IT WAS ROUGHLY 10 p.m. in Las Vegas, on July 8, 2001, when a man rummaging through the garbage behind a bank just west of the Strip found the body.
Tossed behind a dumpster and covered in trash was a dead black man. Though he had no ID on him, police would soon learn that he was known on the streets as “St. Louis,” and, eventually, they would identify him as 44-year-old Duran Bailey, who had recently become homeless. He had been brutalized. Bailey’s skull was cracked, and his blood-caked eyes were swollen shut. Six teeth had been knocked from his mouth and were found scattered nearby. He had been stabbed repeatedly; the scene was soaked in blood. Most disturbingly, his penis had been cut off. It was found several feet from the body.
However gruesome, the murder scene was also rich with potential evidence: There were Bailey’s pants — likely pulled down by his killer, or killers. There was a piece of clear plastic that had been wrapped around his groin. Among the trash on or near the body was a clump of chewing gum, a condom wrapper, as well as several cigarette butts. There was at least one distinct set of bloody footprints inside the trash enclosure and leading away, toward the parking lot; beyond that, tire tracks, apparently freshly laid, running over a parking divider and disappearing toward the street.
Nevertheless, the detectives assigned to the case were flummoxed. The lead investigator, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Detective Thomas Thowsen and his partner, James LaRochelle, arrived at the crime scene around 1 a.m. and left five hours later, as it was still being processed. They went back to the station, “put our heads together” and tried to figure out “what we had before us,” Thowsen would later testify.
They attended the autopsy later that day, where the medical examiner detailed Bailey’s extensive injuries: In addition to the head trauma and post-mortem amputation, Bailey’s carotid artery had been cut, and his anus had been slashed. Swabs taken from his penis and rectum would later be found to contain semen. No time of death was established.
Thowsen and LaRochelle visited the Nevada State Bank where Bailey had been found and learned that someone fitting his description was a customer there. They spoke to a security officer who said he had not seen any homeless people in the vicinity. They also spoke to at least one resident of the area — a woman who lived just to the north of the bank, in the Grandview Apartments, who approached the crime scene shortly after the detectives had left, asking what was going on.
But their official investigation then stalled. For the next 11 days, Thowsen and LaRochelle developed no leads in the case. The detectives could have pulled security footage from the bank or canvassed the neighborhood. They could have contacted Bailey’s known associates in order to retrace his final days. According to the official police report, they did none of those things. The murder of a homeless man, no matter how brutal, apparently was not a priority to detectives with a heavy caseload. The case seemed destined to go cold.
But then, on July 20, the police received a phone call from a woman in Pioche, a historic mining town three hours northeast of the city. Her name was Laura Johnson, and she asked whether the police department had, by any chance, found a man missing a penis. Johnson, who worked as a juvenile probation officer in Lincoln County, had heard something through the grapevine: A teacher friend, Dixie, had mentioned that her former student Kirstin had told Dixie that she cut off a man’s penis down in Vegas.
Thowsen and LaRochelle wasted no time. They hopped in a department SUV and hightailed it north along a two-lane highway into the desert mountains, toward Johnson’s home. There, she related the full exchange with Dixie. It was short on details, yet, according to the police report, she convinced the cops that they probably should not speak to Dixie directly. What if she warned Kirstin that police were asking questions? Thowsen and LaRochelle agreed, and apparently accepted at face value Johnson’s vague third-hand account. They left her home, and less than three hours after arriving in Lincoln County, arrested Kirstin Blaise Lobato.
Yet, solely on the basis of a rumor, the state of Nevada would aggressively pursue a murder conviction of Lobato — and ultimately succeed. Today, following two trials, Lobato is imprisoned at the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in Las Vegas. Now 32, she has a number of staunch supporters — including local activists and a retired FBI agent — who insist that she is innocent, the victim of shoddy police work, an overzealous prosecution, a poor defense and a biased judge.
“It is a perfect storm of wrongful conviction. Everything that possibly could have been done incorrectly was done incorrectly.” – Michelle Ravell
It is a “perfect storm of wrongful conviction,” says Lobato’s most dedicated advocate, Michelle Ravell. “Everything that possibly could have been done incorrectly was done incorrectly.”
A months-long reinvestigation of the case by The Intercept confirms that the investigation into Bailey’s murder was irredeemably flawed. It also reveals a far more likely theory of the crime, based on leads and potential suspects who were available from the beginning, that Thowsen and LaRochelle failed to pursue. Additional evidence suggests that the state has tried to to cover up its defective investigation — at the very least, by refusing to allow DNA testing of critical crime scene evidence. The Intercept’s inquiry indicates that the state’s gross mishandling of the case at every stage almost certainly sent an innocent woman to prison, allowing the perpetrators of the grisly crime to go unpunished for well more than a decade.
KIRSTIN BLAISE LOBATO, nicknamed Blaise, had a difficult childhood. Beginning when she was five years old, she was sexually abused over the course of a year by her mother’s live-in boyfriend. Lobato would later testify that, after being wrested away from her mother’s custody and sent to live with her father and his wife, she was assaulted two more times — first at 13 by a former boyfriend, and then at 17 by a friend’s father. The first two cases were reported to police, but, according to her family, neither attacker was punished. By the time she was assaulted for the third time, Lobato had already decided that the police could not — or would not — help her, and she did not report the crime.
Lobato’s family had tried to keep her safe. When she was 10 years old, they moved from Las Vegas to the tight-knit desert town of Panaca, a small Mormon outpost surrounded by mountains, just 19 miles from the Utah border. The community was welcoming, and Lobato, a friendly and inquisitive kid, fell in with a clique of children from the town’s prominent families, her stepmother, Becki, recalls.
But it was the son of one of those prominent families, Becki says, who raped Lobato when she was 13, after which things began to disintegrate. Lobato took up with the “wild” kids, and was the target of bullying and gossip. She started using methamphetamine, just as her father and Becki had when times were particularly tough. Though she was a bright student who loved poetry — one of her pieces was published in a statewide literary journal of young writers — she suffered from depression and eventually left her high school, enrolling instead at the county’s alternative school, where she graduated in 2000, a year ahead of schedule. Eventually, in early 2001, she packed her car and looking to “make a life” for herself, skipped town. She headed for Vegas, where her meth addiction became full blown. Lobato moved from party to party, crashing where she could. By mid-May she was using all the time.
The man was black, and large. He smelled like alcohol and dirty diapers. He pushed her down on her back, pulled up her miniskirt and pushed aside her panties. She struggled and began to cry, pleading with him to “stop, don’t,” she later testified. The man slapped her and said, “Shut up, bitch.” With his weight pressing down on her, she nevertheless managed to get her right hand into her back pocket, where she carried a small butterfly knife. She flipped it open, grabbed for the guy’s groin and slashed. He recoiled and she freed herself, running back towards her car. When Lobato looked back, she could see him on the ground, crying. She got to her car and sped off, shedding her clothes and possibly the knife — she doesn’t remember exactly what happened to it — as she drove. She arrived at the house of an ex-boyfriend, but he wasn’t home. She left her car in his driveway, with a note on the dashboard saying she would be back. From there, she ran to a nearby church and called the people she’d been with earlier. They picked her up. From there, the party continued.
She did not report the incident to police.
Even so, in the weeks that followed, Lobato brought up the attack a lot — both in Las Vegas, where she continued to use meth, and back in Panaca, where she eventually returned on July 2, to try to sober up.
During a drive to the Utah Shakespeare Festival in mid-June, Lobato described the attack to her friend Kimberlee Grindstaff, telling her that she had used her knife to defend herself, slashing the man somewhere near his groin. “I didn’t even get the impression the guy was hurt,” Grindstaff recalls. “I was under the impression it was enough for her to get away.”
Another friend, Heather McBride, heard a nearly identical version, saying that Lobato told her she used her knife to defend herself against the sexual attack and that she’d cut the man’s abdomen. “I remember asking, ‘Well, what happened?’” McBride tells The Intercept. “She said, ‘I didn’t stick around to find out.’”
The conversation with McBride took place on July 2 or 3 — McBride does not remember which — more than a month after the assault. Duran Bailey would not be discovered until July 8, eight miles from the Budget Suites motel.
LONG BEFORE THE cops received the phone call that led them to Lobato, they had been approached by a different woman, at the scene of the crime. It was the morning of July 9, just hours after Bailey was discovered; as police processed the scene, a woman named Diann Parker walked toward the police line. In her mid-40s, Parker, who has since died, was short and rounded. Her skin was wrinkled and soft, but her gaze was hardened and weary. Thowsen and LaRochelle had already left the scene, but Parker told a patrol officer that she lived nearby, in the Grandview Apartments, and that she herself had recently been the victim of a violent crime. In fact, she said, she had been raped one week earlier — and she was wondering if the dead man in the trash enclosure might be the man who did it. The officer took her name and contact information and sent her home.
