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Kirstin Lobato
Convicted killer turned down
plea deal
By GLENN PUIT , May 29,
2002, Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
 Prior to her conviction on a first-degree
murder charge, Kirstin Lobato turned down a deal that offered
three years in prison for the killing and sexual mutilation of
a homeless man.
Defense attorney Gloria Navarro
said Tuesday that Lobato, who now faces at least 40 years in
prison when she is sentenced July 2, refused to plead guilty
because she knew she was innocent.
"She placed her belief
in the justice system, and she ended up being convicted of a
crime that she did not commit," Navarro said.
On May 18, a Clark County jury
convicted Lobato, 19, of first-degree murder and sexual penetration
of a corpse in the slaying of Duran Bailey, who was bludgeoned
and stabbed to death behind a West Flamingo Road trash bin last
summer. His penis was severed after death.
Special Public Defender Philip
Kohn and Navarro filed a motion Tuesday seeking a new trial for
Lobato, saying a crucial witness in the Panaca woman's trial
is a proven liar.
Korinda Martin told jurors
she and Lobato were at the Clark County Detention Center and
Lobato confessed to her about killing Bailey.
"She was boasting about
it," Martin testified.
Martin, a former nurse serving
time for robbing and coercing one of her patients, said Lobato
had described Bailey as her drug connection.
Now, Lobato's attorneys say
they have proof from police that Martin perjured herself during
the trial.
"She was the linchpin,
the star witness, the most important witness," Navarro said.
"She is the only one who connects my client to the scene."
Navarro said when Martin testified,
Kohn grilled her about the possibility that Martin had fabricated
letters sent to a judge on Martin's behalf in her own criminal
case.
"She denied it under oath,
and she was very convincing," Navarro said.
But the defense attorneys subsequently
had the letters examined by Las Vegas police. Navarro said a
handwriting analysis by police shows that Martin did fabricate
the letters.
"Clearly, she would say
anything to help herself; she would even commit perjury,"
Navarro said.
Clark County Chief Deputy District
Attorney William Kephart has said Martin's account of the Lobato
confession was highly credible and was one part of a litany of
facts showing Lobato is guilty.
During his closing argument
in the trial, Kephart said Lobato met up with Bailey when Lobato
was at the end of a three-day drug binge.
During the trial, authorities
played for the jury a taped statement in which Lobato told police
about stabbing at a man's penis while fending off a sexual assault
in Las Vegas. They also presented Martin's testimony and a handful
of witnesses who said Lobato made other incriminating statements
about cutting off a man's penis.
The defense contended those
statements related to another incident and that Lobato never
met Bailey.
Not mentioned in the defense's
motion for a new trial is the fact that during their deliberations,
the jury in the case sent some seemingly curious notes to District
Judge Valorie Vega.
The jurors "were scared
of her (Lobato's) family," Navarro said, not elaborating
about the contents of the notes.
Also not in the motion is the
fact that the jury in the Lobato case chose to deliberate until
nearly 2 a.m. on a Saturday before returning its verdict. Jurors
were given that option by Vega, who also gave them a chance to
complete their deliberations at a later date.
Navarro said it's possible
that those issues could be the subject of future appeals.
Also in their motion, Kohn
and Navarro argue that Lobato deserves a new trial because of
a decision to limit the testimony of a defense forensics expert
who was going to say there was no physical evidence tying Lobato
to the bloody crime scene.
Lobato found guilty of murder:
Teen-ager faces July 2 sentencing
hearing in homeless man's slaying
By GLENN PUIT , May 19,
2002, Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
In a verdict read shortly before
3 a.m. Saturday, a Lincoln County teen-ager was found guilty
of murder in the death last year of a homeless man whose penis
was severed after death.
Kirstin Lobato, 19, stood still
as the verdict was read in the courtroom of District Judge Valorie
Vega.
But within minutes, she sat
at the defense table and wept. A tissue in her hand, she looked
toward the ceiling of the courtroom.
Lobato had been free on house
arrest during her trial on charges arising from the July 8 slaying
of Duran Bailey, 44. Following her conviction, she was placed
back in custody.
She will remain in the Clark
County Detention Center pending her July 2 sentencing hearing
before Vega.
The prosecution and defense
have agreed to recommend a sentence of 40 to 100 years in prison
for the first-degree murder conviction. Lobato could have been
sentenced to life without possibility of parole on that count.
Jurors also found her guilty
of sexual penetration of a dead body, a felony carrying a possible
sentence of five years to life.
Jurors heard seven days of
testimony before listening to closing arguments that ended Friday
night. Vega then told jurors they could go home and commence
deliberations at a later date.
Instead, jurors opted to start
their deliberations at about 9 p.m. The jury reached its verdict
about five hours later.
Bailey was killed behind a
trash bin in a parking lot on West Flamingo Road. Prosecutors
had offered several possible motives for the crime.
They said Lobato was at the
end of a three-day methamphetamine binge when the slaying occurred,
and speculated she had agreed to trade sex for drugs. The killing
might have occurred when Bailey failed to keep his end of the
bargain, prosecutors said.
They also said Lobato, who
was sexually abused as a child, might have acted because of her
anger toward men.
Regardless, prosecutors said
they believe Lobato was on her knees in front of Bailey when
she produced a butterfly knife and stabbed him in the testicles.
This incapacitated Bailey, and left him unable to defend himself
as he suffered numerous other stab wounds, including a potentially
fatal one to the neck.
Prosecutors said Lobato then
retrieved a baseball bat and beat Bailey to death. After this,
she cut off his penis and stabbed him repeatedly in the anus.
"In this case, there was
a tremendous amount of evidence in bits and pieces," Chief
Deputy District Attorney William Kephart said after the verdict
was read. "The jury seemed to be able to put them all together."
Special Public Defender Phil
Kohn told jurors there was no physical evidence that tied Lobato
to either the crime scene or to Bailey. He noted that a bloody
footprint three sizes larger than the shoes Lobato wears was
found next to Bailey's body.
He also reminded jurors that
another woman accused Bailey of raping her just a week before
the slaying.
During the trial, Lobato testified
that she never met Bailey and was not present when he died.
Prosecutors then confronted
her with the statements of police and others who said she told
them about stabbing a man in the penis. Lobato said she was referring
to an unrelated incident in which she stabbed at a man's groin
area while she fended off a May 2001 sexual assault near Boulder
Highway.
CLOSING ARGUMENTS: Jurors deliberate
severed penis slaying
Prosecutor
stresses suspect's statements; defense notes lack of evidence
By GLENN PUIT ,May 17, 2002, Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
A Clark County prosecutor told
a jury Friday that "words from the murderer's mouth"
show Lincoln County teen-ager Kirstin Lobato is guilty of killing
a Las Vegas homeless man last summer.
Chief Deputy District Attorney
William Kephart said the 19-year-old slaying suspect's statements
claiming that she had cut off a man's penis prove she killed
Duran Bailey, a homeless man found with his penis severed in
Las Vegas last summer.
"There's direct evidence
in this case, and it came directly from the murderer's mouth,"
Kephart said. "It doesn't get any more direct than that."
But Lobato's attorney, speaking
late Friday during closing arguments of Lobato's murder trial,
offered a far different interpretation of Lobato's statements
to witnesses.
Special Public Defender Philip
Kohn said that when Lobato told police and others that she had
sliced at a man's penis with a knife, she was actually talking
about an event in which she fended off a sexual assault from
a yet-to-be identified attacker.
That May 2001 incident, Kohn
said, had nothing to do with Bailey's July killing and occurred
across town from where Bailey's body was found.
"She has never met Duran
Bailey and Duran Bailey was not the man who attacked her in May,"
Kohn said. "There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that connects
my client with Duran Bailey."
Those two arguments were presented
to the jury late Friday in the closing arguments of the Lobato
trial in District Judge Valorie Vega's courtroom. Jurors began
deliberating the case at about 8:30 p.m.
The jury will have to decide
whether Lobato is the individual who killed Bailey behind a trash
bin off West Flamingo Road on July 8. The killer also stabbed
Bailey in the neck, bludgeoned him to death, cut off his penis
and stabbed him repeatedly in the rectum.
According to police, in the
days after the slaying, Lobato told both friends and police she
had cut off a man's penis in Las Vegas.
Of those statements to police
Detective Thomas Thowsen, Kohn said:
"Two people talking about
two different incidents."
Prosecutors said, however,
that explanation simply doesn't make sense. Deputy District Attorney
Sandra DiGiacomo said there are no police or medical reports
in the valley indicating anyone other than Bailey had his penis
cut in such a manner.
"You've just seen the
largest coincidence you will ever see in your life," Kephart
said of the defendant's alibi. "You've heard about this
(someone getting their penis cut off) maybe one other time. What
was her name? Lorena Bobbitt."
Lorena Bobbitt was found innocent
by reason of insanity in 1994 after arguing she severed the penis
of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, because he was abusive.
Kephart said he believes Lobato
was at the end of a three-day methamphetamine binge and desperate
for drugs when she ran into Bailey, who was an accused rapist
and abuser of crack cocaine. Kephart told the jury that it's
possible that Lobato offered sex for drugs but killed Bailey
when he didn't deliver.
Or, the prosecutors said the
motive for the attack could have been what they say is Lobato's
deep hatred of men given the fact that she has been sexually
abused by various men since she was a child.
In requesting an acquittal,
Kohn compared Lobato to the victims of the Salem, Mass., witch
hunt, during which numerous innocent women were burned at the
stake.
"Thirty-six women were
put to death for being witches," Kohn said. "Women
who were different, who were odd and who said stupid things."
In an impassioned argument,
Kohn told the jury that the physical evidence in the case should
clear Lobato. He said a bloody footprint at the crime scene was
nearly three sizes larger than the shoe size Lobato wears and
that no other evidence, no fingerprints or DNA at the crime scene
or in Lobato's possession, links Lobato to the crime in any way.
"Those bloody footprints
are throughout the crime scene, and they do not match my client,"
Kohn said. "That's reasonable doubt right there."
Lobato could face life without
possibility of parole if convicted of first-degree murder and
sexual penetration of a dead human body.
Expert's
testimony limited: Forensics
specialist: Evidence excludes Lobato from scene
By GLENN PUIT, May 17, 2002, Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
An expert hired by attorneys
for slaying suspect Kirstin Lobato says physical evidence in
the case should serve to exclude Lobato as the killer of a Las
Vegas homeless man.
But a jury in the Lobato murder
trial never got to hear most of what Louisiana forensics expert
George Schiro had to say on Thursday.
This was because the district
judge in the Lobato trial, Valorie Vega, agreed with a prosecution
request to limit much of Schiro's testimony.
"There is no evidence
to tie Ms. Lobato to the crime scene," Schiro said in an
interview in a hallway of the Clark County Courthouse. "I
feel the evidence is even exclusionary on her behalf."
Authorities disagree. Prosecutors
allege that Lobato has made several incriminating statements
to witnesses, including the police, regarding the killing of
Las Vegas homeless man Duran Bailey off West Flamingo Road in
July. The man was bludgeoned and stabbed, then had his penis
severed after death.
Lobato, 19, is being tried
on charges of murder with use of a deadly weapon and sexual penetration
of a dead body. She denied killing Bailey when she testified
in court Wednesday.
Outside of court on Thursday,
Schiro said a bloody footprint found at the crime scene was nearly
three sizes larger than the shoe size Lobato wears. He said none
of her fingerprints were at the scene and that authorities found
in her possession no physical evidence linking her to the crime.
He said a piece of chewing
gum found at the scene had Bailey and someone else's DNA on it,
but not Lobato's.
But in court, Clark County
Chief Deputy District Attorney William Kephart questioned some
of Schiro's qualifications and he successfully argued that prosecutors
did not have enough time to prepare witnesses that he said could
contradict Schiro's testimony.
