Text messages lead police to suspect in month-old homicide
Las Vegas police used text messages to make an arrest last week in a month-old homicide.
Sarah Jean Collis, 32, was found dead in the southeast valley desert Oct. 1 by Bureau of Land Management officers. Loralee Lazenby, 34, now faces charges that include first-degree kidnapping and murder with a deadly weapon.
Witnesses told police they last saw Collis with Lazenby on Sept. 29, according to Lazenby’s arrest record. They were staying together in the same trailer.
Collis’ boyfriend told police he walked the women to a 7-Eleven near Nellis and Lake Mead boulevards early that morning. They were planning to meet Lazenby’s husband, Gerald Ice, 26. Lazenby said he had obtained money that she wanted.
Video surveillance from the 7-Eleven shows Collis in the store about 7:30 a.m. Dressed in black, she carried a grey Ed Hardy bag and had sunglasses pushed back on her head.
Ice, who was arrested and jailed on attempted murder charges in separate cases Oct. 6, called Lazenby on a cellphone the morning of Sept. 29, police said. Phone records revealed an exchange of text messages between the husband and wife. Before the women went to the store, police said, Lazenby sent messages to Ice saying “She won’t get up I have tryd bribeing her,” and “on our way in like ten min 7 11 nellis lake mead.”
Then shortly after noon, Lazenby sent this text message to Ice:
“Come get me now please shock wore off…im bout to have panic attack or something…need u right now bad.”
On Oct. 1, BLM officers found Collis dead in the desert near Sam Boyd Stadium. She was wearing the same clothes she wore in the 7-Eleven surveillance.
Collis was killed by a gunshot wound to the head, the Clark County coroner’s office reported.
Police said Ice told friends that he had murdered and dismembered Collis, but detectives later matched Lazenby to the text messages by her nickname, “mama butt.”
Lazenby is being held without bail and is set to appear in court on Wednesday.
Contact reporter Cassandra Taloma at ctaloma@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381.