Thowsen and LaRochelle paid a brief visit to Parker later that morning. They had not yet confirmed Bailey’s identity. Inside the studio apartment she shared with a roommate, Parker told the cops she’d been raped on July 1 by a black guy she knew as St. Louis, who was also called Duran. The cops noted in their report that her body and face were bruised, but the report does not reflect that they asked her for details about the assault she said she’d suffered. On the off chance they might match the prints left at the crime scene, the detectives asked if they could see the bottoms of her shoes. She showed them, and they did not see any blood. So they left.
It is not clear when exactly the cops identified Bailey — or whether they paused to contemplate the fact that the murdered man appeared to be the same person Parker alleged had raped her. Even after Thowsen obtained the report of Parker’s assault, on July 17, the detectives didn’t bother to follow up with her. Instead, three days later, they would arrest Lobato, turning their entire focus on the teenager from Panaca. When police did pay Parker a visit again, on July 23, their sole purpose was to ask her for a positive photo ID for Bailey. Parker did as they asked, then made a strange admission. According to a portion of a transcribed police interview that was included in an appeal of Lobato’s case, Parker told Thowsen that when he and his partner had visited her the morning of July 9, she had forgotten to show them something. Specifically, she said, she had clothing, stained with blood. “From where you were beaten up?” Thowsen asked, referring to the alleged rape. Yes, Parker said. “But I forgot to show you.” Then she added that the blood was hers.
The investigation leaned heavily on the account of Laura Johnson, the woman who first made the phone call to police headquarters asking about a man missing a penis.
Thowsen had the official statement Parker made to police about her sexual assault. It mentioned possible physical evidence related to the crime — including a condom wrapper and a pair of underwear — but included no mention of any bloody clothing. “Okay,” he replied to Parker. He did not mention the odd exchange in his police report. Records do not indicate that police spoke with Parker again.
Instead, Thowsen and LaRochelle continued pursuing their case against Lobato. In the absence of any evidence linking her to the crime, their investigation leaned heavily on the account of Laura Johnson, the woman who first made the phone call to police headquarters asking about a man missing a penis.
IT’S NOT CLEAR WHY Johnson was so invested in spreading the third-hand story about Lobato’s supposed crime — Johnson did not return repeated phone calls from The Intercept — but it seems likely that because she worked in the criminal justice system she felt some duty to report what she’d heard, even if it was a mere rumor.
Her source, Dixie Tienken, was a friend who worked as a teacher at the alternative school from which Lobato graduated. As Johnson described it, Tienken came to her on July 18 with a disturbing story about her former student, who had visited her roughly a week earlier, upset about something that had happened in Vegas. (Tienken was a confidante for many students at the school.) According to Johnson, Lobato told Tienken that she was coming out of a strip club when a man with his penis hanging out of his pants accosted her. Lobato “cut it off,” Johnson told the cops.
Johnson had few additional details to offer. She didn’t know the date or time of the incident. She didn’t know where it happened or where Lobato was staying in Vegas. But she told the cops she believed Tienken’s information was accurate and said that it sounded to her like the attack had occurred recently, a few weeks or “maybe even days” before. She also said she had heard that Lobato’s parents were helping her hide out in Panaca, possibly even considering getting her car painted so that it would not be recognized.
Tienken herself would later dispute the version of the story that Johnson told. She said she had not reported Lobato herself because Lobato had a habit of exaggerating her stories and so, Tienken told police, she wasn’t sure that a crime had even occurred — let alone a grisly murder. In a taped statement to police made six days after Lobato was arrested, Tienken did say that Lobato told her that she’d been knocked to the ground by a man trying to rape her, and that she’d “cut off” the man’s penis. But Tienken also says that police failed to record their entire conversation with her — omitting statements that contradicted Johnson’s narrative — and that on tape they steered her toward answers that pointed toward Lobato as the killer.
The state’s case against Blaise Lobato isn’t exactly easy to understand, in part because, rumor aside, there is no evidence to back it up.
Tienken’s version of events might have signaled to police from the start that they were after the wrong person, had the cops not purposefully avoided her to avoid tipping off Lobato. Instead, they went to Lobato’s home and introduced themselves as officers with the Las Vegas Metro homicide division. They told her they had heard she’d been attacked in Las Vegas and “had to defend herself,” Thowsen later recalled in court. Thowsen also told Lobato that he knew she had been hurt in the past, having obtained the records from the serial molestation she suffered as a child. With that, Lobato, sitting on an ottoman in her family’s living room, hung her head and “started to cry,” Thowsen recalled. “I didn’t think anybody would miss somebody like that,” she told Thowsen.
What Lobato meant by that statement is a subject of debate. The police treated it as an admission of guilt. Lobato knew she’d killed someone and that person, they said, was Duran Bailey. How else would you explain the fact that she had sliced someone’s penis and that the cops had a victim that was missing a penis? It was too far-fetched a coincidence. But Lobato said their appearance at her home confirmed her very worst fear, that the man who’d attacked her in May — the man who was clearly alive when she fled the Budget Suites — had somehow succumbed to his injury. Why else would they be there?
Over the next hour or so, and through sobs, Lobato described her May attack. She described the location in detail, the man who attacked her and what she did afterward. She did tell them that she cut her attacker’s penis — her memory wasn’t that great because of the meth, she said, but she thought she was “trying to cut it off.” She was back at home, she said, trying to clean up her act.
Tienken’s version of events might have signaled to police from the start that they were after the wrong person, had the cops not purposefully avoided her.
The cops failed to ask Lobato basic questions. They did not, for instance, ask where she was the weekend of Bailey’s murder. When she described the attack against her, including a detailed description of the Budget Suites — which happened to be located across town from where Bailey was found — the officers failed to ask questions that would confirm she’d actually been at the crime scene in question. (Thowsen would later say he didn’t want to put any “idea” into Lobato’s head.) When Lobato described the man who attacked her, they did nothing to elicit details that might confirm that she was actually talking about Bailey and not a different black man. Thowsen did show her Bailey’s mug shot — Lobato said she didn’t recognize him. Later, Thowsen would suggest that her demeanor demonstrated that she did recognize him, she just did not want to admit it. Finally, at the critical point where Lobato mentioned that her attack had occurred “over a month ago,” and not within the last couple of weeks, the cops failed to follow up at all. Instead, they turned off their tape recorder, ending the interview. They arrested Lobato and drove her back to Las Vegas.
It was at this point that Thowsen and LaRochelle’s serious investigation began — and it was primarily designed to confirm their belief that Lobato was guilty of murder. “So once you had Miss Lobato you just stopped looking for anyone else?” Lobato’s defense attorney, Philip Kohn, asked Thowsen at the 2002 trial. “Not at all,” Thowsen replied. “But … the information would have to be consistent with going in the right direction. There could be dozens of ways to go, opposite directions that the evidence doesn’t lead to, but that wouldn’t make any sense.”
Indeed, prosecutors and police would repeatedly suggest that Lobato’s recorded statement to police on July 20 was a “confession” to the murder of Duran Bailey, never seriously considering that she might have been referring to an altogether separate incident that took place weeks earlier and across town. It’s a position Las Vegas prosecutors maintain to this day.
THE STATE’S CASE against Blaise Lobato isn’t exactly easy to understand, in part because, rumor aside, there is no evidence to back it up. Lobato was first tried and convicted in 2002, but the verdict was overturned on the grounds that the judge, Valorie Vega, improperly barred the defense from presenting evidence that challenged the credibility of a jailhouse snitch who testified against Lobato. A retrial was held in 2006. Judge Vega presided again. The jailhouse snitch was not called.
Ultimately, the state’s theory of the crime comes down to this: Blaise Lobato, fiending for methamphetamine, drives from Panaca to Las Vegas, sometime on July 6. She gets drugs from somewhere (the source is not clear), and parties until the wee hours of July 8, when she runs out of drugs and goes on a quest for more. She travels west of the Strip and makes her way to the Nevada State Bank to find Bailey. How she thinks to look behind a dumpster for a homeless meth dealer is not clear, nor is it clear that Bailey did meth, let alone dealt it. He only tested positive for booze and cocaine after he died. Nevertheless, Lobato agrees to trade fellatio for the drug. But she then changes her mind, partly because of her history of abuse but also because Bailey smells bad. She then somehow overpowers and brutally murders Bailey — stabbing him repeatedly and then bludgeoning him with a baseball bat that she kept in her car (or some other blunt instrument, since no blood or other evidence was found on the bat or in the car), before slicing his rectum and amputating his penis. She then covers him with trash, jumps in her car and jets back to Panaca. The three-hour journey through desert and mountain wilderness is especially perilous at night — the two-lane road is unlit — yet Lobato arrives fast enough to get cleaned up, and by midday, be hanging out with a friend, driving around on a four-wheeler and drinking beer.
To Philip Kohn, the public defender who handled Lobato’s case in 2002, the narrative was absurd. Still, he tells The Intercept, he wasn’t surprised that the state chose to prosecute Lobato. He describes the Clark County District Attorney’s office as an agency that has “abdicated” its responsibility to “prosecute only those cases that they believe beyond a reasonable doubt,” and which instead regularly defers to the powerful Las Vegas Metro Police Department, even in cases built on the flimsiest of evidence. At trial in Lobato’s case, Kohn says, the state’s shaky theory was enabled by “horrific” judicial rulings that were biased toward the prosecution, which made it impossible for him to present a full defense. (Judge Vega did not respond to a request for comment.)
