initially apparent that Gibbons and Mazzeo were talking about different garages.
Gibbons' attorney, Don Campbell, rejected out of hand the mistaken-garage theory.
"This, for whatever reason, was fantasy," Campbell said, referring to Mazzeo's account of the incident. "How can you combat fantasy?"
Gibbons refused to grant an interview with the Review-Journal last week to answer specific questions about the case. But on Thursday, he made some brief comments on the matter, saying he believes the accusations against him were motivated by politics.
"It went from holding her wrist to help her out to a point where her lawyers were accusing me of attempted murder," Gibbons said. "Hopefully, it is not the new standard of how we deal with political races in the future. ... If we have accepted this as the standard, then no one will go into politics."
The governor's spokesman, Brent Boynton, said Gibbons wants to move on.
"I think he's said all that he's going to say about this case," Boynton said. "He has been completely open and forthcoming. He gave the complete report to police, to the district attorney, the investigators, and it's no longer an issue for Jim Gibbons. He's focused on the years ahead."
There are two parking garages across Hughes Center Drive from McCormick & Schmick's. One of the parking garages is the Hughes Center garage, a five-story structure that has both reserved parking and restaurant parking. It's equipped with a high-tech video surveillance system, and to enter it from the restaurant requires walking essentially a straight line across Hughes Center Drive to the entryway of the structure.
Next to the Hughes Center parking garage is a smaller, two-story garage belonging to the Marriott Residence Inn, the hotel at which Gibbons was staying that night. At a glance, the abutting garages can appear to be one structure .
On the night of Oct. 13, Gibbons and his campaign adviser, Sig Rogich, took refuge from a rainy Las Vegas night in the crowded McCormick & Schmick's. They drank wine with a group of women, including Mazzeo. After leaving the restaurant, Mazzeo called 911 with the claim that Gibbons had pinned her to the wall of the Hughes Center parking garage and threatened to rape her.
The next day, Mazzeo withdrew her complaint, saying she didn't want to be involved in a media circus. She later reiterated the complaint, prompting an extensive Las Vegas police investigation that cleared Gibbons last week.
When Gibbons was first questioned by police on the night of the incident, the interview took place at the Marriott, where he was staying. Gibbons said after drinking with a group of people, including Mazzeo, he encountered Mazzeo outside the restaurant. He agreed to help her look for her truck in the restaurant parking lot. The two walked through the McCormick & Schmick's restaurant parking lot but could not find the truck.
According to Gibbons, Mazzeo then said she believed her vehicle was parked across the street, and Gibbons said he walked the woman across Hughes Center Drive. This would have taken the two in the direction of the two parking structures.
Gibbons said he walked her toward a parking structure. "I presumed that her car was in the structure right out here, that's back here," Gibbons said from his room at the Marriott when interviewed by police.
During a subsequent news conference, Gibbons specified he had walked Mazzeo to the edge of the Marriott garage. Still, confusion remained as to which garage Gibbons was talking about.
Last week, when the police investigative summary on the case was released, documents showed that during a second interview of Gibbons, police presented the governor with a map and asked him to document where he walked with Mazzeo. Gibbons gave the same account as before -- that he walked Mazzeo through the restaurant parking lot, then across the street to the Marriott Residence Inn structure.
"As they neared the two-story parking structure for the hotel, Mazzeo tripped and Gibbons caught her," police said.
Also during his second interview with police, the married Gibbons said he spent 15 minutes helping Mazzeo search for her truck. Gibbons said the two parted ways at approximately 10:15 p.m. But detectives had already checked the computerized records from Gibbons' hotel room, and it showed he didn't enter his hotel room until 10:47 p.m. To explain the discrepancy, Gibbons said that he'd lost his hotel key and had spent time looking for it.
"When questioned about the discrepancy in time, Gibbons said he remembered attempting to open the rear gate to the hotel," police said. "However, the gate wouldn't open. He then walked around to the front of the hotel and realized he didn't have his key. He thought he may have dropped the key card. Gibbons said he retraced his steps back to the rear of the hotel and found his key lying on the ground. Gibbons said he didn't know how long it took him to locate his room key."
No explanation has been given as to why Gibbons never mentioned this to police during his first interview. But Campbell said Gibbons had relayed the information about the missing key to him and a private investigator early on in the case.
Mazzeo, meanwhile, offered a different account as to the pair's actions that night, one that has them ending up not in the Marriott Center garage but the Hughes Center garage.
She said during her 911 calls reporting the incident that the parking structure had cameras, and the incident occurred near an elevator. This would be consistent with the interior of the Hughes Center garage but not the Marriott garage, which has no cameras and no elevator.
At a news conference, Mazzeo said she saw cameras in the garage.
"I saw the cameras," Mazzeo said. "They were right above us."
Police videotaped walkthroughs of Mazzeo's account that night, and she repeatedly headed directly to the Hughes garage without police prodding.
"Mazzeo identified the Hughes Center parking structure for the second time," police said in reports. "Mazzeo never mentioned the parking structure at the Marriott. Detectives didn't influence Mazzeo in any way. Mazzeo led detectives to the Hughes Center parking structure and this is documented on video."
When district attorney's office investigator Mike Karstedt did yet another interview with Mazzeo, she again headed straight for the Hughes Center garage, then repeatedly changed her account as to the exact location of the actual assault.
Karstedt's reports do not indicate Mazzeo ever pointed to the Marriott garage.
There were several other problems with Mazzeo's account. Mazzeo said she'd gone to the nearby La Quinta hotel to place a call after the assault, but video surveillance didn't show her there.
The path she said she'd taken when she fled the garage would have taken her past several businesses that were open, yet she didn't stop for help.
"Inconsistencies in Mazzeo's version of the events during the video/audio walk-thru and her interview are of a concern to detectives," police wrote.
But Wright said confusion could be at the root of the problem.
"I didn't walk the garages with her, but my colleague, Karen (Winckler) did, both with Metro (Las Vegas police) and belatedly and with the district attorney's office," Wright said.
"It was clear to Karen that she (Mazzeo) could not place where she was."
