Jury deliberates Las Vegas pimp’s alleged torture of woman forced into prostitution
The Las Vegas pimp forced a teenager into prostitution and tortured her for months, prosecutor said, leaving scars that she will carry for the rest of her life.
On Friday afternoon, after hearing a week of testimony, including two days that she spent detailing horrific abuse, a Clark County jury began deliberating 16 felony charges against Robert Sharpe III, 30, that could keep him behind bars until he dies.
Sharpe was first arrested in September 2014, three months after Autumn Richards, then 18, wandered into University Medical Center with a liver laceration, a spleen laceration, a renal laceration, fractured jaw, fractured skull, acute rib fractures, fractured vertebrae, a burned right foot, a body riddled with bruises and a broken finger that would later require amputation.
She eventually told police Sharpe persuaded her to become his prostitute after meeting her at a bus stop. She was headed out of town, to escape a troubled family life, and he invited her to party with him.
After he put her to work on the Strip, he beat her if she did not follow his rules, Richards testified this week.
He used his hands and feet, a metal pole, twisted hanger wire and a sock stuffed with oranges.
He would turn up the volume on his stereo, replaying the same song over and over, singing along, laughing, to drown out the sound of her screams, of the thumps of his fists on her body, of a metal pole cracking her bones, of wire cutting her flesh.
In the last days she spent at his North Las Vegas home, he forced her to sleep in his garage because of her rank, infectious wounds. He gave her a jug of water, which she had to refill with a hose in the backyard, the only place she was allowed to rinse off. He fed her cereal or a ham sandwich every other day.
“She wanted out,” prosecutor Elizabeth Mercer said during closing arguments Friday, “and he wouldn’t let her out.”
There were no clocks in the house, and he took her cellphone when she wasn’t on the streets. Mostly, she didn’t know what day it was. When she was allowed to call her family — maybe once a week — he would be in the same room, monitoring her conversation.
Defense lawyer Dan Winder argued that Richards “was already in this game” before she met Sharpe, and that she could have left him “anytime she wanted.”
He pointed to Richards’ family struggles before meeting Sharpe.
“There’s a lot of facts in dispute,” Winder said.
Throughout the trial, defense attorneys tried to prove a theory that “some other dude did it.” They suggested that another pimp, known only by the nickname “Slim,” could have been the abuser.
Richards escaped only after Sharpe tried to sell her to another pimp, prosecutors said. But the woman was nearly dead, so Sharpe left her near a Wendy’s restaurant across from University Medical Center.
Prosecutors said Sharpe forced the woman to rehearse and memorize a story for her to tell doctors and police. It took almost two months before she could summon enough courage to tell authorities that Sharpe had tortured her. Winder tried to use her initial statements to police to poke holes in her testimony.
He also said police should have done a better job trying to track down the other man.
“We don’t know who that dude is,” Winder said. “That’s why we want to know where Slim is.”
The jury is expected to resume deliberating the charges against Sharpe, which include kidnapping, sex trafficking and assault. If convicted, he could be sent to prison for life.
Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker
