about mayhem in the desert
meet the creators
Mrs. & Mr. Smith, creators and authors of Mayhem in the Desert.
Mayhem in the Desert is created and written by us, Meagan and Anthony Smith. We were both born and raised here in Las Vegas (we even met while attending the same high school). We both grew up hearing our relatives recount famous crimes that helped define the city, as well as the influence of organized crime that they witnessed in their day-to-day lives during the 60’s and 70’s.
We decided to bring these and other true crime stories to life by creating a website to tell the tales about the darker side of Sin City and to explore how this oftentimes forgotten history shaped our hometown. We are both long-time true crime fans, and a key inspiration for the structure and style of Mayhem in the Desert is Crime Library, which is now defunct but was once the one-stop place on the Internet for longform true crime stories.
When not researching and writing Mayhem in the Desert, Meagan works on varied art projects and Anthony works as an attorney.
Sources
The Las Vegas-Clark County Library District is a valuable resource for information about Las Vegas history. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District)
The Las Vegas-Clark County Library District hosts an invaluable collection of newspaper archives that shed light on lost pieces of local history and which was a crucial part of our research into true crime tales from Vegas past. Other valuable resources in gaining information for our site were the UNLV Digital Collection, the Las Vegas Historical Society, and the University of California-Riverside Digital Newspaper Collection. Finally, we had the benefit of stories from our relatives that have lived in Las Vegas for decades and recall the public reaction to many of the crimes recounted at Mayhem in the Desert.