Extortion attempt keys arrest

In February 2007, at the tail end of a chaotic NBA All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas, a shooting outside the Minxx Gentlemen's Club and Lounge paralyzed a bouncer and injured two others. As the accused Minxx shooter awaits trial, the Review-Journal, in a three-part series, revisits the crime and explores the ups and downs of the police investigation that followed the shooting. Through the use of interviews, witness statements, police notes and other materials from the investigation, the newspaper reconstructs the events that eventually led authorities to the man they believe opened fire at the Minxx.

The man charged with shooting and badly wounding three people at the Minxx nightclub in February 2007 might have eluded capture but for his apparent attempt to cash in on the crime.

For months, police focused their investigation on football player Adam "Pacman" Jones and a group with him at the club the night of the incident; it seemed likely that a racially charged fight between Jones and a bouncer inside the club had spilled over to the parking lot, where the shooting took place.

That bouncer was one of the victims in the NBA All-Star Weekend shooting. Another bouncer was also shot, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. The third shooting victim was a female club patron.

Jones and some members of his entourage were questioned after the shooting, but none provided much useful information.

After an initial interview with police, Jones had stopped cooperating with authorities.

With the investigation at a standstill by summer 2007, police arrested Jones and two others on felony charges for the fight inside the club before the shooting. Around this same time, Jones was slapped with a suspension for the 2007 NFL season.

Perhaps it was his desire to play football again. Or maybe he feared going to prison. Still another possibility is he simply wanted to tell the truth.

Whatever the reason, at a moment when his freedom and career appeared in jeopardy, Jones made a big play. It wasn't an electrifying punt return or a game saving interception, but rather an admission that he hadn't been honest with police.

At a September 2007 meeting with Las Vegas police and prosecutors, Jones came clean.

He told of a brief encounter with a stranger outside the Minxx right before the shooting. According to Jones, the man appeared out of nowhere and told him, "Don't worry about it. Get out of here."

Jones said he ignored the man and didn't think again about the conversation until someone -- presumably the same man -- later contacted him and a friend demanding payment for the shooting.

At the two-hour meeting in Las Vegas, Jones said he could identify the man who approached him in the parking lot and who he saw running away from the Minxx after shots were fired.

So why hadn't he told police any of this before?

"'Cause I was so nervous," Jones told the law enforcement officials. "And at that point, I was thinking everybody was tryin' to put everything on me. I was just nervous."

Those in the room were skeptical of Jones' story. It not only clashed with what he told them months earlier, it just seemed too far-fetched.

But it was a lead, nonetheless, and those had been scarce in recent months.

So off they went in search of the stranger from the Minxx parking lot.

Meanwhile, Clark County prosecutors began preparing a plea agreement that would keep Jones out of jail.

PAY ME NOW

An alleged extortion plot was at the heart of Jones' new version of events.

Phone calls to Atlanta, dozens of them, started coming to Jones and his childhood friend, Christopher Davis, about a week after the incident at the Minxx Gentlemen's Club and Lounge, Jones told police.

The caller identified himself only as "P" and was adamant about getting paid for "handling the thing out in Vegas." The money request fluctuated from a few thousand dollars all the way up to $100,000.

"Handling the what out in Vegas?" Davis, who received most of the calls, asked the caller.

"The situation with Pac," came the answer.

Jones and Davis told the man they didn't know what he was talking about. But the calls kept coming.

After a while, another man contacted Davis on behalf of "P." Both Jones and Davis knew this caller. A lot of people in Atlanta did. And when Edward "Slugga" Morris started making similar demands for money, the two men got scared.

Morris, a member of the infamous International Robbing Crew gang, was later tied to seven Atlanta-area murders. Already convicted of one killing, Morris is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.

But in spring 2007, he was on the streets and making repeated calls to Christopher Davis.

Morris expected Jones to give both him and "P" cash for the Las Vegas shooting.

His demands became increasingly ominous.

"There were threats about killing us," Davis later told police.

Davis and Jones knew Morris wasn't the type to bluff, so Davis made two wire transfers totaling $3,800 to a woman in Seattle associated with "P." Davis then personally dropped off $10,000 of Jones' money for Morris behind some bushes at a Chick-fil-A.

It was a peculiar sequence of events, considering that Jones was seen hanging out with Morris several months later at a suburban Atlanta nightclub. On that night, another fight led to another shooting, and Jones and Morris were both named as suspects. No one was ever charged in the shooting, however.

When Las Vegas police visited with Davis in October 2007, they had a lot of questions.

What was the relationship between Jones and Slugga Morris? Who was the mystery caller who hinted he was the Minxx gunman? And what was the caller's relationship to Morris?

Davis gave the detectives some advice: "If I was tryin' to figure out what this whole thing's about, know who I would talk to? Slugga."

That interview, though it might have cleared up a few things, never took place.

Instead, Las Vegas police found someone else to help them. She was dancing right in their own backyard.

A WAY OUT

Sheena Saltz was using the stage name "Candy" when she got too close to an undercover cop at a Las Vegas strip club. Next thing she knew she was being whisked out of the club in the middle of the night.

But instead of going to jail, she ended up in a room where Las Vegas police detectives Kirk Jordan and Fred Merrick ripped into her.

They showed her receipts of two money orders sent to her from Atlanta. Unfazed, she told them she picked up the money for her boyfriend, a man named Arvin Edwards. This wasn't the first time she had done that. She never asked him where the money was coming from or what it was for.

The detectives believed they now had a name for "P": Arvin Edwards.

Was it possible the pieces of Jones' story would fit together?

Saltz said Edwards was originally from New Orleans and had been badly wounded in a shooting incident there several years before.

Now Jordan and Merrick were getting somewhere, but how far they got depended on Saltz.

They offered to help her with charges she faced in Washington state for allegedly bringing the drug Ecstasy over the Canadian border. They warned that she might be charged with extortion if she withheld information from them.

The tactic worked.

In tears, Saltz told the detectives she and Edwards, whose nickname was "Goldie" or "G," were in Las Vegas over NBA All-Star Weekend.

So Arvin Edwards went by "G," which could be misunderstood as "P," the name the mystery caller used on the phone.

Saltz said she knew nothing about Edwards' involvement in a shooting, however. In fact, she had never seen him carry a gun.

Her opinion of him was low by this point. She called him a "lowlife," a "jackass," and assorted other names for dragging her into this mess.

Jordan and Merrick asked if Saltz would be willing to wear a wire to collect additional evidence against Edwards.

She said she wouldn't feel safe doing that.

"Find out for me what happened (at the Minxx), and I'll do everything I can to get you help," Merrick said. "I'm not being mean to you. I'm giving you a way out."

The drug charge against Saltz in Whatcom County, Wash., was later amended down. She spent 90 days in jail there.

PACMAN'S DEAL

Saltz gave police Edwards' name and enough information about him to suggest he might be the Minxx shooter. Now it was up to Jones to make the case solid.

Edwards' telephone records, according to police, confirmed he had called Jones in the weeks after the Minxx shooting.

Next, Jordan took Jones up on his offer to try to identify Edwards in a lineup.

In November 2007, at the law office of Jones' Tennessee attorney, Worrick Robinson, Jones was shown a group of photographs. But Jones failed to pick out Edwards.

A valet who was working at the Minxx the night of the shooting, however, later picked Edwards out of a similar lineup.

"I am about 50 to 60 percent sure that would be the person that did the shooting," David Devine told police.

Jones had better luck identifying Edwards a few months later in a physical lineup in Yakima, Wash., where Edwards was in custody on a gross misdemeanor assault charge unrelated to the Minxx shooting.

Two things distinguish Edwards from most people: a tattoo of the word "GANGSTA" on his neck and a right arm shriveled by a 2002 shooting in New Orleans.

"I already know who it is," Jones blurted out as the six would-be suspects were still entering the room.

Jones said he based his identification of Edwards on the neck tattoo, which wasn't visible in the earlier photo lineup.

Two people, including Jones, had identified Edwards in lineups. Saltz and two California Highway Patrol officers gave information suggesting Edwards was in Las Vegas over NBA All-Star Weekend. And most important, it appeared Edwards extorted money from Jones after the Minxx shooting.

But Edwards is not the person that Minxx shooting victim Tommy Urbanski positively identified as the shooter in July 2007, based on surveillance video from inside the club. Police never figured out who that person is.

Edwards was arrested on three counts of attempted murder and other felony charges. In August 2008, he was indicted on those charges and held on $2 million bail. He hasn't been charged with any crimes stemming from his alleged attempt to extort Jones.

Prosecutors offered Jones a plea deal in exchange for his cooperation against Edwards.

The plea deal with Jones: Two felony charges of coercion were dropped. He pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct, a gross misdemeanor. He will avoid jail time in return for testifying against Edwards at trial.

