Las Vegas man gets life in prison for 2015 fatal stabbing
A Las Vegas man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend in front of her daughter in 2015 was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“This was a horrific crime,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Fleck told jurors before they decided 50-year-old Leonard Woods’ penalty. “That is the cold, hard reality of what happened in this case.”
The prosecutor said Josie Jones died in “one of the most brutal, paninful, dispicable ways.”
The same panel found Woods guilty Monday of one count of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, two counts of taking an image of another person’s private area and one count of open gross lewdness.
Woods fatally stabbed Jones, 41, in front of her then-15-year-old daughter outside a Walgreens on Aug. 5, 2015, prosecutors said.
Woods represented himself at trial and argued that he had nothing to do with Jones’ death.
On Wednesday, he asked jurors to find “any possible leniency still in your heart.”
“I would like to think that some day, if at all possible, I could go back out there and be a help to some of these wayward youth,” he said, “to be a stand-up man, to be a pillar of the community, so things like this won’t happen.”
Jones was stabbed 16 times in her chest, neck and stomach.
After the stabbing, Woods turned himself in to police. He told officers he had been involved in an “incident” at the Walgreens.
Woods argued at trial that the stabber seen in surveillance video from the Walgreens at Tropicana Avenue and Decatur Boulevard was not him. But prosecutors said Woods had a motive to kill Jones: He went to jail after she reported previous threats to police, then she moved across town to hide from him.
Woods had previously told Jones that he would kill her and her children and burn down their house if she left him, prosecutors said.
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