Prosecutors Sandra DiGiacomo and William Kephart, who is now an elected Clark County judge, ignored or refused repeated requests for interviews for this story. In two very brief phone conversations with DiGiacomo, she refused to discuss the case because she said there was “so much misinformation” about it. When pressed for specifics, DiGiacomo declined to provide any, saying only that the misinformation is “anything” Lobato’s defenders say.
What is especially striking about the prosecution of Lobato is the way police and prosecutors were able to ignore or explain away the fact that no physical evidence in the case supported the state’s theory.
On the stand at the first trial, Lobato presented her alibi. (She did not testify the second time around.) She said she had arrived in Panaca on July 2, 2001. She was sick and weak and convinced that she had been “poisoned” by bad drugs in Las Vegas. Becki, her stepmother, took her to see a doctor on July 5, and they were told to come back with urine samples. Lobato followed her doctor’s orders and continued to hang around Panaca. She was spotted by several people in the meantime, including by a neighbor’s grandson. Before long, Lobato decided she wanted to go back to Las Vegas after all. But, she said, she did not leave until the morning of July 9 — the day after Bailey was found. On July 8, Lobato said she hung out with a friend, drinking beer and riding around on a four-wheeler. A neighbor could confirm this; looking out her kitchen window as she did the dishes midday, she saw Lobato on the vehicle, turning donuts in the street. Back in Vegas, Bailey’s body would be discovered late that night.
In response, prosecutors sought to kill the credibility of witnesses who said they’d seen Lobato in Panaca the weekend Bailey was killed. Questioning another neighbor, whose grandson said he’d hung around with Lobato at her family’s house that weekend, they got her to call him “brain dead” — the kid “just doesn’t do the things he’s supposed to do,” she explained — and thus not reliable. Prosecutors also implied that Becki coerced the young man (and others) into lying about seeing Lobato in Panaca the weekend that Bailey was murdered, a serious charge she denies.
Laura Johnson took the stand at both trials. Although seemingly a textbook example of hearsay, the court allowed her to repeat the third-hand account of Lobato’s attack, describing what she said Dixie Tienken had told her. Key parts of Johnson’s account contradicted Tienken’s own testimony at trial. But prosecutors were able to undermine Tienken by seizing on the fact that her testimony also clashed with her previous statements to Thowsen and LaRochelle. This, however, went back to the partially recorded interview Tienken described to the The Intercept. Tienken says, for example, that she told police that after Lobato told her about being attacked, the two searched for news accounts together to see if anything had turned up about a man who might have suffered a knife injury to the groin. On the stand, Tienken said they looked online for sources dating back to June 1 — more than a month before Bailey was murdered — and that she told police the same. But because there was no record of that statement (or others), prosecutors suggested that Tienken was lying to cover up for Lobato.
The same judge that allowed Johnson’s third-hand account barred testimony from witnesses on the defense side, on the grounds that their statements were hearsay. At the second trial, for example, the state convinced Judge Vega to bar Heather McBride, one of Lobato’s friends who heard about her May attack, from describing what Lobato told her — even though prosecutors had elicited that very same testimony back in 2002. That account contradicted Johnson’s testimony. McBride described the experience as extremely frustrating. Again and again, Judge Vega sustained the state’s objections. “Anything we would say would be called hearsay or [the prosecutors] would say … something, to cut us off where we really couldn’t tell our whole story except for what the [state] wanted to hear,” she recalled.
The defense was hardly blameless. At least one key witness was never called at all. Lobato’s friend Kimberlee Grindstaff, one of the first people from Lincoln County to whom Lobato confided about being attacked in Vegas, told The Intercept she was willing to testify at both trials. But she says that she was told before the first trial that she wouldn’t be needed. It is unclear why she wasn’t called the second time around.
By the time Lobato was retried in September 2006, Thowsen’s story about his efforts to investigate Lobato’s May attack had become far more elaborate, including much more detail than he’d offered during the first trial. Yet, again, none of it was recorded in the official police report. Although Thowsen initially testified that he checked for reports about a cut penis, under more intense cross-examination, Thowsen admitted that he had not personally done all of that research. “I can’t do every single thing. Some things have to be delegated,” he said. He maintained that he called some area hospitals, as did his secretary, whom he did not name. Thowsen also added that he had called “several” area urologists asking whether they’d encountered any patients with a severed penis in 2001. He asked that they “communicate amongst themselves” and report back if they found such a patient. “[A] town of this size doesn’t have all that many urologists,” he explained. When pressed, he added, by way of proof, “I’ve probably been to dinner with most of them at the same time.” Notably, Thowsen failed to memorialize any of these alleged investigative moves, nor did he apparently ask his secretary to do so.
Despite Thowsen’s dismissal of Lobato’s claims of a May attack, one juror at the second trial was curious enough to pass a question to Judge Vega before Thowsen left the stand. The juror wanted to know whether Thowsen had ever gone to the Budget Suites to see if anyone might have witnessed a man assaulting Lobato. Thowsen replied that the motel had no information about Lobato staying there and had no reports of incidents happening in the parking lot. “[T]here’s no sense looking for a witness to something that we know didn’t happen there,” he responded.
Thowsen did not respond to repeated requests for an interview for this story.
What is especially striking about the prosecution of Lobato is the way police and prosecutors were able to ignore or explain away the fact that no physical evidence in the case supported the state’s theory — without much pushback from the defense.
Clark County medical examiner Dr. Lary Simms initially declined to speak to The Intercept, writing, “everything i have to say about the issues … were answered at trial.” But his claims at trial shifted slightly but significantly between 2001, when he took the stand during a pretrial hearing, and the second trial in 2006 — and they have since been called into question in their entirety. At the hearing, Simms testified that he hadn’t pinpointed a time of death (he was never asked to, he said), but he estimated that Bailey’s death likely occurred within 12 hours of when his body was found, around 10 p.m. on Sunday, July 8. This would have made it impossible for Lobato to have committed the murder, given that she was seen in Panaca that morning. But by the time the first trial began, Simms had shifted the time of death, placing it likely within 18 hours of when Bailey was discovered – widening the window enough to make the prosecution’s theory plausible. At Lobato’s second trial, his testimony shifted yet again, when he said that Bailey was likely killed between 12 and 18 hours before he was pronounced dead by a coroner investigator, at 3:50 a.m. on July 9.
When asked in a follow-up email about his seemingly fluid time-of-death estimation, Simms denied changing his testimony. In a statement that, if true, dismantles the state’s theory of the crime, he wrote that his “first and shortest estimation, which, as I recall would have excluded possible contact with Ms. Lobato, was my best estimation and was the most probable.” Simms added that the jury’s acceptance of a different timeline that would implicate Lobato in Bailey’s death “amazed me then and continues to amaze me.” Perhaps, he wrote, they used “other data” from “other testimony” to reach their conclusion.
The jurors were encouraged to look past the lack of evidence and the otherwise confusing twists and turns in the case and to focus on one thing: the penis.
But Lobato’s defense never did call to the stand a medical examiner to review Simms’s time-of-death estimation. Indeed, it was not until Lobato’s most recent — and still pending — appeal was filed in 2010 that the defense offered experts to argue that the state’s timeline for Bailey’s death has always been completely off. According to two forensic entomologists, the absence of any fly eggs on Bailey’s body suggests his time of death was far more likely to have been just before or at sunset on July 8, just two hours before he was discovered. (In a final email to The Intercept, Simms wrote that he has not “critically analyzed” any entomology evidence, but, assuming it is accurate, he would conclude Bailey “most likely” died closer to 4 p.m. on July 8.)
The absence of such analysis was in keeping with a crime scene investigation that was flawed at the most basic levels. Analysts did not take inventory of the many trash items found on and around Bailey’s body. Instead, based on unknown criteria, they determined that only some pieces had any evidentiary value and threw away the rest.
Those pieces of evidence that were preserved did not point to Lobato. Of 22 fingerprints collected by crime scene analysts, none matched Lobato (or Bailey). In testimony in 2006, a DNA analyst said that cigarette butts found at the scene revealed an unknown male profile on one cigarette butt, and a combination of Bailey’s DNA and that from another unknown person on the second cigarette. Lobato was excluded as a contributor. The same lab collected blood and saliva from the chewing gum recovered at the scene, which revealed a mixture of DNA from Bailey and a third unknown person. A fourth, separate DNA profile was also found on a pubic hair collected from Bailey’s body.