Robert Reid and Sadia Morrison, who also were charged in connection with the fight inside the Minxx, both pleaded no contest to the charges against them. Both got probation. Morrison fell to her death from a New York City rooftop seven months after her plea; no foul play was suspected.

An investigation that started in Las Vegas and continued in Atlanta had finally born fruit in the Pacific Northwest.

With the plea deals, Jones went from main suspect in the Minxx shooting to the star witness against the accused shooter.

ALLEGATIONS DENIED

So who is the man set to stand trial for the Minxx shooting?

Though police believe Arvin Edwards simply happened upon Jones in the club parking lot, they also suggest he has ties to a larger criminal organization.

That's where the Atlanta-based International Robbing Crew and Slugga Morris re-enter the picture.

Edwards and Morris, police say, were friends from their days in New Orleans. Both were displaced by Hurricane Katrina in fall 2005, Morris to Atlanta and Edwards to Seattle. Edwards said he moved to Seattle to be closer to his brother, who lives in British Columbia.

It is unclear whether Morris was in Las Vegas at the time of the Minxx shooting, but police believe they conspired to extort money from Jones after the shooting.

According to police, Edwards is not only a friend of convicted murderer Morris, but he's also a man capable of spontaneous acts of violence such as the Minxx shooting.

Edwards' only felony conviction, however, appears to be on a drug charge in Washington state.

In a jailhouse interview with the Review-Journal, the 30-year-old Edwards denied the allegations against him.

"I think it was a poor job of detective work," Edwards said. "They couldn't find who they wanted to find, so they took a guy whose name they heard and put it on him. Now it's gotten to the point where they can't back out of it because it'll make them look bad."

He didn't address his alleged extortion attempt against Jones, or his relationship with Edward "Slugga" Morris. Edwards said he's never seen Jones before.

Jones, understandably, has distanced himself from Edwards.

He said the only time he ever saw Edwards was outside the Minxx. He didn't know who Edwards was, either, except for things he heard about him, from Slugga Morris of all people.

"The kid, Slugga, told me that he's wanted in New Orleans for some kind of gunfighter thing," Jones told police. "Um, he supposedly moved to Seattle."

NO MORE PACMAN

Edwards' public defenders, Dan Silverstein and Casey Landis, believe Jones is hiding something, that his story about Edwards appearing out of nowhere in the parking defies common sense.

Sonia Jimenez, one of the county prosecutors handling the case, said the facts are simpler than they appear.

"It isn't a big conspiracy like the defense claims exists," she said at a March hearing in the case. "I guess the point of (the defense's claim) is that Slugga Morris is really the shooter, and this defendant isn't."

Edwards' trial, which had been set for this week, was postponed while the Nevada Supreme Court reviews whether prosecutors purposely withheld key evidence from a grand jury that indicted Edwards. District Judge Valorie Vega set a new trial date of Feb. 22.

If convicted on all charges, Edwards could spend the rest of his life in prison.

While Jones recently vacationed in Florida, Edwards sat in solitary confinement at the Clark County Detention Center. In mid-May, a fellow inmate was charged with assaulting Edwards during a mix-up in which both men's cell doors were left open.

As he awaits trial, Edwards tries to stay busy by making lists, some of which have been seized by police.

If he's ever released from jail, the first thing he's going to do is start a business. He has some ideas, which include operating an ice cream truck and inventing a device that allows for hands-free reading of a book.

Jones meanwhile is trying to resurrect his football career. Just 25, he's hoping to make another NFL comeback.

The developments in Las Vegas in part led to Jones' reinstatement by the NFL for the 2008 season. After being traded from the Tennessee Titans to the Dallas Cowboys, his season was interrupted by a four-game suspension for fighting with his bodyguard. He finished the season with the Cowboys but was released by the team earlier this year.

There's no more Pacman. He's just Adam Jones now, thank you.

Some teams, including the New York Jets and Oakland Raiders, have expressed interest in signing him, according to a person familiar with these negotiations.

Jones and Edwards have at least one common battle. Both are named in civil lawsuits filed by the victims of the Minxx shooting.

Whether their connections go deeper than that is just one of the things that might come out at Edwards' trial.

Urbanski, the bouncer paralyzed in the Minxx shooting, said he isn't sure about the case against Edwards: "I was really happy at first (when Edwards was arrested). My second emotion was I hope this is the right guy. I wish I could identify him and know it was him."

Contact reporter Alan Maimon at amaimon @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0404.