Police say man confessed to friend about east Las Vegas killing

Las Vegas police said Andrew Klophaus confessed to a friend that he killed the man whose body was found in a vacant desert lot in east Las Vegas on Monday.

Officers responded to the area after a woman called 911 to report a dead body wrapped in blankets off Nellis Boulevard, just north of Vegas Valley Drive, according to Klophaus’ arrest report. When they arrived, they found a body on cardboard, wrapped in blankets with “apparent blunt force trauma to the left ear and temple area.”

Police learned the man went by the name Rusty, and he was “tentatively identified as Joshua Pyzer,” though the Clark County coroner’s office has not officially identified him.

Officers asked nearby homeless people if they knew anyone named Rusty. A woman named Sherri Washington told them that her friend, “white Andrew,” later identified as Andrew Klophaus, had asked her for an alibi on Saturday because police would be looking for him.

Klophaus told Washington that he had gotten into a fight with Rusty and “it went too far,” the report said. When Washington asked if Rusty was dead, she said Klophaus nodded.

Washington told police that on Sunday her friend Teresa Jordan approached her and “said Rusty’s face was smashed in and that he was dead.”

Klophaus, 33, was taken into custody Sunday and booked into the Clark County Detention Center on unrelated charges. Officers interviewed him, and he told them he had done heroin with Rusty roughly a dozen times but didn’t know anything about his death.

When detectives searched Klophaus’ property, they found a shirt with blood on it, the report said. This and Washington’s testimony led them to rebook him on a murder charge.

His next court appearance is scheduled for Thursday morning.

Contact Alexis Egeland at aegeland@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0335. Follow @alexis_egeland on Twitter.