Even what weapon it was that was used to stab Bailey — to cut open his carotid artery, or to amputate his penis — was never determined. Nonetheless, at each of Lobato’s trials, prosecutors had Thowsen bring to court a random butterfly knife for demonstrative purposes — amazingly, defense attorneys did not object at either trial to jurors seeing a knife that wasn’t proven whatsoever to resemble the weapon used in the murder. From Simms’s autopsy report, it is clear that a single-edged blade of some sort made some of the stab wounds to Bailey’s body, but it isn’t at all clear what type of knife was used. In an effort to determine how many and what kinds of weapons might have been used, The Intercept asked retired Texas medical examiner Dr. Lloyd White to review the autopsy report and photos. He too said he could only determine that a single-edged blade was used to make at least one wound. But the depth of the wounds was apparently not measured, and the language used to describe the damage to Bailey was imprecise, White said. “[I]t’s not a very good autopsy report,” he concluded.
In the end, the jurors were encouraged to look past the lack of evidence and the otherwise confusing twists and turns in the case and to focus on one thing: the penis. Bailey was missing a penis. Lobato had admitted to cutting a penis. The rest was mostly details. “The reason why you’ll never forget this trial is because of the circumstances that came under it,” prosecutor Kephart said. “A man’s penis was cut off.”
Each time around, jurors convicted Lobato after mere hours of deliberation. Although originally sentenced to up to 100 years on a charge of murder with use of a deadly weapon, and a second charge of “sexual penetration of a dead human body,” jurors at her second trial were apparently less convinced of her culpability, convicting her only of voluntary manslaughter and the one count of sexual penetration. Combined, Lobato’s current sentence could last as long as 35 years. She will also be forced to register as a sex offender.
TO MICHELLE RAVELL, the state’s case against Lobato is simply illogical. Ravell, who is Lobato’s most staunch supporter, first met Lobato not long after she was arrested. It was a twist of fate that would bring them together; roughly a week before Lobato was arrested, Ravell’s son — then a young twenty-something dedicated skirt-chaser — came home from a weekend trip to Lincoln County with stars in his eyes. He’d met a girl and was smitten. Turns out it was Lobato, and just days after Ravell first heard her name she heard of her arrest. For murder. “And he’s telling me about it and I’m like, ‘Oh, you really know how to pick ’em.’ What kind of mother wants to hear this about the girl her son says he wants to marry?” Ravell recalls. But her son insisted that Lobato could not have been guilty. This intrigued Ravell; she was quickly drawn into the details of the case.
“At that time I didn’t have the notion that people didn’t get arrested for things they haven’t done,” she says. “I thought the police did a bit more research and investigation. I didn’t know they just went running around arresting people.” For more than a decade now, she has worked to try to bring attention to the case and to clear Lobato’s name.
Along the way, the case caught the attention of Steve Moore, a charismatic former FBI agent from California who, since retiring from the agency in 2008 has become a champion of the wrongfully convicted. Today, he is perhaps best known for his continuing work in support of Amanda Knox, accused of murdering a roommate in 2007 while a foreign exchange student in Italy. Moore was first alerted to the Lobato case by an acquaintance who asked that he look into it. As with Ravell, Moore couldn’t believe what he found — or rather, what he didn’t find. “I just kept looking for the evidence, I kept reading through [the case documents] saying, any time now I’m going to find something that will tell me, ‘Oh, now I know why they thought that,’ or, ‘Oh, now this makes sense,’” he said. “And the more I looked at it the more I realized this is just complete and utter bullshit.”
Among the nagging, unresolved issues was the central question of motive. Why would Lobato suddenly turn on Bailey with such extreme violence? Though the state never addressed the issue head on, it suggested that the crime was fueled by Lobato’s meth use — just as prosecutors used her drug habit to explain away the fact that none of the details she described about her attack outside the Budget Suites matched the details of Bailey’s murder.
But, Ravell and Moore point out, if there was one person in town who might have had a reason to harm Bailey as brutally as the prosecutors have insisted Lobato did, it was Diann Parker, the woman who approached the police line on the morning of July 9. Bailey had allegedly raped her exactly one week before he was murdered, giving Parker, or one of the neighbors who witnessed her troubling encounters with Bailey, a clear motive. While the report on Parker’s rape was in the hands of police, it was never taken seriously by the state.
Grandview Apartments (Google Maps)
Bailey had once lived with his mother in that same apartment complex, but when she died, he was unable to keep the place. He became homeless. Still, Bailey continued to spend much of his time at the Grandview complex, his cousin testified, hanging with a guy who rented a place there, while spending his nights sleeping under a freeway overpass above Flamingo Road.
Not much is clear about Bailey’s past. Reportedly he was from Missouri, had the nickname “St. Louis,” and was rumored to have once committed murder. He had been arrested a number of times by the Las Vegas police, including for violent assaults of a girlfriend at the Grandview Apartments. He was accused of choking her; another time, he slammed her head against a tree.
Bailey had started hanging out with Parker in early 2001. Parker, originally from Arkansas, had her own share of run-ins with the law. She’d been picked up for burglary a couple times in the nineties, and eventually the Nevada Gaming Control Board revoked her work card, preventing her from maintaining casino employment. In 2000, she was arrested for solicitation. She was unemployed in the summer of 2001.
Parker and Bailey used crack cocaine together and Parker had, on occasion, traded him sex for drugs. He was a scary guy, she would later tell police. After Parker’s friends ran Bailey out of their apartment on the Sunday that he slapped her, Parker quickly headed home.
Early that evening, however, she ran into Bailey again, when returning to her apartment from the laundry room. Bailey came up behind her and forced his way inside her home. He was angry. What was she doing with those Mexicans? Nothing, just hanging out, she replied. If he caught her hanging with them again, she recalled him saying, “I’m gonna knock the shit out of you.” A struggle ensued and he hit her in the head. She pleaded with him not to hurt her — say that once more, she recalled him saying, and “I’ll kill you.” He threw her onto the bed. Over the next five hours or so, he repeatedly raped her, including several attempts at sodomy. He then said he would have to kill her, lest she report the attack to police. She convinced him she would not say anything, then said she wanted to go with him to score some drugs. When he walked out of the apartment, she rushed back inside and locked the door.
Parker was afraid that Bailey would carry out his threat, so she did not immediately report the assault. But a few nights later he came back, banging on her apartment door and window. She went to the police and on July 5, was interviewed at the University Medical Center hospital.
In photos, police documented Parker’s extensive injuries: Two swollen, blackened eyes; a bruised mouth, where Bailey held his hand to it, to keep anyone from hearing her scream, she said; a bruise to her neck, where Bailey held a kitchen knife to her carotid artery, among other deep bruises.
Bailey’s injuries were eerily similar to the ones he had inflicted on Parker.
“If anyone breaks in your house, you have a right to protect yourself. That’s the law. Whatever it takes,” the officer replied.
Three days later Bailey was found murdered.
His injuries were eerily similar to the ones he had inflicted on Parker. There were the two black eyes he gave her (Bailey’s were bruised and swollen shut), the wound to her neck (his carotid artery had been cut), the bruising on her mouth (his teeth were knocked out), and the fact that he raped her vaginally and tried several times to sodomize her (his penis was amputated and his anus slashed).
If these parallels did not catch the attention of law enforcement, they were enough for defense attorneys to raise the possibility of an alternative theory of the crime, which they tried to present at the 2002 trial. Parker was called to testify and maintained that Bailey had raped her, but denied any involvement in his murder. She said she first heard about the crime from her roommate, who had seen something on the news, then went to the crime scene to see for herself if the victim might have been Bailey. It was not clear — nor did police try to figure out — why Parker might have concluded that the dead person down the street was Bailey. The Intercept sought to determine what, exactly, was aired on the local news the morning of July 9, to no avail. Local television stations either had no record of such a story in their archives or else had no way to check that far back.
There is no record reflecting that Thowsen or LaRochelle bothered to check news reports at the time. If there is no direct evidence to connect Parker to the murder, it is clear that Thowsen and LaRochelle took hardly any steps to see if any existed. They dismissed Parker as a suspect based primarily on the fact that she had been “cooperative” when they visited her apartment and asked to examine the bottoms of her and her roommate’s shoes for a bloody pattern that might match the shoe prints left at the crime scene. They didn’t see any blood on them and that was that.
Nor did investigators seek to interview Parker’s Mexican neighbors. In testimony, Thowsen said he did run their names through a law enforcement database, found no criminal history, and determined that they were “hardworking” and thus unlikely to have been involved in the crime.
Thowsen wasn’t the only person who failed to get more information from Parker’s neighbors. Lobato’s defense attorneys did not interview them either. According to Kohn, by the time his investigator went to search for the men, they had moved. Defense attorneys thought perhaps they’d returned to Mexico.
But they were wrong. In a visit to Las Vegas, The Intercept was able to locate two of the men who lived in the apartment across from Parker in 2001. They said they did not remember Parker or Bailey, nor were they ever questioned by police. But they also said that there were actually seven men living in that apartment in 2001. Apart from themselves, the men said that three are working construction in California, and two simply disappeared that summer of 2001. They headed back to Mexico and have never returned.
Parker died in 2005, and The Intercept was unable to locate her former roommate. But in an affidavit provided to Lobato’s defense in 2010, the man said that he was actually Parker’s “domestic partner” and that the two discussed Bailey’s murder on “a number of occasions” before she died. He said that Parker told him that it “was not possible” that Lobato had murdered Bailey.
IN THE LONG-RUNNING TV crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, set in Las Vegas, the city’s police, crime scene analysts and medical examiner are portrayed as efficient and fearless advocates for truth in justice — they leave no stone unturned and are swift and resolute in their evidentiary analyses. In the real-life case of Duran Bailey, nothing could have been further from the truth.
Law enforcement ignored evidence that pointed away from Lobato, and today prosecutors continue to oppose any additional forensic testing that might solve the murder once and for all — potentially proving either that they were right about Lobato, or that they relentlessly pursued an innocent woman.
Despite the state’s official position, on a recent episode of the true crime show Snapped, which featured Lobato’s case, prosecutor DiGiacomo claimed that the semen DNA has been proved to belong to Bailey. “I’ve had supporters of Lobato say to me, well, why don’t you test the sperm that was found … It was tested,” she said bluntly. “It was the victim’s.” But court transcripts contradict this statement. (For starters, no sperm was found in the semen samples the state collected from Bailey’s body, which is significant because scientific testing at the time was not discrete enough to discern a DNA profile from a spermless semen sample.) Regardless, if any testing on this evidence has indeed been carried out, the results have never been given to the defense.
Through assistants, elected District Attorney Steven Wolfson and Deputy DA Steven Owens, who is representing the state against Lobato’s appeal, declined to talk about the case.
Regardless, the state remains steadfast that Lobato is guilty of Bailey’s murder — and that no amount of DNA testing will change that. In defending its stance, the DA’s office has staked out a position that runs counter to the evolution of DNA science and its profound impact in revealing wrongful convictions. Nationally, there have been 326 post-conviction DNA exonerations; in nearly half of those, DNA testing has also led to the identification of the guilty party. To date, there have been just two DNA exonerations in Nevada — and only one in Las Vegas, in a different 2001 case, in which the Vegas Metro police admitted, 10 years later, that its lab mixed up two biological samples, falsely incriminating an innocent 18-year-old who spent four years in prison for a robbery he didn’t commit.
Lobato’s case is currently pending before the Nevada Supreme Court. In arguing against DNA testing before the court last fall, prosecutors acknowledged that there was nothing found at the scene to tie Lobato to the murder. But neither was another key bit of evidence found. “Show me another black man with a missing a penis and maybe we’ll have something to talk about,” Deputy DA Owens told the court.
After repeated requests, The Intercept was barred from interviewing Lobato by the Nevada Department of Corrections, despite an official policy that formally encourages news media visits to Nevada prisons. The explanation was that the Nevada DOC does not allow inmate interviews “for entertainment purposes.” DOC records show that the department used the same excuse to deny 18 media requests between January and September of last year. (More than half of those were requests to interview O.J. Simpson.)
But Lobato’s supporters are vocal on her behalf. To Steve Moore, the retired veteran FBI agent, the problem from the start was that the cops, unable to see past the lurid detail of the missing penis, never did any real investigation at all. “It was pathetic,” he says. And Michelle Ravell points out that if Lobato is lying — if she has truly been guilty of Bailey’s murder all along — it would mean that a lot of other people are lying on her behalf as well. Everyone who described Lobato’s recounting of the story of her May 2001 attack in Las Vegas would have to have made it up or gotten it wrong.
Or even more confounding, says Ravell, it would mean that Lobato went around telling people the details of an attack before it ever happened, in an attempt to create an alibi for a future crime. “You don’t say, ‘I was attacked and some guy tried to rape me’ so that later, some guy can try to rape you or try to attack you and you can kill them,” Ravell says. “Who the hell does that?”
Edited by Liliana Segura. Fact-checking by Alleen Brown. Research assistance by Sheelagh McNeill.
Illustrations by Pat Kinsella for The Intercept.
I’m PRAYING that this young lady is soon released! This is such a sad story! Why would these people want to continue to keep this child suffering for their obvious botched investigation!
Yeah, even after all these years, even without The Innocence Project offering to pay for new technology DNA testing of sperm-less semen (an offer the State has so far declined), we’re still waiting for the State of Nevada to explain their “highly intriguing” (and I’m sure entertaining should they ever address it) theory of precisely how Lobato’s semen wound up in Bailey’s rectum? Every time a reporter gets close to asking, the prosecutors clam up with, “No comment.”
I had not been aware of this case before, and read much of this long report, and scanned the rest. It seems to be an egregious example of bad police work and conviction of an innocent person. However, it is ot clear to me what I, or anyone else reading this might do to help. Often we are asked to sign a petition or something. Perhaps I missed this. Someone please advise. Thank you.
There is a petition at http://change.org/kirstin
Official site: http://www.justice4kirstin.com/
3rd party case docs, incl. online book: http://justicedenied.org/kbl.htm
Dr. Payne, my last reply did not post. Rather may I suggest googling jfgi?
He got what he deserved. I don’t think anyone should have been convicted of anything. However, it is illegal. I do not see where they proved she did it but I can clearly see where she would have motive and admits to having her junkie friends nearby so not just motive but ability is now there. Although I do not believe that she could have done this by herself its very plausible that her and her junkie friends could have as well as I have seen people wasted that had unheard of strength and blackouts that last days. SO I don’t see it as far fetched that she did it or was a part of it. None of this matters in the legal system. Killers get let go everyday for technicalities and people get found guilty just by accusation. Now that we live in a society that looks at evil as good and good as evil anything flucking goes.
We live in an era in which many people have no clue as to what evidence is and no clue as to what proof is as well. Meanwhile it is obvious that cops and judges can be as dangerous as the psycho living behind the dumpster. And on top of that the accused is a drug addict who if released will most likely be nothing but a menace to society as she will probably be back on drugs very quickly. And I have no use for a state that fails to apply modern crime scene investigations at whatever level required to reach certainty. It also seems that Nevada must be filled with molesters and rapists as this girl seemed to be getting molested and raped far more than any half way normal person could ever be. It is all pretty disgusting and frightening as well.
I’ve been following this case for a couple years now and I am astounded that Miss Lobato is still behind bars. This has to be just one of the worst cases of incompetent and fraudulent police and district attorney prosecution work I’ve ever heard of. The authorities in question should all be removed from service and sent to prison themselves for for framing Kristin.
This case is a bit worse than the Ryan Ferguson, and West Memphis Three cases because the plausibility of this girl malevolently and maliciously attacking a deranged homeless man, who had a history of violence, successfully murdering and mutilating him (in ways that correspond exactly to a Mexican vigilante execution) without a single injury to herself or leaving any trace of herself on a bloody crime scene is non-existent. It’s simply impossible. Never mind that she admits only to defending herself during a sexual assault weeks prior to this murder in another part of town…and that she has no idea what damage she inflicted on the attacker except that she escaped and lost the weapon, and that she wasn’t in Vegas when Bailey was killed. It’s impossible to read this case and not determine the investigators, prosecutors and judge are all guilty of professional misconduct and all their previous cases need to be examined because they surely have a history of abuse. It takes practice to corrupt the judicial system this badly and all the State’s employees need to be examined and their previous work scrutinized because they definitely have done this before and unless they are removed from their position then they will do it again.
Lobato likely caused a superficial injury to a completely different large attacker, who never reported it or got medical treatment and will certainly never admit to being the one who attacked her.
this conviction is mind-boggling. I feel that there is no point to having a jury and judge when miscarriages of justice like this are still possible. This is state-sanctioned lynching.
“It takes practice to corrupt the judicial system this badly and all the State’s employees need to be examined and their previous work scrutinized because they definitely have done this before and unless they are removed from their position then they will do it again.”
You likely have no idea exactly how accurate your assessment is those who operate in the Vegas justice system truly is on the local, State, and Federal levels.
With few exceptions, very few, the attorneys, judges and clerks place protecting each other above the interests of their clients.
The exceptions, those who attempt to inject any level of accountability into Vegas justice, are black-balled, stigmatized, and otherwise retaliated against.
Amazing reporting. Reading about our criminal justice system doing what they did here has me seeing RED. Yet, they keep their jobs. Seeing Thowsen’s fat, bloated face on here makes my skin crawl. How can I get this “bi-pedal carbon based life form” in the boxing ring so I can legally beat him into the ground?
Putin did it.
Great work!
Clive Stafford Smith, who is an attorney who has worked for Guantanamo detainees, takes on a similarly corrupt prosecution in The Injustice System.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/clive-stafford-smith/injustice-system/
For a while I was considering setting up my own Black Site Prison for teenage girls, but I decided against it for moral and ethical reasons.
Besides, I’ve moved on to milfs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33FV6TaMto0
What sort of person makes such a joke on the tail of a dreadful and cruel tale such as this? Actually that was my first reaction, but I checked the link you gave and fair enough, it is kind of funny and yet poignant as well as more or less on topic.
Mussolini is a bad influence on me. It’s best not to associate with deceased fascist dictators.
Unless you have no choice of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_%28Niven_and_Pournelle_novel%29
This is a dreadful story and tragically it is doubtless not the only case of injustice nor the worst awaiting correction. There is no way the system can give people back the lives they steal either. I’d like to see police and prosecutors who get it so wrong as this and so clearly, given the same sentence that their victims have served.
Good writing, although sometimes confusing who is who in the story.
Is part of the problem not the jury system in the US, as they are not trained and miss expertise to judge the value of presented proof. In this case the absence of hard evidence.
The US is ranking number one in percentage of the population being imprisoned worldwide (0,7%) 5-7 times more than in the EU (+/- 0,1 – 0,15 %) to give a comparison. Murder rate is also 5-7 times higher but far from greatest worldwide over the last 10 years when victims in illegal war don’t count.
In today’s world the police say we the people need to support them….but in my mind it is the police who need to be investigated…this is not ‘shoddy’ police work…It is criminal negligence….
“At that time I didn’t have the notion that people didn’t get arrested for things they haven’t done,” she says. “I thought the police did a bit more research and investigation. I didn’t know they just went running around arresting people.”
This notion never ceases to blow my mind.
Incidentally, a Google Maps link for the dumpster is https://www.google.com/maps/search/grandview+apartments/@36.1162247,-115.1970395,24m/data=!3m1!1e3
The Budget Suites shown in the photo looks a lot like https://www.google.com/maps/search/budget+suites/@36.1006233,-115.1956215,141m/data=!3m1!1e3 and not like some of the other Budget Suites locations on the Google Map (however the Street View looks very different, so there could be a time factor)
So as far as I can tell, the two locations “across town” from one another are a mile apart, due north-south (two major roads). We’re talking about someone on an admitted meth binge, trying to find a hotel some friends are staying at, who drove off and went to a different location after the attack. Somehow I don’t find it that hard to picture that she described the Budget Suites hotel she was looking for and had been to previously, but might have actually been at this other location.
Now even if I believe that, the prosecution still has a big problem: if its evidence is her story, in which she slashed to prevent a rape, how does it make sense to believe what she said insofar as she is guilty, but disbelieve it insofar as it is self-defense?
This case is way too far wrong to even take into consideration the self defense out. But to answer it anyway, the self defense wouldn’t hold up too well, considering everything else besides the slashing of the penis that was perpetrated upon the victim. But anyway, there is no way that the murderer is Kirstin Blaize Lobato.
Wnt – you are looking at the wrong Budget Suites. There are many of them all over Las Vegas. The one she refers to it on Boulder Hyw, near Sam’s Town. Not a mile apart by anyone’s tape measure.
Hi Jordan, the amount of time spent investigating this case and the time you’ve given it is truly impressive. I love your passion for finding out what the truth is.
Thanks so much for doing this article. As a result, YOU, are making a difference in this world.
:)
The way the justice system is portrayed in movies and TV is, as one would expect in fiction, a fiction. Judges tend to go along with whatever the state wants (e.g., hearsay rulings here) and jurors are often more interested in the gossipy side issues so they can figure out if they like the party the state opposes. Lobato was definitely the kind of person jurors would easily hate — she used drugs, hung out at strip joints, went to alternative school, etc. etc. She’s in jail because of a cynical prosecution, supported by jaded judge, convicted by a jury likely focused on the gossipy “white trash” lifestyle side issues the prosecution certainly pushed and the judge allowed.
If the justice system was like it is portrayed in the media — fair, justice seeking, helpful, unbiased — there would have never been this trial. If Lobato had been a middle class high school basketball player, the police would have probably have looked elsewhere (if wealthy, definitely looked elsewhere). But she was a loser meth head in their eyes, guilty of this or something else. It’s an example of the classism inherent in our legal system.
Whether by chance or mutual agreement, all those who played any role in the Lobato case and refuse to discuss it with Jordan Smith are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, participants in a conspiracy of silence to deny justice to Lobato.
Reminds me of this story: http://caracaschronicles.com/2015/03/13/a-political-prisoner-dies/
What a bunch of incompetent, lazy pricks. Refusal to test the DNA makes me seriously wonder if there’s not some cover-up occurring – if they’re not trying to protect someone or ones from prosecution.
As a country, what we have to do is outlaw TV series like “CSI Everywhere” where the cops are falsely portrayed as the good guys. This has nothing in common with real life where the majority of them are no better than thugs.
Definitely worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlY9C6pzxKc
Jordan Smith extraordinary. You are a true asset to The Intercept and all of us. Thank you so much!
My heart breaks for Kirstin Blaise Lobato and all she’s endured. Sigh… rape culture.z
What is it with prosecutors? They are supposed to convict the guilty, but they seem to have this bizarre thing about notches on their guns – they get extra points for convicting the innocent. I mean, anyone can convict a guilty person. It takes a real talent to convict an innocent one. And even when their convictions are proven wrong through DNA and convictions vacated, these prosecutors and police continue to insist that they “got” the right person, and anything that disputes that is a bunch of lies.
Right up until this very day, the prosecutors, police and judges in the Central Park Jogger case insist that the five teenagers they jailed for almost two decades were guilty, despite irrefutable proof that the crime was committed by someone else, identified through DNA, who was languishing in prison for multiple similar assaults. They claim, idiotically, that the Justice System worked. No it didn’t, it deprived five young boys of their youth, exposed them to unspeakable abuse and let the real rapist get away with impunity to perform other horrible assaults – all of which happened only because these police, prosecutors and judges managed to convict the wrong people. The blood of the victims is on their hands, yet who will hold them accountable? The little “slip up” they deny, to this day, cost the citizens of the City of New York around $40 million in compensation.
Thank God for the Innocence Project and similar pro bono organizations whose only axe to grind is protecting the innocent and ensuring Justice. The governor of Illinois commuted all death sentences when it came to light that more prisoners on death row were exonerated than executed, by far.
There is a lot wrong with the Criminal Justice system in America, a system that has more people in prison than the population of several small countries combined, and the highest incarceration rate in the world. Considering the fact that that includes Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and China, that constitutes nothing less than a national disgrace. It has to be stopped.
What is it with prosecutors? Simple. In the USA, they are elected, therefore, they are politicians.
Steve Moore is the guy who said Amanda Knox was framed by the cops in order to cover up the fact that they had lost control of “real killer” Rudy Guede, who in his view was a police informant, Watch the interview with Erin Burnett and Paul Callan to see Moore lose it.
All I can say Jordan is read your own article. Lobato incriminated herself, She and her family’s subsequent efforts to cover up her involvement are fairly obvious. Your baselines insinuations against the justice system are repugnant. Don’t forget a man was tortured and killed. Just because he may have been a homeless drug addict doesn’t mean that he and his family don’t deserve justice.
Maybe you should read the article again… Lobato did not incriminate herself, no cover up is “obvious”, and the “baseline insinuations against the justice system” are spot on.
Catching the right person would be justice… by definition.
I agree. Someone attempted to rape her – and a man was found dead – less than a month apart and in the very same city. That seems pretty conclusive.
From watching too many forensic police shows, people get the idea that you need to use technology to prove things well beyond the level of a reasonable doubt. They get distracted by side issues – Whose footprints were at the crime scene? Whose semen was in the victim’s body? But in basic police work, you only do enough to make your case in court, and any further investigation would be overkill. In fact, additional investigation might end up destroying your own case – so it would be downright counterproductive.
All of those things point to someone who isn’t Lobato. The footprints, the tire tracks, the pubic hair found at the crime scene. Not to mention I saw no indication of inconsistency with the people corroborating her alibi. If they were truly unreliable meth heads, they did a good job of keeping their stories straight. There did seem to be a lot of cherry picking of things that looked favorable to the prosecution though.
People who witness a crime often tell conflicting stories of what they saw. So as a prosecutor, you never want to call a direct witness to the stand. People who talked to the suspect may be guilty of trying to cover up for the suspect. So the best witness is a person who talked to somebody who talked to the suspect. Such a witness is more credible, because they aren’t personally invested in the outcome, and so have an objective viewpoint. The parts of their narrative that contradict the actual evidence can be easily explained by the fact that the people they talked with were lying. The parts of the narrative that support the prosecution’s assertions are obviously true.
In fact, I’m not sure why direct witness testimony and forensic evidence hasn’t been abolished from courtrooms, but we must remember that the legal profession is very conservative and slow to change. However, since plea bargains have largely eliminated the need for trials, it may be a moot point.
You want to abolish testimony under oath and forensic evidence in favor of hearsay?
“Such a witness is more credible, because they aren’t personally invested in the outcome, and so have an objective viewpoint.”
Why? Maybe they dislike the person. Maybe they have other motives.
“as a prosecutor, you never want to call a direct witness to the stand.”
First time I heard that point of view. It’s simply incredible.
“as a prosecutor, you never want to call a direct witness to the stand.”
Oh yes you do.
“Such a witness is more credible, because they aren’t personally invested in the outcome, and so have an objective viewpoint.”
Why? Maybe they dislike someone. Maybe they have other motives. Maybe someone in the chain of gossip was making things up or exaggerating them or changing details without suspecting where it all would lead. “A person who talked to somebody who talked to the suspect”… the “somebody” in the middle of the sentence is not under oath.
“I’m not sure why direct witness testimony and forensic evidence hasn’t been abolished from courtrooms”.
I am. The direct witness is under oath, and evidence is better than hearsay.
“Someone attempted to rape her – and a man was found dead – less than a month apart and in the very same city. That seems pretty conclusive.”
In Las Vegas? Where in an average month there are 400 violent crimes? You can just link up any two of them and that’s conclusive?
Hans
Mussolini is Mussolini.
From the top of his head to the tip of his toes.
Hans, you must be new here. You have missed the irony. Benito has a style of long standing.
Oh! Deep embarrassed blush. Thank you for telling me before I make an even greater fool of myself.
Whether a comment is ironic or taken at face value is irrelevant.
What I found interesting about this case is that hearsay evidence can be quite powerful. A jury reacts to the perceived credibility of the witness – so someone associated with law enforcement, who speaks clearly and convincingly can carry a lot of weight – whether they witnessed the event directly or not. Even if some inconsistency in their story is revealed during cross-examination, it will probably reflect on the original story teller rather than on the witness, who therefore maintains their overall credibility in the eyes of the jury.
Many people reach decisions, not by direct inference from available evidence, but by copying someone else’s opinion. So if a compelling witness expresses a strong opinion that the defendant is guilty, it may matter more than the facts of the case. My only information about this case is the present article, but I can easily believe that Johnson and Thowsen fit the bill.
A trial is not a search for the truth. Rather, the prosecution presents a narrative designed to convince a jury that the defendant is guilty. The defense attempts to cast doubt on the prosecution’s case. What is ironic is that the lack of actual evidence to contest, may have made the job of the defense more difficult. Their best option might have been to construct a convincing counter-narrative in court, rather than the more conventional approach of challenging the prosecution’s case – but it doesn’t appear they did that.
Ah Mull, nice to hear your voice. I’ve missed you.
You should take a closer look at Kirstin’s case. First of all, there is massive evidence that she was 165 miles away at the time of crime. No one saw her at the crime scene and there isn’t a shred of physical evidence that puts here there. The entire case against her is a statement she made to police a couple of weeks after the crime.
The problem is that she had made these same statements to people at times prior to the murder meaning that she couldn’t possibly have been talking about the killing of Bailey. The prior incident happened in May 2001, about six weeks before the murder, where she defended herself with a knife against an attempted sexual assault. The jury never heard the exonerating testimony of these witnesses due to a legally incorrect application of the hearsay rule by the trial judge.
Here is an article I’ve written about the case. Take a look at the links to the affidavits at the bottom of the page.
http://groundreport.com/the-nevada-supreme-court-again-hears-arguments-in-the-case-of-kirstin-lobato/
“A man was tortured and killed”… that means Lobato did it??? Maybe you guys should do your job and catch the right person, instead of posting your hiking trip pictures on facebook
Well, I guess this explains why you think the way you do about Amanda and Raffaele. …or perhaps it is why you think the way you do about Amanda and Raffaele that explains your comments here. I’ve read hundreds of your posts regarding Meredith Kercher’s murder over the past few years and have never been able to understand how you could believe that which you confess to believe. But after reading your comments here it becomes very obvious you have absolutely no critical thought capability. “Labato incriminated herself” ??? Um, yeah, about a month before the murder, but why let facts get in the way. “subsequent efforts to cover up her involvement are fairly obvious.” ??? Really? And what obvious efforts would that be? What a piece of work you are.
It’s only hearsay if it helps the defense. That particular travesty is only eclipsed in ridiculousness by having the same judge presiding in the retrial whose negligence had caused the retrial to be necessary. Judges have far too much arbitrary power. Those subjected to their capricious whims have far too little recourse when that power is used improperly.
Yeah, it baffled me when I read the same judge presided over the retrial.
Obviously, the best person to cover up the judge’s incompetence in the first trial was the same judge.
so…did someone else come after her and rape a dead body? No explanation of the semen at all? Obviously it didn’t come from Kirstin (pun intended)! The officers involved should be forced to serve out her time, and she should get their pensions as compensation.
I so much appreciate this article and the investigation that went into it. Your investigation will eventually lead to her release. But right now it exposes how corrupt and lazy and incompetent the investigators were. It exposes the prosecutors for the vile humans that they are, and also exposes at least one of the just as vile and lazy and corrupt judges. They all have jobs that they are paid well to do. They all not only don’t do those jobs, but they ruin the lives of countless people in the process of not doing their jobs. And then there’s the jurors. Even with the mistakes and generally shoddy work of the defense, there is no excuse for them not to have seen through the judges and prosecutions railroading of the defendant. I could not see myself coming even close to voting that defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
I am wondering about something I had notice throughout the article. Why did the author, Jordan Smith, and the editors, and anyone else responsible for the article, keep flipping back and forth between “Las Vegas” and “Vegas?” I couldn’t see any pattern or explanation for that. Inconsequential to that question to you all; my personal preference is always to refer to Las Vegas as Las Vegas, never as Vegas. Same is true for me about San Francisco. I never call San Francisco “frisco,” even though both Vegas and frisco are relatively commonly used by many.
The only possible explanation for the author failing to write in the manner you prefer would be his utter disregard for your personal opinion.
From the article: “Nor was there any way Lobato could be the source of the semen collected from Bailey’s rectum.” There might, logically, be some difficulty making Diann Parker responsible for the semen. Funny how so many attempts to overturn a guilty plea try to pin the crime on somebody who is conveniently dead.
The article pointed out, fairly subtly, that she may have had an accomplice, one of her “Mexican” friends who protected her previous to the rape.
Who is this alleged accomplice, and why was no DNA test done on him?
Which only further underscores how pathetic the investigation was handled..
If her ‘accomplice’ was one of her Mexican neighbors, testing couldn’t be done because they disappeared soon thereafter (presumably to Mexico).
I think the article is strong when it examines why the case against Lobato was weak. I think the article is weak when it tries to pin the crime on Parker. It is just as weak as the police case against Lobato. Sure, grab onto one person out of probably many who had a motive, claim that some fairly common facts (black eyes, knife to the throat) constitute strong linkages, and declare that you have solved the case. I do think the police did a poor job of investigating and ignored evidence that didn’t fit their theory, but at least they were using a rare fact (penis cut off or groin sliced without knowledge of the outcome) as their attempt to make the linkage. It is possible to demonstrate that the evidence does not point to Lobato without producing “the real killer” like Perry Mason always did.
The article does not try to pin the crime on Parker. As you note, it would have been as difficult for Parker to leave semen in Bailey’s rectum as it would for Lobato to have done so. However, the article does point out circumstantial evidence pointing away from Lobato, possibly to someone who knew Parker, that would have been checked out in a competent investigation.
We really need the Feds to impose long jail terms on all cops, prosecutors, and judges involved in such railroading.
Despite the spectacle of a vigorous prosecution in the courtroom, the evidence was not considered to be relevant to the outcome of this case.
So may I suggest, in the name of efficiency, that instead of an evidence-free prosecution, that bets be placed instead on some sporting event, also unrelated to the case’s evidence, and that both sides agree to forgo their courtroom stagecraft, using a sporting event outcome as surrogate for the determination of a verdict.
Plus, advantage to Vegas with legal gambling; this method might come up against an unfortunate legal obstacle elsewhere.
Better than dunking witches, anyway.
Ooooh – great business idea! Another way to profit off the misery of others. Kudos!
The incompetence of the individuals involved in this case is beyond astounding, it in and of itself is criminal. Sad thing is people look at CSI, forensic files, and investigation discovery and think most people in law enforcement are sherlock holmes types, when in fact, many of them are more barney fife. Wonder how many more millions of miscarriages of justice, and unsolved crimes there are due to having idiots like this in our criminal justice system.
Very fine piece; kudos to the reporter, editor and all involved.
As a lawyer I say: Do not ever volunteer to speak to a member of law enforcement. Do not lie to enforcement; this shouldn’t happen because you are going to simply refuse to speak to them unless you have a lawyer present. *Politely refuse unless and until your lawyer allows it and is with you; this applies even if you are not the suspect and have no reason to think you are. No matter what the officer says, s/he IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. S/he doe not give a shit about your interests, no matter what s/he tells you. Shut the fuck up unless your lawyer is there.
Had someone only pounded the above into the head of poor Kirstin Blaise Lobato she would probably now be a free woman.
Very true, this should be taught in all schools from childhood so that it stays ingrained in people’s head. Especially, innocent people should simply refuse to talk to police or even allow their property to be searched without a warrant. Parents and teachers please note.
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The law professor in this video provides good advice directed at nonlawyers. Basically, nothing you say to the police can help you (exculpatory) but whatsoever you say can and most likely will be used against you (inculpatory).
