Murder Before Dawn: 1973 Death of Barbara Jean Kirk Unsolved
19-year-old Barbara Jean Kirk was strangled to death in her Las Vegas apartment in May of 1973. Her case remains unsolved.
murder before dawn
Renzie Kirk, a 21-year-old airman stationed at Nellis Air Force Base on the northeast side of the Las Vegas Valley, left his one-bedroom apartment at 2750 East Bonanza Road before dawn one Thursday morning in May of 1973. His wife, 19-year-old Barbara Jean Kirk, was still sleeping in the bedroom as he closed the front door and headed to work.
Less than an hour after her husband left to report for duty, Barbara Kirk would lose her life in a vicious crime that remains unsolved nearly fifty years later.
Barbara’s husband, Renzie Kirk, served as an airman at Nellis Air Force Base in 1973 (pictured here at that time). The couple had been high school sweethearts back in Tennessee and relocated to Las Vegas in late-1972. Renzie Kirk left the couple’s apartment early in the morning on May 3, 1973 - Barbara would be murdered less than an hour later. (UNLV Digital Collection)
a violent welcome to las vegas
Barbara was originally from the small town of Paris, Tennessee. The year before fate and orders from the US Air Force brought her to southern Nevada, Barbara graduated from Henry County High School. By that time she had been in a long-term relationship with Renzie, who was a year ahead of year at Henry County High, and the couple married over the summer of 1972.
Only a few months after their marriage, the Kirks relocated to Nevada and moved into the Bonanza Gardens apartment complex in East Las Vegas. The apartment complex consisted of several two-story quadplexes and had the benefit of being affordable.
Barbara had worked part-time at a KFC during high school back in Tennessee. Upon moving to Vegas, she obtained a position at the KFC located at 520 North 25th Street, less than a five-minute drive from the newlywed couple’s apartment.
Shortly after settling into her new city, Barbara found herself the victim of a violent crime. A few minutes before 11:30 a.m. on November 27, 1972, a man walked into the KFC where Barbara worked and ordered 72 cents worth of chicken while she was operating the register. Barbara packed the customer’s order into a white paper bag bearing the Colonel’s face, but when she went to hand the customer his food he brandished a handgun tucked in his pants. The man demanded Barbara Jean empty the contents of the cash register into the bag containing his chicken, a request to which she readily complied. Barbara handed the man the bag of chicken along with the $150 in the register. He then exited the store and sped off in a yellow Mustang onto 25th Street.
Local Las Vegas newspapers covered the murder of Barbara Jean Kirk as the murder of a young woman while alone in her apartment shocked the community. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ)
burglary and murder
Renzie Kirk’s military duties required him to report at Nellis Air Force Base in the early morning hours. After waking and donning his uniform, Renzie exited apartment 115-C at about 4:30 a.m. on May 3, 1973.
At 5:10 a.m. – about forty minutes after Renzie left for work – a scream from the Kirk residence startled a neighbor in a nearby apartment. Twenty minutes passed with no further signs that anything was wrong in apartment 115-C.
Then, at 5:30 a.m., two men that also lived at the Bonanza Gardens complex spotted dark smoke seeping from the door and windows of the Kirks’ apartment. The concerned neighbors ran to the apartment and pounded on the door. After receiving no response, they smashed a window and entered the unit.
What they discovered inside the apartment shocked both men.
Lying in the middle of the living room floor was the lifeless body of Barbara Jean Kirk. The young woman had items of clothing wrapped around her neck.
The neighbors dragged Barbara’s body outside and covered it with a blanket before calling the Fire Department. Firefighters received the call reporting the blaze at 5:47 a.m., but the small fire had already been extinguished by the time they arrived. Arson investigators later determined the fire had been started near an end table and some drapes, with the flames confined to a small area near the front of the Kirks’ apartment.
Homicide detectives soon arrived on the scene and commenced the work of trying to identify Barbara’s killer. The apartment bore the signs of a struggle between the young woman and her attacker, and a dresser in the bedroom had been ransacked. Barbara had been sexually assaulted by her assailant and was then strangled to death with her nightgown and a KFC apron. The fire started by her killer - presumably to cover up his crime - did not cause any injuries to Barbara’s body.
Barbara’s remains were returned to her native Tennessee where she was buried by her family in Spring Hill Cemetery.
The murder of Barbara Jean Kirk remains unsolved after nearly 50 years. The Google Maps image above shows the neighborhood where the crime occurred. Also featured is how the local news covered the Kirk murder investigation, as well as news coverage of the arrest of a resident of the Bonanza Gardens apartment complex on charges of sexual assault in 1968. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ/Google Maps)
a half-century without answers
It took the police only a day to rule out Renzie Kirk as a suspect in Barbara’s murder. It appeared that Barbara was killed as part of a burglary of the apartment. But in reality the detectives assigned the case had little evidence to go on that would help develop a suspect. An article in a local Las Vegas newspaper from the year following the murder indicated that police still had not determined a motive behind Barbara’s murder.
In 1997, Barbara’s elderly parents announced a $10,000 reward for any information leading to a suspect in their daughter’s murder. Due to the needs involving the raising of their five other children, Barbara’s parents weren’t able to save up the reward money until nearly a quarter-century had passed from the time of their daughter’s untimely death. Barbara’s mother told a reporter with the Las Vegas Sun, “It’s haunted me not knowing why and who. It’s something a person don’t never get over.”
There are several questions surrounding this unsolved case. Was burglary the main motive or was it murder? It appears the killer was watching the Kirks’ apartment in some way or another since the break-in occurred not long after Renzie left for work.
The murder of Barbara Kirk could have been a crime of opportunity – she had been the victim of a violent crime only a short distance from her apartment just a few months before her death. But it is equally as likely that this was a premeditated assault by someone with the time and proximity to Barbara that allowed details of the evil attack to be planned.
One final notable fact of this case that stands out to us is that a resident of the Bonanza Gardens apartments by the name of Stanley G. Stevens was arrested in 1968 – five years before the Kirk murder – on charges of sexually assaulting and beating a 24-year-old cocktail waitress after she walked in on the man and an accomplice ransacking her apartment. The charges were later dropped against this neighbor when the cocktail waitress refused to testify against him – but the individual had a history of arrests for other burglary and forgery charges. While Stevens was never publicly linked to the Kirk murder, it is interesting that an individual facing prior arrests for burglary and sexual assault was living in the same complex as Barbara not long before her murder.