Man accused of keeping bodies in storage unit pleads not guilty

A 52-year-old man pleaded not guilty Thursday to killing an elderly couple whose bodies had been stuffed in trash bins at a Las Vegas storage facility for 10 years.

Robert Dixon Dunn is accused of killing Eleanor and Joaquin Sierra in 2003 and writing more than 100 checks — spending upwards of $200,000 — in the couple’s name long after they were dead.

Dunn faces two counts of murder, two counts of robbery and 11 counts of theft in the deaths. Prosecutors have said they intend to seek the death penalty against him.

Clark County District Judge Michelle Leavitt set a trial date for October 2016.

Authorities found the couple’s remains in an air-conditioned unit at All Storage at the Lakes, 2949 Lake East Dr. The last time anyone saw them alive was 2003, prosecutors said. Joaquin Sierra would have been 97 and Eleanor Sierra 93 when their bodies were discovered.

In an attempt to mask the smell of decomposition, Dunn had poured cat litter inside the wax-sealed trash bins, which were wrapped in duct tape, court transcripts say. He stacked boxes, books and furniture in the front of the unit.

For years, prosecutors said, Dunn even used stolen checks from the Sierras to pay for the storage unit.

Dunn had moved around in the more than 10 years before he was arrested, living in Pennsylvania, New York and California.

The west valley storage unit was originally rented under the name of his mother, Beverly Dunn, who died in 2005 at Sunrise Hospital after complications from diabetes.

Using the alias Robert Bligh and the social security number of a child, a police report says, he married a woman named Joy Ike in Las Vegas in 2008. Prosecutors said that marriage may not have been legal because Dunn used fictitious information.

He even told his wife about the Sierras’ bodies, saying they were his “rich aunt and uncle,” who had killed themselves by taking prescription medications, according to a police report.

Dunn threatened his wife on several occassions, according to police, and told her “he knew about the laws of the spousal privilege. … He would never divorce her because he was worried about the information he had confided in her.”

Ike had been to the storage unit and did not see the trash bins.

Prosecutor David Stanton has called Dunn a “prolific grifter,” who stole from other elderly people in the past decade.

Some of them are also dead.

In August 2013, during the last days of his life, Mark Joseph Taylor cashed out thousands of dollars in gold, wrote checks and signed over a vehicle to Dunn, prosecutors said. He had met Dunn about a year before.

Dunn was jailed in California on charges of stealing from his brother, a California lawyer, when Las Vegas police first confronted him about the Sierras.

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