However, remember that you should provide your identification to law enforcement officers if asked (some states/jurisdictions may be more stringent on ID requirements) and you must provide your drivers license, registration, proof of insurance, et cetera if you are operating a vehicle and are stopped by law enforcement.
The ACLU has a good list of Dos/ Don’ts about interacting with LEOs, to which I will post a link within the next post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
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‘Your Rights and the Police: California’
https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/your-rights-and-police
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Um, no. There isn’t an obligation to carry or “show your papers” in the U.S. In some jurisdictions there is a duty to show ID if the LEO reasonably suspects you of criminal activity. Ask if this is the case. If it is not, you do not have to show ID.
What about in the case this fellow? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK_aUYJxiv4
Great advice.
My son was arrested for burglary 20 years ago right after he turned 18 for burglaries he committed as a juvenile. He admittedly did commit several burglaries of cars and a couple homes, but by the time his case came close to his trial date, his charges had mushroomed into dozens of unsolved new charges. It was obvious to us that the prosecution or police or whomever is in charge of those decisions, that they were just dumping unsolved cases of burglary onto my son. By then, being just days from trial, he accepted a plea deal for felony grand larceny serving 364 days in county jail. Without the case dumping, his loot only amounted to petit larceny. That was the point that solidified our(my family) distrust of the police or prosecutors. If the police want to question you, get a lawyer, it doesn’t matter if you think you have nothing to hide. As far as having a right to a lawyer, do not trust a public defender(pretender). I look back at that time with loads of guilt and regret that I didn’t sell everything I had to hire my son a competent lawyer. The point of this story and how it relates to this article is the adversarial nature of the justice system has been perverted into a game of numbers with prosecutors pushed for conviction rates. Seeking the truth has taken a back seat to clearing cases. As for judge Vega presiding over the retrial after having her original trial overturned, does that sound like justice? Noone, especially someone in such a position as Judge Vega wants to admit to making mistakes. Mistakes that can take away the freedom or possibly life of a potentially innocent person. Justice system? Don’t make me laugh. Great article with plenty of facts. Thanks. Speak up people.
Ah, the ‘finality of conviction’ is the eraser DAs use to hide from objective review of missed or ignored evidence arriving after the second trial. Apparently NV DAs make short shrift of other jurisdictions establishing ‘conviction integrity units’ unconnected to the original players involved in a case.
Thank you Jordan Smith. I think you are awesome!
I look forward to their upcoming interview (I assume) with N V-C and K S.
I think this report comes off as too partisan – it is too eager to say an injustice was done, and much too reluctant to make it clear what the opposing point of view is. My feeling is that you can’t really say that someone has done something wrong until you know why they did what they did and you know their logic is in error.
Buried in this story are relevant facts about the “rumor”: it was testified to directly by Tienkin, quoting Lobato (whether she believed it or not), and by a confession by Lobato (never mind it’s the wrong time and place). For these things to happen, of course, doesn’t mean that she did it, but it means the headline of this story is outright misleading. Like most convicts, innocent or guilty, she was hooked by the mouth.
If we are to make political progress, we need to question the policies themselves rather than just saying their result is wrong. To begin with, why is an admission “against penal interest” admissible, when hearsay usually isn’t? If someone tells you “Yeah I did it” and “No I didn’t” as I understand it only the first will be told in a courtroom, and that more or less is what we see here. The bigger question is why even after all this time people still believe in “confessions”. We get this lovely tradition straight from the Spanish Inquisition – supposedly an innocent person never confesses, except when they do. You take a rape victim, someone with drug addiction, someone at a low moment in their lives thrown off guard and confused, and their word is supposed to be enough for us to believe definitively in their guilt. It’s as if we don’t care about the cost of keeping someone who is malleable but innocent in jail for life, or the peril that the real criminal, now free and clear, poses to society.
The article grasps hesitantly toward its moral, but fails to elucidate it: we ought to demand more proof than words before we send someone to jail for a heinous crime. There should be some sort of confirmation by hard evidence. That is not the law — it’s just a good idea.
The “opposing points of view” refused to participate. Their choice.
What they said on the record was presented and shown to be inaccurate, weak and incomplete.
Please elaborate on what you would have added to make it less partisan.
It’s terrible that prosecutors are more concerned with obtaining any conviction regardless of guilt or innocence. What is worse is that when it seems there is a genuine case of wrongful imprisonment, they are not at all concerned with righting wrongs, and are more concerned with impeding efforts to determine the truth and obtaining justice for the potentially wrongly accused. They seem to have no empathy. I cannot understand why they aren’t clambering over each other to find the truth. If I were the prosecutor, I’d be racked with guilt at the possibility of sending someone to prison for such a crime when they may be innocent.
“Lobato’s case is currently pending before the Nevada Supreme Court.”
Hopefully, this story will help to expose the lack of evidence upon which Ms. Lobato was convicted and bring into focus the questionable justice available within the criminal justice system of the State of Nevada.
If they had nothing to hide (like incompetence or worse…) they would not have overlooked evidence and would be willing to perform DNA tests on all remaining available evidence. Period.
Excellent story.
I am so profoundly proud of Jordan Smith, the author of this extensive article, and of The Intercept for taking this story on and investigating it so thoroughly. Clearly, this young woman was railroaded for a crime she did not commit, which The Intercept recognizes, and I hope and pray to God that they are successful in helping to exonerate her. I don’t know Nevada’s law(s) on the matter; but, if Lobato is exonerated, as I believe she will be eventually, if she can obtain damages from the state for all of the many years that she has been wrongly imprisoned, I also hope and pray that she receives millions of dollars for this gross miscarriage of justice that was perpetrated against her by an obviously criminal state and its authorities. To think that I was born in that county, Clark County, though I have never been back there since I was an infant, even to visit.
This case clearly goes to show, NEVER trust police or VOLUNTEER *ANY* INFORMATION TO THEM WHATSOEVER. I don’t blame Blaise Lobato at all though; for, due to her many years of sexual, physical and drug abuse, she obviously isn’t responsible for correctly determining who she can and cannot trust, and had a tendency to hang around with people who she couldn’t trust, which is quite common for people who have been habitually abused. She is clearly the victim in this case, and her story of the earlier sexual assault by the cretin who turned up dead weeks later, at the hands of someone else, should have been taken seriously, extensively looked into, and she should have been treated as the victim that she obviously was, not the suspect in a murder case with absolutely no concrete evidence proving her involvement in the murder.
Blaise Lobato was presumed guilty from the get-go, and the state “framed” its case against her based on nothing but that presumption of guilt, violating her constitutional rights over and over again. The case against her should have been thrown out long before it was prosecuted, the prosecution in the case should be criminally prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned and disbarred, and the judge should be removed from the bench and be disbarred as well. This kind of case is very from an isolated incident, and occurs all too frequently in practically every county, in every state, in the U.S. more often than not. As a result, it is my personal opinion that almost no one can obtain a fair trial in this country. The vast majority of defendants, especially those accused of murder, and those of non-white skin, are railroaded, particularly in coerced plea “bargain” cases.
Sorry, I meant to say in the third paragraph, “…This kind of case is very FAR from an isolated incident…”!
“and her story of the earlier sexual assault by the cretin who turned up dead weeks later, at the hands of someone else, should have been taken seriously, extensively looked into, and she should have been treated as the victim that she obviously was” –
That isn’t quite true. There has never been any correlation between whoever attacked Kirstin and Duran Bailey. Their descriptions don’t match, either.
Kudos and hats off to Jordan Smith and THE INTERCEPT. The Justice4kirstin team tried for years to get local journalists to do a “real” investigative article about Kirstin’s case. You would think that they would be all over this, but they seemed just as anxious as the prosecutors and courts to sweep it far under the rug out of public scrutiny. Jordan read every trial transcript and then went investigating on her own. We were hoping for an honest article. We are very pleased that we got one. Awesome job telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth Jordan.
Fascinating article, extremely well-written, please keep us updated about what happens next!
Wow gross negligence! This case along with others leaves me with no faith in our judicial system. Especially that fact a journalist is able to investigate the crime more extensively. If the officers would have done their jobs they to might know what we do, the victim/neighbor had the most motive! Fucking incompetent idiots
Jesus, so much for fair trials in this country if your poor or a drug addict with a questionable lifestyle. Beyond a reasonable doubt. If this was a working class white man, like myself, the cops would be laughed at by a jury. Instead of logic and actual evidence it is clear as day that this woman was found guilty purely because how she lived. Not because of any actual evidence. How does that happen? Ill tell you how, judgmental snobs who think they are better than, with egos, and do not worry about letting the real killers get away with it. Everyone involved with condemning this woman I believe, should be ashamed of themselves as it seems The Intercept did more investigating than the police.
Forget Serial. The Intercept should do a lucrative podcast about this case. :-)
Haha! Excellent idea. The incompetence exhibited on the part of the state in this case is really shocking.
My thoughts exactly when I saw the length and depth of this article. Now I see why TI took such exception to the conclusions of Serial. They were doing a similar investigation, in a completely different way.