Nevada marked by 150 years of murder, mayhem

Nevada has seen its share of shocking crimes and frontier justice. From prostitutes to mobsters, firing squads to lethal gas, the eclectic crimes committed and punishments handed out have evolved with the Silver State and kept law enforcement officers and crime reporters alike in business since 1864.

What follows is a decade-by-decade look at some of Nevada’s Crimes of the Century (and a half) — a handpicked but by no means comprehensive list of the particularly heinous or especially historic acts of lawlessness the Silver State has ever seen.

Among the honorable — or dishonorable — mentions that didn’t quite make the list: Philip Cline, who was convicted of murder and arson after eight people were killed by smoke and flame at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1981; Heather Tallchief, who stole more than $3 million from an armored car company and disappeared in 1993, only to turn herself in 10 years later; the still-unsolved 1996 murder in Las Vegas of rapper Tupac Shakur; and Jessica Williams, who was sentenced to up to 48 years in prison for driving under the influence of drugs after she fell asleep while driving in 2000 and killed six teenagers who were picking up trash along Interstate 15.

1860s: ‘Queen’ killer sent to the gallows

Dubbed “Queen of the Red Lights” after her death, Julia Bulette was a prostitute in the mining boom town of Virginia City. She was reportedly well-liked by most, had a regular seat in the town’s opera house and was the guest of honor in parades put on by the Fire Department. But on Jan. 20, 1867, her maid found her bludgeoned and strangled to death in her home, which was robbed of all the woman’s jewels. Jean Millian, a Frenchman caught trying to sell her possessions, was found guilty of her murder. His 1868 hanging — the town’s first public execution — drew a crowd that included Mark Twain.

1870s: First train robbery in the West?

That all depends on how far east you think the West goes. It is widely considered the first train robbery in Nevada or anywhere west of the Rockies. It happened in the early-morning hours of Nov. 5, 1870, when a passenger train was robbed west of Reno, near a town called Verdi. The robbers — there were thought to be eight people involved — forced the train’s conductor to separate one section of train cars from the rest of the train. After locking up the train’s crew, the robbers stole about $42,000 in gold pieces and $9,000 in silver bars. Four of the convicted men later escaped from prison. Much of the treasure was recovered, but about 150 gold coins, now worth $500,000, remain missing.

1880s: Insult leads to murder

Las Vegas Valley rancher Archibald “Archie” Stewart was shot to death on July 13, 1884, while defending his wife’s honor. Stewart’s family lived on a ranch he took from a neighbor after the man defaulted on a loan. One day while Stewart was out of town, a ranch hand named Schyler Henry quit and insulted Stewart’s wife, Helen, on the way out. Upon Stewart’s return, he went to Kiel Ranch — then a hangout for outlaws, now a historic park in North Las Vegas — to find Henry. Stewart was spotted first, though, and the ensuing shootout left him dead. Helen Stewart, about 30 years old at the time, was left with four children and a fifth on the way. Henry was shot twice and lived. Prosecutors tried him along with ranch owner Conrad Kiel but couldn’t prove the crime. Helen suspected a man named Hank Parrish, who disappeared in the aftermath of the shooting. Parrish was later found and hanged in Ely for several murders, though Stewart’s wasn’t one of them. His death was never solved, but the trouble at Kiel Ranch was far from over.

1890s: Senator’s death no work of art

Alice Maud Hartley was an English artist who came to Reno and rented a studio in the top of a bank building to work on her paintings. She became involved with married Nevada state senator Murray D. Foley. In 1894, the couple argued, and she shot him to death. “I only regret,” she reportedly told the sheriff, “not having done it publicly.” In the murder trial, Hartley told the court that Foley had forced himself on her. It was revealed in court that she was pregnant. Hartley was convicted at the end of a six-day trial. She served 18 months of her 11-year sentence in prison with her infant son, where she continued her art by sketching. Once released after 18 months, she moved to San Francisco and died a free woman in Denver in 1908.

1900s: Death returns to Kiel Ranch

Conrad Kiel, who was cleared of Archibald Stewart’s death in 1884, left his ranch to his sons Ed and William when he died. On Oct. 11, 1900, one of Archibald’s sons went to the ranch and found both Kiel brothers dead. Police initially thought it was a murder-suicide. However, the bodies were exhumed in 1975 and investigators determined both were murdered. Circulating rumors said another of Archibald Stewart’s sons, Hiram, had killed the men to avenge his own father’s death. The double-killing remains unsolved, just as Stewart’s murder has.

1910s: Prints point to wagon robbers

This robbery — sometimes and somewhat dubiously labeled the “last stagecoach robbery in the West” — was historic nonetheless. It marked the first time fingerprints were used as evidence in a trial. On a snowy December night in 1916, a horse-drawn mail wagon was ambushed in the far northeast corner of Nevada, near Jarbidge. The driver, Fred Searcy, was killed. A search revealed several pieces of bloody evidence, and law enforcement brought in California fingerprint experts to help. After investigation, three suspects were arrested, including known horse thief Ben Kuhl. Kuhl was sentenced to death and given the choice of being hanged or shot. He chose death by bullet, but before his execution day, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He spent nearly 30 years behind bars before he was released in 1945.

1920s: Killer meets deadly innovation

A Chinese man named Gee John was the first person in Nevada — and the United States — to be executed by lethal gas. John murdered a member of a rival Chinese immigrant gang in Mina, a town 150 miles southeast of Carson City. In February of 1924, prison authorities tried to humanely execute John by pumping cyanide gas into his cell during the night. His cell didn’t contain the gas though — it leaked into other areas of the jail — so a gas chamber was built and John was executed there.

1930s: ‘Driven’ to murder, escape

On April 27, 1937, Grace Nusser shot her unfaithful and abusive husband, George, to death while he lay in bed in their Boulder City home. The shooting came after she found out George had filed for divorce without telling her. When she confronted him, he told her he cheated on her with a waitress, so the angry woman stormed out and bought a gun. “She was very, very drunk and very, very driven,” Nevada historian Dennis McBride said of the woman. After killing her husband, Grace fled to Hoover Dam, where she was arrested. She later slipped out of the jail and fled several miles across the desert until an airplane spotted her. She was sent to prison in Carson City, which only housed two other women at the time. She lost her mind over the next year and a half until she was finally transferred to a mental health facility in Sparks. She died in 1952 from a chronic medical condition, reportedly the result of an injury inflicted by her husband.

1940s: A pub crawl and killing spree

A 22-year-old Boulder City man named Donald Brown was found dead on the highway between Boulder City and Henderson on Aug. 19, 1948. A mentally ill man named Clayton Fouquette, 35, owned up to the murder and admitted to an Aug. 23 murder in California, as well. Fouquette had recently been released from a mental hospital for alcoholism but fell off the wagon and went on his pub crawl and murder spree from California to Nevada, picking up a woman at a bar on the way. When he was arrested, he readily admitted to both murders and was found guilty of Brown’s. The woman was investigated for knowing about the murders and not reporting them. After several years of insanity pleas and appeals, Fouquette was executed in 1953.

1950s: Greenbaum meets unhappy associates

Addicted to heroin and far in debt, it seemed inevitable that casino-man Gus Greenbaum’s story would end prematurely. The man, involved with the Chicago mob, was invested in the Riviera, Flamingo and El Cortez casinos. Greenbaum’s associates became annoyed by the high profile he created for himself. Then they found out he was stealing from the Riviera. He was found murdered in his Arizona home on Dec. 3, 1958. His throat had been cut with a butcher’s knife, leaving him nearly decapitated. He still had a heating pad beneath him in bed when he was found, and the TV was on. His wife, Bess, had her throat slit, as well. The crime remains unsolved.

1960s: Death by dynamite

“It has to be a bomb. There’s no question,” Nevada District Attorney George Franklin said at the time of the massive explosion that killed six people and injured 20 others on Jan. 7, 1967. The bomb went off on the second floor of the Orbit Inn Motel at Fremont Street and Seventh. Police said up to 30 sticks of dynamite were used. The explosion was traced back to Army deserter Richard James Paris. The 28-year-old man fired a gun into a pile of dynamite in his motel room. He and his wife Christine were among the dead.

1970s: Labor leader’s influence ends in desert

In winter of 1977, the body of Al Bramlet, the most powerful labor leader in Nevada, was found in the desert west of Mount Potosi by hikers. Bramlet had been shot six times, including once in each ear. Bramlet’s culinary union held sway over much of Nevada’s government at the time. The man who bullied his way to power by planting bombs near people who disagreed with him had been the target of assassination several times. Tom Hanley, a notorious Las Vegas tough guy and labor racketeer, and his son Gramby pleaded guilty to Bramlet’s murder and were sentenced to life without parole. Eugene Vaughan cooperated with police and received a lesser sentence.

1980s: ‘Ant’ squashed as feds close in

Chicago mobster Anthony “The Ant” Spilotro was sent to Vegas in the 1970s. He was a well-known hit man and leader of the “Hole in the Wall Gang” burglary ring. He ran his operations first from a casino gift shop, then a jewelry store. Law enforcement tried to get dirt on Spilotro but failed for years. Finally, in the 1980s, a friend of Spilotro was arrested and began cooperating with the FBI to convict Spilotro of the robberies and murders he’d ordered over the years. Before the feds could get him, Spilotro and his brother were lured into a basement and killed. The bodies were found in an Indiana cornfield in 1986.

1990s: Binion’s death mints mystery

When troubled gaming executive Ted Binion was found dead in his estate home in an old-money neighborhood of Las Vegas on Sept. 17, 1998, his death was initially called a drug overdose. But a man with such a prominent name couldn’t have such a simple ending. His death turned into a homicide investigation after Rick Tabish was caught digging up an underground vault in Pahrump filled with $7 million of Binion’s silver. It turned out Binion’s girlfriend, Sandra Murphy, was also involved with Tabish, and the pair were charged in 2000 with killing Binion and trying to steal his silver. They were acquitted of the murder charges four years later, but both served time for the silver heist. Murphy was released in 2005. Tabish was paroled in 2010 and ordered to live with his parents in Montana.

2000s: O.J.’s run ends in Vegas

The crime was scarcely even newsworthy: an armed confrontation in a Palace Station hotel room over some sports memorabilia that ended in threats but no bloodshed. But the name of the assailant made it headline news around the world. Hall of Fame football player O.J. Simpson argued that he was simply trying to recover his own property, but he would be convicted in 2007 on 10 separate charges and sentenced to up to 33 years in prison. His conviction was hailed as delayed justice by those who felt he was wrongly acquitted of the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Simpson’s case is now on appeal as his involuntary stay at Lovelock Correctional Center continues.

2010s: Officers killed in suicidal ambush

An angry, apocalyptic husband and wife ambushed and killed two Las Vegas police officers at a pizza restaurant on June 8, 2014, in a suicidal rampage that sent shock waves across the country.

After gunning down officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo, Jerad and Amanda Miller went into a nearby Wal-Mart, where they killed shopper Joseph Robert Wilcox when he tried to stop them with his own gun.

The two died in the store in a shootout with authorities, Jerad by a police bullet and Amanda by her own gun. Their paranoid, anti-government motives were later revealed in videos they posted online and in reports of their attempts to join Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with federal authorities earlier in the year.

Contact reporter Annalise Little at alittle@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0391. Find her on Twitter: @annalisemlittle.