A Vanishing at Chaparral High: The Murder of Catherine Tighe

**Catherine Tighe, who went missing from Chaparral High School in 1983. Her body was found not far away near Twain and Boulder Highway. The Tighe murder remains unsolved. (LVMPD)**

This month marks forty years since 17-year-old Catherine Tighe vanished from her Las Vegas high school. Her abduction and subsequent murder remain unsolved all these decades later, but the murder bears striking similarities to another infamous Las Vegas crime – the 1979 slaying of Kim Bryant.

Coverage of the Tighe murder covered more than a decade in Las Vegas newspapers. The last article covering the unsolved crime was published in 1997. Google Map showing the area where Tighe’s body was recovered not far from Chaparral High School, where the student went missing (LVRJ/Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/Google/CCSD)

disappearing from school

Catherine Tighe was born in New York but she had grown up in Las Vegas. Early 1983 marked the halfway point of Catherine’s junior year at Chaparral High School on the southeastern side of Las Vegas. She was excited to have recently taken on a job working in the school’s cafeteria to earn some spending money, and she was described by her classmates as a polite and quiet girl.

It was just about 1:30 p.m. on February 7, 1983, and Catherine was supposed to meet a friend to pick her up from school. But she never showed up to meet her ride. Adding to the mysterious circumstances of Catherine’s no-show for her ride, none of her fellow classmates remembered seeing Catherine on campus after classes ended that day.

Failing to come home from school was far from Catherine’s typical behavior, which prompted her parents to immediately involve law enforcement in searching for their daughter’s whereabouts. Police had no luck in locating the young student, and contemporary local news reports indicated this was a case where someone had truly disappeared without a trace.

Nearly a month would pass before Catherine’s terrible fate was discovered. A man collecting empty cans in a vacant desert lot between Twain and Indios near Boulder Highway discovered the partially clothed body of a young woman lying face down under a bush on the morning of March 2, 1983. The man immediately contacted the police, and investigators soon identified the remains as those of Catherine Tighe.

The Clark County Coroner’s Office determined that Catherine died from manual strangulation and that she had been sexually assaulted prior to her murder. Homicide detectives believe Catherine was murdered within one to two hours after her abduction, and they noted the remains were discovered not far from Chaparral High School. But investigators had as little evidence to go on regarding the circumstances of Catherine’s murder as they did her disappearance.

Chief of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department homicide division, Lieutenant John Conner, told local reporters, “She left school at 1:30 pm as she normally did, and we have no idea who picked her. We don’t know if she went willingly. We have nothing to go on.”

From there, the case went cold.

The Las Vegas press covered the possibility that serial killer Herbert James Coddington may have been responsible for the Tighe murder. Coddington was believed to have murdered at 12-year-old girl in Las Vegas in 1981, only two years before the Tighe slaying. (Murderpedia/LVRJ/Las Vegas-Clark County Library District)

Renewed interest in the Tighe murder was generated in 1987 after the arrest of Herbert James Coddington in South Lake Tahoe for murdering two women chaperoning a pair of young models. After his arrest, Coddington was also charged with the 1981 murder of 12-year-old Sheila Jo Keister in Las Vegas. The fact that Keister had been kidnapped in the middle of the day and died from strangulation caused some to speculate about connections between Coddington and the Catherine Tighe murder. After all, Coddington lived in Las Vegas between 1980 and 1984. But Metro homicide detectives were clear to reporters that they did not believe Coddington was Catherine’s killer.

Johnny Blake Peterson, killer of Kim Bryant and Diana Hanson. Peterson is being looked at for his potential involvement in up to five murders around the Las Vegas area during the 70’s - 80’s. Peterson died in 1993. (LVMPD)

Victim of a serial killer?

Several aspects of Catherine’s abduction and murder bear similarities to another crime that occurred almost exactly four years earlier. 16-year-old Kim Bryant was waiting at the Dairy Queen across from her Las Vegas high school just after 10:00 a.m. on the morning of January 26, 1979. Bryant was abducted by an unknown man in a vehicle, and her body was later found in a desert area near Buffalo Avenue and Charleston Boulevard. Bryant died due to several blows to the head from a large rock, and her body bore signs of sexual assault. Her slaying remained unsolved for decades.

It took over forty years, but the work of Othram Labs and local Las Vegas philanthropists eventually solved the murder of Kim Bryant. Her killer was a Las Vegas resident by the name of Johnny Blake Peterson.

Police used genetic evidence to link Peterson to another crime – the 1983 murder of 22-year-old Diana Hanson. She had just returned home from college to Las Vegas for the holidays. Hanson went jogging on an afternoon in late-December but never returned to her parents’ house. Her body was later found in the desert near Spring Mountain Road and Buffalo Avenue - not far from where Bryant’s remains were located. Hanson’s killer had stabbed her repeatedly, and like Bryant she was sexually assaulted prior to her murder.

Little information is available about Johnny Blake Peterson. He was born and raised in Las Vegas. Peterson worked as a plasterer and was married with two children. He died at age 32 in January of 1993 at a Las Vegas hospital, but his obituary is silent on his cause of death.

Kim Bryant had been abducted from her high school just like Catherine Tighe, and both girls were sexually assaulted before being murdered in a desert area not long after their disappearances. Police announced that they are looking at Peterson’s involvement in up to five unsolved murders in the Las Vegas area. And one 1983 news article about the Tighe murder stated that her abduction was part of “an alarming number of teenage girls and young women who have vanished mysteriously from the streets of Las Vegas in broad daylight.” Could Peterson be responsible for the murder of Catherine Tighe?

While there may be some potentially promising suspects in the murder of Catherine Tighe, her case remains unsolved.