Las Vegas firefighter spoke with wife, then called hitman
Shauna Tiaffay spoke to her husband for three minutes the night before she died.
George Tiaffay hung up with his wife and, within a minute, dialed the number of a homeless man who said he was hired to kill the 46-year-old Palms waitress.
The two were in the process of divorcing, living apart, and she had recently told him that their relationship could likely not be repaired.
Within nine hours, she was dead, bludgeoned with a hammer inside her Summerlin apartment as she arrived home from work in the early morning hours of Sept. 29, 2012.
As George Tiaffay's murder-for-hire trial wound toward a close Monday, Metro homicide detective Clifford Mogg detailed phone records between the husband and wife, along with calls the defendant made to confessed hitman Noel Stevens in the hours before and after the slaying.
Prosecutors said the 43-year-old former Las Vegas firefighter, graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and high school valedictorian had been friends for years with the homeless man, who had a violent past.
In the month of the slaying, George Tiaffay exchanged 87 phone calls and sent 26 text messages to Stevens. That was more than twice as much as the two corresponded at any point that year.
On the night before the murder, Tiaffay and Stevens exchanged five phone calls, the last a call from Stevens to Tiaffay at 9:19 p.m. on Sept. 28, 2012, the detective testified.
Stevens admitted to breaking into Shauna Tiaffay's apartment, waiting for her to arrive home from an overnight shift, and hitting her repeatedly over the head with a hammer. Throughout the trial, defense lawyer Robert Langford has attempted to cast Stevens as a psychotic liar who killed without persuasion.
George Tiaffay found his wife's body surrounded by blood that morning, as he brought their 8-year-old daughter to the apartment. Prosecutors said he knew what he would find.
Stevens testified last week that the ex-fireman offered $5,000 for the killing, though he only received $600. Stevens has pleaded guilty to murder, burglary, robbery and conspiracy charges and is slated to be sentenced next month.
Less than two weeks after Shauna Tiaffay died, investigators found a partially written note inside her husband's home, according to Mogg.
"I, George Tiaffay, the sole surviving parent of Madison Tiaffay, want to make it known that should anything unfortunate happen to me, take care of my daughter Madison Tiaffay," the note read.
Before his arrest, George Tiaffay slammed his white Ford F-150 pickup truck into a concrete retaining wall at 80 miles-per-hour, surviving the crash because he was wore his seatbelt.
Prosecutors rested their case Monday afternoon, and the defense attorney called one witness: Tiaffay's sister, Maria McGrew.
McGrew's testimony was brief, describing a childhood on a small California chicken ranch she shared with her younger brother and three other siblings. McGrew said her brother ran the ranch as a boy after their father died. Later in life, George Tiaffay worked construction jobs overseas for the army before moving to Chicago and then Las Vegas.
"In all the years that you've known George, have you ever known him to be a violent person?" Langford asked.
"Never," she said, "ever ever."
Tiaffay faces life in prison on murder, robbery, burglary and conspiracy charges.
Closing arguments are slated to begin Tuesday, and jurors could start deliberating Tiaffay's fate in the afternoon.
Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker
