The Unsolved Torso Murders of Las Vegas

“In 19 years on the force, I’ve never seen anything to this extreme. I’ve talked to fellow officers and they’ve dealt with dismemberment, but on a much smaller scale.”

— Sergeant Larry Bradley, North Las Vegas Police Department

Two unsolved torso murders occurred during the 1990’s boom years in Las Vegas. Local press covered the murders of “Silver State Jane Doe” and “Civic Center John Doe,” with both cases characterized by dismemberment of the victims. However, the Silver State Jane Doe case piqued more public interest and accordingly garnered more local press coverage. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ/Clark County Coroner’s Office)

Boomtown Murders

Two grisly unsolved murders from the 1990’s boom years of Las Vegas highlight the transient undercurrent of the rapidly growing city. Known only as Silver State Jane Doe and Civic Center John Doe, these individuals were robbed not only of their lives but also of their identities in a city that at times is marked by harsh anonymity for those seeking a new life in the desert.

Silver State Jane Doe

The employees on duty the afternoon of September 19, 1995, at the Silver State Disposal recycling center located at 333 West Gowan Road in North Las Vegas were performing the often tedious work of sorting the incoming trash when one of the workers yelled to stop the conveyer belt.

Amidst the glass and plastic bottles was a woman’s bloody torso from the knees to the waist. It was not long before homicide detectives were on the scene at the Silver State Disposal plant to begin the laborious process of sifting through the day’s incoming trash in an effort to locate the rest of the unknown woman’s remains.

Even though it was mid-September, the temperature that afternoon still reached 95 degrees. The pungent smell from the heaps of refuse was almost unbearable at times – but the search had to continue.

“Got something!” one of the detectives yelled after four hours of scouring through trash.

The severed head of a young woman, her 7-inch long dark brown hair with auburn highlights in draggled disarray, had been found. A bit more searching revealed the woman’s arms among the day’s debris. Before the day was done, detectives discovered a mauve American Tourister suitcase containing the victim’s legs.

Detectives were unable to find the woman’s chest, which would render the process of determining a cause of death nearly impossible. “We’ll probably never have a definitive cause of death unless we find all the body parts,” Metro Sgt. Ken Hefner told the Las Vegas-Review Journal. Hefner went on to say, “If the piece we’re missing has got a shotgun hole, then we know she was shot.”

Serial killer Wayne Adam Ford was suspected of murdering at least six women across California and Nevada. Ford confessed to murdering sex worker Tina Gibbs after meeting her on a Las Vegas street in 1998. Homicide detectives looked into Ford in relation to the murder of Silver State Jane Doe due to Ford working as a cab driver in North Las Vegas during the mid-90’s, but police felt the timeline was not right to consider Ford a suspect. The shocking circumstances of Wayne Adam Ford’s arrest - he walked into a California police station and took a severed human body part from his pocket - resulted in extensive local and national press coverage. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ)

The Investigation

The unidentified woman’s remains were taken to the office of the Clark County Coroner. After conducting an autopsy, the medical examiner determined that the victim was a Latina woman between 20 and 30 years old, standing about five feet tall and weighing 200 pounds.

However, the investigation revealed little in the way of identifying marks. The victim had a scar running just over an inch long above the knee on one of her legs. She was missing a few teeth and also had several fillings. Her right ear bore two piercings with one in her left ear.

Lt. Greg Jolley of Metro said the Jane Doe had been murdered three or four days before the gruesome discovery at Silver State Disposal. Homicide detectives determined based on “business debris” found near the recovered body parts that the victim’s remains were brought to the center by commercial recycling trucks operating in an area bordered by East Flamingo Road, South Eastern Avenue, South Maryland Parkway, and Sunset Road.

Some thought the case had gained new life in 1998 when former Las Vegas resident Wayne Adam Ford was arrested in California after walking into a Humboldt County police station and pulling the severed breast of a woman from his pocket. Ford confessed to four murders across California, and he was suspected to be involved in the slayings of as many as six women. Ford had obtained a work card from the Las Vegas police and was employed for a period of time with the North Las Vegas Cab Company during the mid-90’s.

Ford confessed to the murder of Tina Gibbs, a sex worker that plied her trade on the streets of Las Vegas for several months after moving from her native Tacoma, Washington. After soliciting Gibbs’ services one night on Tropicana Avenue in April or May of 1998, Ford murdered Gibbs and disposed of her body in Kern County, California.

Ford’s involvement with the Gibbs murder coupled with his penchant for dismembering his victims caused Vegas homicide detectives to look into his involvement with the murder of Silver State Jane Doe. However, Metro homicide detective Lt. Wayne Petersen said, “Dismemberment homicides are extremely rare, but it doesn’t appear the timeframe fits.”

Silver State Jane Doe remains unidentified, and no suspects have been identified in relation to her murder. As one of the detectives on the case put it, “We can’t link her to anything or any missing persons. We haven’t had a name yet.”

