Woman convicted of murder in brutal dumbbell attack, stabbing

A Clark County jury convicted a 31-year-old woman of first-degree murder Friday, rejecting her insanity defense in the brutal slaying of a man inside a northeast valley apartment last year.

Prosecutors said Elita “Gaby” Maldonado dropped a 40-pound dumbbell on William Sanford’s head while he slept and then stabbed him at least 38 times.

After about two hours of deliberation, the jury also convicted Maldonado of robbery. She faces a maximum term of life in prison without the possibility of parole at a sentencing hearing next month.

Maldonado had claimed that she killed Sanford, 49, because she heard the voices of her two daughters echoing in her head, saying that he had hurt them.

“The voices do not stop,” said defense attorney Norm Reed. “The screaming does not stop. The hurting of the children does not stop.”

Maldonado’s lawyers had asked the jury for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, pointing to a combination of methamphetamine use and a lifetime history of mental illness that amounted to “a disease or defect of the mind.”

“We’re trying to apply this legal standard — this common sense standard — to a crazy person,” Reed said. “And that’s hard.”

But prosecutors told jurors the defendant was high on meth after Sanford paid her for sex on the night of May 28, and Maldonado wanted to rob him so she could get more drugs. Sanford was stirred awake after being hit on the head, prosecutor Michael Staudaher said, and Maldonado decided “I’ve got to finish him.”

Her story to police about the voices of her children changed later when she spoke with two of her sisters. In about an hour of recorded conversations from jail, she never told them about the voices. Defense attorneys argued that she had been medicated at the time of the calls.

Instead, Maldonado said she killed Sanford because he was raping her. In interviews with psychologists, she gave other versions of what happened, prosecutors said.

After Sanford was killed, Maldonado placed a sheet over the window to hide her shadow. She cleaned herself up, got rid of her bloody clothes and carried a cardboard box to the trunk of Sanford’s car, in an attempt to make it appear as if she was moving out of the blood-splattered apartment. She took his keys, credit card and cell phones before driving off in his silver 2003 Cadillac and stopping at a nearby market where she smoked more meth.

She drove around until the car ran out of gas and then hopped a train she thought was headed to Phoenix.

She wound up in Wyoming, where she stole a pizza truck and crashed it, before Las Vegas police identified her as the suspect and tracked her down.

“Is that a woman who is looking for her children, suffering from this delusion?” prosecutor Michelle Sudano asked jurors during closing arguments. “She absolutely knew that what she was doing was legally wrong.”

Sanford lived nearly all of his life in the valley and was a union member for more than 20 years, helping set up conventions across Las Vegas, family members said. He had two grown daughters and two grandchildren.

During one of the phone calls to her sisters, Maldonado even appeared to imply that Sanford had offered to help get her off the streets.

“That’s exactly who he was,” said his brother Douglas Sanford. “That’s the type of heart he had.”

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