A Torso in the Pond: The Murder of Ladonna Milam

A Grisly Discovery

A trip to the fishing pond at Veteran’s Memorial Park in Boulder City took a gruesome turn on the morning of June 23, 2003. A woman’s torso was located in two parts floating in the pond, the victim’s abdomen having been sliced vertically. A search of the park then revealed additional indications of the unknown brutality that had occurred – a human ear with an earring was located near the pond, and a bloodied blouse was found in a trashcan at the park.

It did not take long to tie the grisly crime scene to the sudden disappearance of a local Boulder City resident from her job as a maid at the Hacienda Hotel located just outside of town on the way toward the Nevada-Arizona border. 49-year-old Ladonna Milam received a request for extra towels from Room 1651 while working the night of June 22, 2003. It is unknown whether Ladonna experienced any hesitation as she carried four fresh towels up to the room occupied by a young man that had left the on-duty clerk at the hotel with an uneasy feeling over due to his skittish behavior and refusal to make eye contact. However, we do know that Ladonna was never seen alive again after visiting Room 1651.

Surveillance footage would show the occupant of Room 1651 carrying a large duffel bag as he took the hotel elevator to the ground floor at around 1:00 a.m. the morning of June 23, 2003.

Local media covered the quick arrest of a suspect in the murder of hotel maid Ladonna Milam, who was murdered by part-time college student Perry Monroe in Room 1651 of the Hacienda Hotel near Boulder City. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ/TripAdvisor/Wikipedia)

Capturing a killer

The hunt for Ladonna Milam’s killer did not last long. Perry Monroe, a 29-year-old University of California, Davis student, had booked Room 1651 at the Hacienda Hotel using his own credit card. Police were quickly able to track Monroe’s movements and arrested him as he slept in a car at a roadside rest stop near Fresno, California.

An inventory of Monroe’s vehicle unveiled more macabre discoveries. The victim’s hands were located inside the trunk of the car. Investigators also found strands of Monroe’s hair and packaging for a hacksaw along with blades in the garbage of Room 1651. The hacksaw had been purchased days earlier while Monroe was traveling through Oklahoma.

Within the week, Monroe was ordered to be extradited back to Las Vegas to stand trial for the brutal slaying. It was soon clear that what prosecutors thought would be a straightforward case would present unexpected delays, though none could anticipate it would take over a decade until the final resolution of the matter.

The murder case against Perry Monroe lasted for over a decade, all of which was covered regularly by local Las Vegas media as seen here, including repeated continuances of the proceedings to determine whether Monroe was competent to stand trial. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ)

Competency questions

Perry Carl Monroe came from a close family and was a well-known fixture of Alameda, California, throughout his high school years. Monroe was an accomplished athlete, holding records as a swimmer and serving as captain of his school’s water polo team. He was liked by his fellow students and was voted prom king his senior year. When he enrolled at UC Davis, he appeared to be unimpeded as he moved toward his goal of becoming a doctor.

Then his behavior began to change in college. The outgoing athlete became withdrawn, with some friends chalking the changes up to depression while other speculated that Monroe showed signs of autism. Behavior issues eventually led Monroe to start attending classes more sporadically as he moved back in with his parents and took up work as a lifeguard.

It came out during the initial stages of the criminal case that Monroe had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. This then led to him being deemed incompetent to understand the charges against him by Judge Kathy Hardcastle, who ordered Monroe to be sent to Nevada’s only maximum security facility for criminal inmates with severe mental illness at Lakes Crossing.

After over a decade of treatment designed to render Monroe competent enough to stand trial, the now-41-year-old defendant stood in the Las Vegas courtroom of Judge Jennifer Togliatti and pleaded guilty to the murder of Ladonna Milam. The court handed down two life sentences for Monroe during the 2015 hearing.

Ladonna’s widow, Jerry Milam, remarked on his wife being a kind and caring person and told reporters, “It’s over with, and I’ve just got to walk away from it and leave it alone. If you go prying into that stuff, you get in trouble, big trouble with yourself.”

Las Vegas media speculated over whether Perry Monroe committed additional murders during the several weeks he traveled across the United States before the murder of Ladonna Milam, though no definitive ties to other crimes was found. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ)

Links to Other Murders?

Questions remain about Monroe’s crime. First, is the motive. Monroe and Milam had no prior connections, and the medical examiner determined that sexual assault was not a motive. And nothing in Monroe’s history showed this sort of propensity for extreme violence. He had a few misdemeanor arrests, but never for a violent crime.

The other looming question is whether Perry Monroe was responsible for any other murders. The part-time college student had embarked on a several week cross-country journey before perpetrating his vicious crime, and detectives on the case actively sought any connections between Monroe and related murders in the States he passed through, though no firm links were identified. Notably, Monroe’s crime peripherally intersected with the nationally-followed Scott Peterson trial over the murder of his wife, Laci. Media speculated that Peterson’s attorney’s would attempt to allude to Monroe as being the real killer of Laci Peterson.

Today, Perry Monroe remains incarcerated and the Hacienda has now been rebranded as the Hoover Dam Lodge.