Trial set for suspect linked by DNA to ’85 rape, slaying

Justice has been 25 years in the making for Beth Lynn Jardine's family.

On June 3, 1985, the 23-year-old airman second class stationed at Nellis Air Force Base was found semi-nude and bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer. She had been raped in her northeast Las Vegas apartment.

Two weeks after Jardine was slain, Las Vegas police arrested a pharmacist as a suspect, but the charges were quickly dropped. None of the forensic evidence, such as fingerprints or DNA samples, linked the pharmacist to the crime, and the district attorney's office did not pursue prosecution.

Investigators had found partial bloody palm and fingerprints on Jardine's bedsheet at her apartment on Lucite Avenue, near Craig Road and Lamb Boulevard. They also had DNA samples from the sexual assault.

What they didn't have, and only time could provide, was the technology necessary to find Jardine's killer.

The homicide case remained unsolved until 2007, when a national DNA database produced a match in convicted sex offender Charles Reese Conner of Arkansas.

Now, three years later, authorities believe Jardine and her family finally will have justice.

This week, the 61-year-old will stand trial in District Court on one count of murder and two counts of sexual assault in Jardine's death.

If convicted, Conner could face the death penalty.

Las Vegas cold case detective Kevin Manning first got a hit on Conner's DNA through CODIS, or the Combined DNA Index System, a national database of DNA samples from convicted offenders and forensic crime scene evidence run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Armed with a DNA match, Manning in 2007 ordered a police forensic analyst to compare the partial prints from the crime scene with Conner's prints.

After establishing a match, Manning and another detective flew to meet their suspect in Arkansas, where Conner had been released on parole after serving time for kidnapping and raping a 10-year-old girl.

During a recorded interview with Manning, Conner told the detective he was in Las Vegas for about nine months around the time Jardine was killed.

He initially said he didn't remember her or recognize her photo, according to court documents.

"He said he'd had an alcohol problem for many years and that he remembered very little of his time in Las Vegas. As he said, he was pretty much drunk through the whole time he was here," Manning testified at a 2007 preliminary hearing for Conner.

During the interview with Manning, Conner never denied that he could have been responsible for what happened to Jardine.

"He said he couldn't deny it and that if we had his DNA and his fingerprints, how could he deny it," Manning testified.

Conner described his time in Las Vegas as a drunken escapade through Sin City, mixed with barroom hookups.

"He said that was part of his behavior while he was here, that he was out drinking, going to bars, picking up women and basically, having lots of sex," Manning said.

During the hourlong interview, Manning said Conner eventually admitted he remembered meeting Jardine at a bar. They then went out to eat and went back to her apartment.

Conner told the detective that Jardine made a comment in the apartment, and "something clicked."

"He said he kind of went into a blind rage and he then hit her repeatedly with a framing hammer," Manning testified. "And he admitted to us that he then had anal sex, intercourse, with her after he had hit her."

Conner's story jibed with witness statements from 1985.

Witnesses recalled seeing Jardine at the Whiskey Creek Bar on Charleston Boulevard near Nellis Boulevard before she was found dead. They recalled her leaving with a man, according to court records.

One of the bar patrons told police that Jardine didn't want to drive her car because she had been drinking, authorities said.

Manning also testified that he never told Conner that Jardine had been killed with a hammer before Conner described the slaying.

Conner was arrested in 2007 and brought back to Las Vegas to stand trial.

But in one of many twists, detectives learned it was not the first time Conner had spent time in a Las Vegas jail.

The day Jardine's body was dis­covered, Conner had been arrested in an unrelated case on charges involving car theft and carrying a concealed weapon.

But police never made the connection, and Conner was released from jail after those charges were dismissed.

In 1994, Conner, who was living in Arkansas, was charged with kidnapping and rape in the assault of a 10-year-old girl. He was convicted of those charges in 1996.

If not for Conner's rape conviction, his DNA may never have been entered into the CODIS database.

Defense attorneys and prosecutors have refrained from commenting much.

Conner, who is being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center, faces trial in ill health. Defense attorney Andrea Luem said he has thyroid cancer. During an appearance in court last week , Conner appeared weak and uncomfortable.

Conner's defense attorneys recently won a small victory during pretrial motions when Judge Elissa Cadish ruled that a hammer could not be considered a deadly weapon in accordance with state law in 1985.

The Legislature would change the law years later, but prosecutors must follow the law as it was written at the time of the slaying, Cadish ruled.

If convicted and a jury decides against the death penalty, the ruling could affect the prison sentence Conner receives.

Meanwhile, Jardine's parents, Linda and David, who live in Arkansas, have been subpoenaed as witnesses for Conner's trial.

"We're glad it's happening at last," Linda Jardine said. "We've had 25 years to accept that she's dead and that somebody murdered her. We just want to go ahead with it."

For her part, Linda Jardine doesn't know what to expect to feel during the trial.

Her daughter's death has been an emotional issue for her family for so long, she said. "We think of it in terms of get it over with."

Contact reporter Francis McCabe at
fmccabe@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039.