Civic Center John Doe

It was about 2:20 a.m. on the chilly morning of October 13, 1991, when a homeless individual searching for aluminum cans in a dumpster behind an AM-PM convenience store in North Las Vegas made a horrific discovery.

A heavily tattooed male torso partially wrapped in a plastic garbage bag had been tossed in among the trash behind the store located at 2000 East Cheyenne Avenue, close to the intersection of Cheyenne and Civic Center Drive. Homicide detectives responding to the scene searched the rest of the dumpster and found another plastic garbage bag containing the severed forearms and hands of the unknown victim.

Officers from the North Las Vegas Police Department inspected other dumpsters in the vicinity, including those located at several nearby businesses, but no other human remains were located. Detectives determined that the garbage bags containing the victim’s remains had been placed in the dumpster behind AM-PM between midnight and 2:00 a.m. on the night of October 13th.

**Some of the minimal local press coverage of the case reported on police theories about the cause of death for Civic Center John Doe. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ)**

No I.D. and No Suspects

The lack of a head meant no dental records, complicating efforts by North Las Vegas homicide detectives to identify the body. And while the victim’s death was determined to be a homicide, the medical examiner was unable to provide a specific cause of death.

Investigators were able to gather at least some information about the deceased that could help in the identification process. The victim was either Latino or white and between 30 – 50 years of age. But most notably, the recovered remains had several unique tattoos that police hoped would result in a name to match with the torso, hands, and forearms.

At the center of the victim’s chest was a large letter “N.” The upper right chest of the unidentified torso bore the bust of a woman wearing a sombrero with the words “Brown Sugar” on the brim. Further down, the name “Monique” was tattooed on the right middle section of the victim’s chest, with a caricature of the Pink Panther on the right side of his stomach. A blurred double rose in black ink anchored the lower left chest. The John Doe’s back contained a cartoon caricature of a muscular man with a bulldog’s face on the right upper back near the shoulder.

The victim’s forearms also contained identifying tattoos. The right forearm contained the profile of a skull smoking a cigarette and wearing a ballcap. On the left forearm was the word “Dell.”

The police developed the theory that Civic Center John Doe died of a gunshot wound to the head. This theory was premised in part on the fact that the wounds to the victim’s torso would have been insufficient to cause death and because John Doe was dismembered postmortem. However, Clark County Coroner Ron Flud was quick to note, “That doesn’t mean there weren’t other ways he could have died.”

Investigators on the case also believed the victim was murdered elsewhere and then disposed of in North Las Vegas. But due to the lack of a victim identification, detectives were unable to pin down whether the victim was even a resident of Nevada or if he had been murdered out-of-state only to be deposited in the transient hub of 90’s Vegas a few hundred feet from a major interstate highway.

“In 19 years on the force, I’ve never seen anything to this extreme,” Sergeant Larry Bradley told reporters. “I’ve talked to fellow officers and they’ve dealt with dismemberment, but on a much smaller scale.”

The Clark County Coroner website used to provide links and information from its files about unidentified persons, and for several years photos of Civic Center John Doe’s various tattoos were available to the public in the hope someone would be familiar with the tattoos dotting the remains. But over thirty years later, no one has identified the man whose torso was unceremoniously disposed of behind an AM-PM in North Las Vegas.

These authors were here in Las Vegas during the massive boom of the 1990’s, which saw tens of thousands of people per year moving to sprawling desert subdivisions. The extraordinary population explosion was a frequent topic of coverage in the local press. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ)

Cold Cases in the Booming Desert

As the city of Las Vegas exploded with tens of thousands of new residents per year during the early-to-mid 90’s, not all of the newcomers to town had deep roots in the city. And the rapid growth coupled with the natural anonymity provided by urban centers made Las Vegas an attractive place for a wide variety of predators.

The circumstances surrounding the murders of Silver State Jane Doe and Civic Center John Doe can only be speculated upon based on the sparse evidence available. Was Silver State Jane Doe a long-term resident of Vegas that crossed paths with a killer passing through town or was she a recent transplant to the city herself? While Wayne Adam Ford was not responsible for the murder of Silver State Jane Doe, he was but one of many men that satisfied his murderous impulses during a short stay in the desert boomtown. Perhaps Silver State Jane Doe fell victim to circumstances similar to those that resulted in the death of Tina Gibbs in 1998.

As for Civic Center John Doe, did he find himself on the wrong side of an argument - or was he the victim of the worst occupational hazard of organized crime. It’s also possible the unknown victim was the target of someone whose only motive was the act of killing itself. As Vegas homicide detectives noted, dismemberment murders are rare. The overkill that marked Civic Center John Doe’s death could be the indicia of a compulsive killer.

While the cases of Silver State Jane Doe and Civic Center John Doe have been unsolved for decades, there is still hope that there may be resolution for these unknown victims. Companies such as Othram Labs have refined genetic testing techniques to allow identifications using a small sample size, which has already lead to the resolution of several cold cases in the Las Vegas area.