Jurors begin deliberating in Las Vegas firefighter’s murder trial

In the weeks leading up to Shauna Tiaffay's death, her husband bought hammers and knives and dark clothing with a homeless man.

Yet when police questioned George Tiaffay about who could have fatally bludgeoned his estranged wife, he never mentioned Noel "Greyhound" Stevens.

Prosecutors allege that Tiaffay paid Stevens to kill the 46-year-old mother in September 2012 after the Tiaffay marriage fell apart.

A jury of seven men and five women started deliberating Tuesday afternoon in the murder-for-hire trial of former Las Vegas firefighter George Tiaffay. The jurors are scheduled to resume deliberations Wednesday morning.

In closing arguments, prosecutors pointed to a failing marriage and a controlling husband who had filed for divorce nearly a year earlier in an attempt to control his wife. The Tiaffays communicated regularly as their divorce worked its way through the court system, but about two weeks before she was killed, Shauna Tiaffay told her husband that she was not likely to reconcile.

"Tempers didn't flare," prosecutor Pamela Weckerly said. "It wasn't emotional. It wasn't heated. It wasn't confrontational. The murder of Shauna Tiaffay was as cold and dispassionate as it could get."

The confessed hitman testified last week that George Tiaffay offered him $5,000, though he never received all of the money.

Stevens said he bludgeoned the Palms cocktail waitress with a hammer inside her Summerlin apartment as she arrived home from work in the early morning hours of Sept. 29, 2012.

"Noel Stevens used a hammer," prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said. "The person who used Noel Stevens is George Tiaffay."

Throughout the trial, defense lawyer Robert Langford has tried to cast Stevens as a psychotic liar, who suffered from hallucinations and heard voices that told him to kill.

"If you look at everything in this case that isn't out of the mouth of Noel Stevens, everything is an absolutely commonplace part of life or part of a divorce process," Langford said. Prosecutors "want to put their own spin on it."

Last week, jurors watched surveillance video from a Walmart that showed Stevens and George Tiaffay buying clothing, a knife and a hammer, though the tools were not those used in the slaying. Stevens said he made several dry runs before he killed Shauna Tiaffay, at one point burglarizing her apartment. He testified that during one of those dry runs, he bumped into police officers who confiscated what they took to be burglary tools. Stevens and the firefighter later bought another hammer and knife.

On Monday, a Metro homicide detective detailed the number of phone calls and text messages George Tiaffay exchanged with Stevens before and after the slaying.

"Is it possible that Noel Stevens somehow acted on his own and created all this evidence?" Weckerly said. "Every action he takes suggests from the evidence that there is someone else involved in this crime. These two communicate back and forth day after day after day in September like they're teenagers."

Langford pointed out that the context of those conversations and messages was unknown.

"The phone calls mean nothing," Langford told jurors in his closing argument.

Tiaffay, a former firefighter and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, now 43, faces eight counts, including murder, robbery, burglary and conspiracy. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Stevens has pleaded guilty to murder, burglary, robbery and conspiracy charges and is scheduled to be sentenced next week.

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker.