Abduction at Primm: The Kidnapping and Murder of Alexander Harris

Alexander Harris was abducted from the video arcade at Whiskey Pete’s in November of 1987. His disappearance captured local press attention, coverage that only amplified once Harris’ body was found a month after his disappearance under a nearby mobile home. Police released a suspect of the man seen leading Harris out of the hotel. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ/Wikipedia)

Abduction from Whiskey Pete’s

Thanksgiving weekend of 1987. Roxanne Harris traveled to Las Vegas with her parents and 7-year-old son, Alexander, for a short holiday trip. The family decided to make a short stop at Whiskey Pete’s Hotel and Casino in Primm on their way back to their home in Mountain View, California. Located right on the state line, Primm is the last stop for those seeking one last taste of legal gaming before entering California.

Roxanne left Alexander in the Whiskey Pete’s video arcade while she and her parents gambled in the casino. But when she returned after twenty minutes, her son was nowhere to be found. A review of video surveillance footage showed a man that appeared to be in his mid-thirties leading Alexander out of the hotel by the hand. Several witnesses recalled seeing the man walking out with the child, but they presumed the two were father and son because the boy didn’t appear to be in any sort of distress.

An initial search turned up nothing. Alexander Harris had disappeared.

Computer programmer Howard Lee Haupt was charged with the murder of Alexander Harris, and his five week long trial garnered significant media attention in Las Vegas. Haupt was acquitted of murder due to the lack of evidence in support of the State’s case. (Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/LVRJ/UCR)

A Suspect and a Flimsy Case

But the mystery of his disappearance would be resolved in tragic fashion a little over a month later. Thirty-three days after being walked out of Whiskey Pete’s by a stranger, the body of Alexander Harris was located by a gardener underneath the nearby trailer of a casino manager. The boy’s body had no discernible signs of physical trauma, and the cause of death was ruled to be suffocation.

Homicide detectives quickly ruled out relatives as suspects in the boy’s murder, and the focus turned to identifying an individual that matched eyewitness accounts of the man the led Alexander out of the casino. Detectives soon homed in on San Diego computer programmer Howard Lee Haupt, who was staying at Whiskey Pete’s at the time of Alexander’s abduction and who bore a resemblance to police sketches of the suspected abductor. Haupt was arrested in February of 1988 and extradited to Las Vegas to stand trial for murder.

The problems with the State’s case against Haupt were immediately apparent. First, though Haupt resembled the police sketch of the suspect, eyewitnesses could not identify Haupt as the abductor in a police lineup. Another hole in the case against Haupt was that investigators were unable to identify any physical evidence linking him to the crime after a search of both Haupt’s house and vehicle. And perhaps the most fatal fact that prosecutors were forced to contend with was that Haupt had two witnesses that could place him sailing at the same time that Alexander Harris was walked out of Whiskey Pete’s.

The progression of the case revealed that though prosecutors advanced enough evidence to take the matter to trial, the judges presiding over the matter were skeptical of the strength of the case against Haupt, which was reflected in Haupt’s bail being reduced while he faced charges carrying a potential death sentence if convicted.

The murder trial lasted five weeks, and dozens of witnesses offered testimony for each side. At the close of evidence, a legal uproar occurred when trial Judge Stephen Huffaker indicated he may instruct the jury to acquit Haupt due to the weakness of the evidence against him. District Attorney Mel Harmon responded by seeking emergency orders from the Nevada Supreme Court to keep Judge Huffaker from making such instructions to the jury, and lead homicide detective on the Harris case Tom Dillard even made an intimidating phone call to the judge as a means of extralegal persuasion (Dillard was docked one week of pay for his transgression of intimidating the judiciary).

Ultimately, Judge Huffaker did not instruct the jury to acquit. But he did not have to as the jury reached the verdict of not guilty entirely on their own. Haupt later filed a lawsuit for millions of dollars due to police ignoring key evidence of his innocence.

In 1997, another 7-year-old child was murdered in a Primm casino after being left in a video arcade while the parent gambled. Jeremy Strohmeyer, a Long Beach teenager, assaulted and murdered Sherrice Iverson at the Primadonna Resort. His case received wide press coverage in both California and Nevada, along with his friend David Cash, Jr., who witnessed the crime but did nothing to stop it. (UCR/Las Vegas-Clark County Library District/Murderpedia.com)

Another Murder of Another Child in Primm

In May of 1997, yet another horrific crime against a child would occur at a Primm casino. On the morning of May 25, 1997, 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson was unsupervised in the casino arcade at Primadonna Resort and Casino while her father gambled. 18-year-old Long Beach, California resident Jeremy Strohmeyer followed Iverson into a bathroom of the casino where he sexually assaulted and murdered the young girl. Strohmeyer ultimately pled guilty to the crime and received four life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Though never charged with a crime, a controversial figure in the Sherrice Iverson murder case was David Cash, Jr., a friend of Strohmeyer that was with him in the Primadonna Resort casino on the morning that Iverson was killed. Cash saw his friend forcibly take Iverson into a bathroom stall and even witnessed Strohmeyer with his hand over Iverson’s mouth. Instead of reporting this crime in progress, Cash left the restroom and was later joined by Strohmeyer. David Cash courted public outcry over his callous disregard over his inaction in the murder of Sherrice Iverson, telling reporters: “I'm not going to get upset over somebody else's life. I just worry about myself first. I'm not going to lose sleep over somebody else's problems."

While the murders of Alexander Harris and Sherrice Iverson ten years apart in the casinos uttering a final siren call to Californians on their way back home are irreparable losses beyond which words can describe, there was at least some degree of justice served in relation to Iverson’s death. Over thirty years later, there still is no indication that the unknown man responsible for the death of Alexander Harris is any closer to being identified, let alone prosecuted.