Slain cabby’s family will always be there to remind killer of his deed

I would have liked Glenn Kelly, his daughter tells me. Almost everyone did.

He was a friendly man, laid-back, proud of his five kids. He possessed the ideal personality for a cabdriver and was so popular with his bosses that his image graced the company safety manual.

Glenn liked to wear his Yellow Cab uniform with its policeman-style cap, black tie and Eisenhower jacket. He created a credit union for the drivers. He also was proud to be chosen to chauffeur local officials and visiting dignitaries.

"He was the one, when the governor, mayor or anybody needed someone picked up, he was the one who picked them up," Kelly's daughter Toni Farrimond recalled.

She was 18 when he was murdered. "My dad and I were pretty close. My mother and I didn't get along very well. We were both pretty hard-headed, but my dad was basically the mediator."

She remembers the last time she saw her father alive. It was New Year's Eve 1971, and he'd been called in to work at the last minute. It was nothing special. He liked his job at the cab company and was willing to fill in.

But for some reason that night, Toni got up and glanced out a window of the family's home in time to watch her father get in his car and drive away.

"I'd never done that before," Toni said.

She was reminded of the image of her steady, unassuming old man a day later when a Yellow Cab official called looking for him. Reliable 50-year-old Glenn Kelly hadn't returned to the shop. His last call was a pickup at 1:27 a.m. at The Corner Bar on East Lake Mead Boulevard with two passengers aboard.

His body was found on New Year's Day off Boulder Highway in Henderson. Shotgun blasts had ripped into his body, but someone had then taken the time to cut his throat.

The case wasn't difficult to crack. Police discovered John Michael Tiffany and Timothy Grimaldi, both 18-year-old North Las Vegas residents, driving the cab in Kingman, Ariz. The bloodstained shotgun used in the killing was on the back seat, and a short time later each signed confessions.

At trial, Grimaldi was convicted and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Tiffany was granted a severance and avoided trial in favor of a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Tiffany went to prison in 1972 and received his first parole hearing just eight years later. He was paroled in 1985 but was arrested by UNLV police in November 1991 on open and gross lewdness charges. He was in possession of a razor box cutter, rubber gloves and condoms. His parole was violated, and he returned to prison.

The children of Glenn Kelly, long since grown with families of their own, know all about this, of course. They've lived with the nightmare of their father's murder for nearly four decades now. They witnessed the stress and anguish the murder caused their mother, who was left alone to raise the children. And they have fought against Tiffany's release each time he's gone before the state Parole Board.

Will they succeed again?

Tiffany is scheduled to go back before the board today. By one official count, it will be the 14th appearance for the 56-year-old killer, who has served more time on the parole violation than he did for the original offense.

Tiffany's lack of remorse angers Kelly's daughter.

"Usually his comments toward us are that we need to get a life," said Toni, who runs her own delivery service and, ironically, earns a living driving on the streets of Las Vegas. "He says we need to move on. We need to do this. We need to do that. Well, we've gotten on with our lives."

But the murder of their father will always be a large and terrible part of their lives.

"It pretty much is a nightmare," she said. "We did get on with our lives. And then when we start getting our notices (from the Parole Board), it always has a tendency to weird me out a little bit. I start getting emotional."

But the killer can count on Glenn Kelly's surviving family members to be present at every hearing.

They'll make sure the life of the friendly, harmless cabdriver is never forgotten.

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.