Eight years after hotel maid’s death, anyone with clue remains silent

On the morning Essie Oten Reed was shot, she rose before dawn as usual and dressed for work as a housekeeper at Circus Circus. She had held the job 14 years and supported her family through good times and bad on a maid's wages. That was October 2000.

She left her house on George Place a few minutes after 5 a.m. and walked a block or so to the bus stop near D and Paul streets in the heart of her poor Westside neighborhood. The 57-year-old native of Columbia, La., was known and liked by her neighbors.

As she waited for the bus that would take her downtown and south to the Strip, a young man on a bicycle approached her and demanded money. He menaced her with a small-caliber pistol while she attempted to meet his demands for $10.

Essie was barely 5 feet tall and defenseless. As she fumbled with her purse, the man shot her in the head. The bullet exited at her right ear.

Instead of riding away with the purse, the assailant dragged her behind a Paul Street duplex and attempted to rape her. Failing that, he left her to die.

Her life slipping away, she managed to stand and walk back to her house, where she dialed 9-1-1 and identified herself as Mrs. Reed.

"Will you send the police? I been shot and robbed."

"What happened?" the operator asked.

"I was at the bus stop and some young man or something shot me in my right side of my ear," she said.

Police and paramedics arrived at her door a few minutes later, and she was transported to University Medical Center, where she gave police a brief statement before she fell into a coma.

On Christmas Eve 2000, Essie died.

• • •

Just last week I received a letter from reader Jocelyn Spiers, who never met Essie but was touched by the sadness of her murder. Spiers clipped the three small Review-Journal articles about the woman, including her four-paragraph obituary.

"I'm probably going to start to cry when I tell you this," Spiers said softly. "I was reading the newspaper, and it just caught my eye. I followed it in the newspaper thinking I may see someone caught. I cut the articles out and kept them. Every once in a while I'd run across the articles in my papers and wonder whether they ever caught the person who killed her.

"It's just such a very sad story. Right before my husband and I moved here, my brother-in-law was shot and killed for no reason. This type of story affects me a lot."

• • •

The murder of Essie Oten Reed?

"Of course I remember it," Metro Homicide Bureau detective Barry Jensen said. "I use the term high-risk lifestyle. It fits most of the victims that we have. But not her. She wasn't working the streets, selling or buying dope, or in a violent relationship. She was a lady who went to work every day. The neighbors we talked to all liked her. She would go to work rain or shine. She was at the bus stop every day. And it's important to remember she was somebody's mom."

On Oct. 10, 2000, Jensen and detective Sheila Huggins were assigned to Metro's sexual assault detail when they drew the call. A few months later when he moved to Homicide, Jensen inherited the case that lacked willing witnesses and incriminating physical evidence.

A bullet fragment was recovered from a .25-caliber gun, the kind of cheap pistol common in street crime.

"What really struck me is how haunting the phone call is," said Huggins, who is now retired. "It struck me as so incredibly sad because some terrible, violent ass comes along and takes her whole life away from her. All she's doing is working and being a decent human being. It really, really did bother me."

More than eight years have passed. Timid neighborhood boys and girls have become men and women. There's a chance someone who was afraid to speak up in 2000 will feel a pang of conscience and muster the courage to help police rekindle the case.

If we do not value the innocent life of this hard-working hotel maid, what does it say about us?

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.