Young mother’s body found in trash can in Las Vegas

Helena Haley was young, a birth mother of three, and hadn't been in Las Vegas more than a month before she was thrown out like the rest of the day's garbage on a downtown street corner last year.

Like many young women lured to Las Vegas, Haley fit a profile: young, looking for a better life and maybe mixed up with the wrong crowd.

And like so many of those women, her story ended tragically.

A homeless man found her, stuffed headfirst in a blue plastic Rubbermaid trash can in a parking lot on the northwest corner of Eighth Street and Carson Avenue.

She was so small -- Las Vegas police Lt. Lew Roberts said she couldn't have been taller than 4 feet 11 inches or weighed more than 90 pounds -- that there was plenty of room left in the can for her clothes to be piled on top of her.

Haley's identity had been a mystery since she was found Sept. 10, but the Clark County coroner's office identified her in late January, breathing new life into her case.

How she died is still a mystery to investigators.

Haley had no identifying marks on her body, aside from a wound to her head that Roberts said probably occurred when she was dragged across the parking lot in the trash can.

Medical examiners are waiting on toxicology results. Roberts said Haley might have overdosed and the suspects simply chose to throw her body away.

Haley was born April 10, 1986, in Whiteville, N.C., a town near the southern tip of the state that's nearly as poor as it is small.

Family members who live in Whiteville said Haley was smart and liked to read and write poetry.

She had two children there, a boy and a girl, who stayed with their father when she chose to move to California in 2007, said Haley's mother, Geraldine Haley.

She had another child in California and, while there, visited Las Vegas at least three times in 2008, Geraldine Haley said.

She moved to Las Vegas in August with a boyfriend. The child was given up for adoption in California.

The last time Geraldine Haley heard from her daughter was on Sept. 8, when Helena Haley said that her boyfriend had moved back to California.

She said she didn't want to go back, however, because she had found a job with a travel agency.

Geraldine Haley had suspicions about her daughter's boyfriend.

"He had to be a pimp or a gang leader or something," she said.

When she didn't hear from her daughter after Thanksgiving, Geraldine Haley filed a missing person's report. She said dental work confirmed that the body the coroner's office had been housing for months was her daughter.

"Me and my sister were very close," said 20-year-old Renee Haley.

When she heard the news about the discovery of her sister's body, "I burst into tears," she said.

Helena Haley was given a proper service in North Carolina.

Roberts said the identification of her body will provide new leads in the case.

"It gives us a direction to go in," he said.

Contact reporter Lawrence Mower at lmower@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0440.