Trial opens for ex-Las Vegas firefighter accused of hiring hitman to kill wife

Shauna Tiaffay told her husband that living apart would likely end their marriage.

"Once we live separate, I don't think there's any going back," she wrote in a text message.

Sixteen days later, she was dead, brutally beaten to death with a hammer in her Summerlin home.

Immediately after he received that text, George Tiaffay made at least 11 phone calls and sent one text message to a homeless man he had befriended, prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo told a jury Tuesday in front of a courtroom packed with Tiaffay family and friends, along with local and national media.

Authorities believe George Tiaffay, a 1994 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who started as a Las Vegas firefighter in 2002, hired the homeless man to kill his wife, a 46-year-old cocktail waitress at the Palms, in Sept. 2012.

The case is far from a whodunit, but the motive isn't quite clear. In January 2013, Noel "Greyhound" Stevens, told a judge that he used a hammer to beat Shauna Tiaffay to death and that George Tiaffay hired him to do it. The couple's relationship had been rocky since the fall of 2011, and George Tiaffay filed for divorce later that year. Shauna Tiaffay moved into her own apartment in April 2012.

"What really was the catalyst for the crime was when Mr. Tiaffay lost his influence over her," DiGiacomo said during opening statements of a trial expected to last three weeks.

Stevens, who has pleaded guilty to six charges, including first-degree murder, robbery and two counts each of burglary and conspiracy. He is still awaiting sentencing, and could take the witness stand for the prosecution later this week.

Defense lawyer Robert Langford asked jurors to question the validity of Stevens' testimony.

"You're going to hear all sorts of things that are going to cause you to have a reasonable doubt as to whether he is telling the truth about George Tiaffay," Langford said. Prosecutors are "going to want you to believe everything in the world about George Tiaffay, and absolutely nothing else that comes out of Noel Stevens's mouth. And they can't have it both ways."

Stevens testified to a grand jury that he hammered Shauna Tiaffay in the head 17 times as she returned home in the early morning hours of Sept. 29, 2012. She was still in her work uniform, covered by a white sweatshirt imprinted with the word "LOVE."

George Tiaffay and Stevens were linked to the crime by cellphone records that indicated the duo met a few hours after the killing, authorities have said. Investigators found store surveillance camera recordings of them buying a hammer, knife and gloves a few weeks before Shauna Tiaffay's death.

Prosecutors pointed to repeated text messages and phone calls between George Tiaffay and Stevens before and after the slaying. Tiaffay made sure to delete any of the texts from Stevens, according to the prosecutors.

Stevens eventually unfolded "layer upon layer" of details to the authorities, DiGiacomo said.

But the defense attorney argued that Stevens has mental health issues, and that Tiaffay's relationship with the homeless man was not criminal.

"That story that you just saw so artfully displayed is not the whole story," Langford said. "There are a lot of reasons not to put it that way."

George Tiaffay was with the couple's then-8-year-old daughter when they walked into the grisly scene at the Willowbrook Apartments, 2601 S. Pavilion Center Dr., near the intersection of Sahara Avenue and the Las Vegas Beltway. Shauna Tiaffay had been dead for hours by the time they arrived, and prosecutors allege that her husband knew it.

Her body was cold and stiff, and blood stained the carpet around her. Her right hand was broken, with the rings on her fingers smashed. A hole from a hammer blow to the side of her head was so deep paramedics initially thought she had been shot.

At the start of testimony, prosecutors played George Tiaffay's 911 call.

"I think I need to report a break-in and a murder," he said calmly. "My wife is on the floor, bloody. She's not moving."

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