Vega ended up allowing Schiro
to testify about his opinions regarding chemical tests for blood
in Lobato's car. Authorities said materials found in the woman's
car may have been blood, but Schiro believes it was not human
blood.
Schiro also was allowed to
testify about how fingerprints are lifted.
Testimony in the trial is expected
to continue today.
'Sensitive' defendant denies mutilation
slaying charge
By GLENN PUIT, May 16, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Slaying suspect Kirstin Lobato
tearfully told a jury Wednesday that she has been a victim of
sexual abuse since she was a young girl, but she denied a prosecutor's
suggestion that this prompted her to murder and mutilate a man
last summer.
"I'm a sensitive person,"
Lobato said.
"The thought of killing
someone really bothers me."
Lobato, 19, spent nearly three
hours on the witness stand Wednesday as she spoke in her own
defense during the sixth day of testimony in her murder trial.
The Lincoln County woman is
charged with murder with the use of a deadly weapon and sexual
penetration of a dead body in the July slaying of Las Vegas homeless
man Duran Bailey, whose body was found to the rear of a West
Flamingo Road trash bin July 8.
Bailey, an accused rapist and
abuser of crack cocaine, had been stabbed in the scrotum while
alive. After his bludgeoning and stabbing death, his penis was
severed and his rectum was slashed.
Lobato, soft-spoken, calm and
wearing a business suit, testified that she had nothing to do
with Bailey's death.
"Duran Bailey never attacked
me," Lobato testified.
"That's always been my
position."
In what would prove to be a
remarkable day of testimony in the courtroom of District Judge
Valorie Vega, Lobato also revealed the details of four sexual
assaults against her. She repeatedly clashed with Clark County
prosecutor William Kephart over facts, and even read two poems
she wrote to a jury hearing the case.
"Trapped in my reclusive
life, solitude cuts me like a knife," Lobato once wrote
in a poem.
"So many questions, so
little time," Lobato wrote in another. "Sometimes I
wonder if I'm losing my mind."
The admitted methamphetamine
addict acknowledged telling police that she had stabbed at a
man's penis with a knife while fending off a sexual assault in
Las Vegas. But, she said, this incident had nothing to do with
Bailey's death.
She said nearly two months
before Bailey's July slaying, she was attacked by an unidentified
man in a Budget Suites parking lot near Boulder Highway.
During this incident, Lobato
said her attacker "bum-rushed" her as she got out of
her car in the parking lot.
"I started to cry and
I said, 'No,' " Lobato said.
"He slapped me and said,
'Shut up, bitch.' "
She said during a struggle
with the man, she was able to retrieve a butterfly knife and
fend him off by stabbing at his groin.
"I just reached for whatever
I could grab down there, and I cut," Lobato said.
Her attorney, Special Public
Defender Phil Kohn, asked whether she knew if she had cut off
the man's penis in the Budget Suites incident.
"I'm pretty sure I didn't,"
Lobato said.
"I didn't have anything
in my hand to throw or drop or anything else."
Despite the seeming similarities
between this account and Bailey's slaying two months later, Lobato
said she was certain she was not confusing the two incidents.
She said she had nothing to do with Bailey's death, adding that
at the time Bailey was killed, she was at her parents' home in
Panaca.
"Did you kill him?"
Kohn asked.
"No," Lobato said.
Under questioning from Kephart,
the chief deputy district attorney made it clear he viewed Lobato's
testimony as fiction. Kephart told Lobato he believed she killed
Bailey after she tried to buy drugs from the man, who demanded
sex in return.
"You went on July 8th
to meet your connection, Duran, to buy drugs, didn't you?"
Kephart asked.
"That's incorrect,"
Lobato responded.
"You killed him because
he wanted sex that night?" the prosecutor said.
"That's absolutely wrong,"
Lobato said.
"You bent down in front
of Duran Bailey to make him believe you were going to give him
oral sex, and then you stabbed him in the bottom of the scrotum,"
Kephart said.
"No," Lobato said.
Lobato said she never reported
the Budget Suites incident to police because when she had told
authorities of previous sexual assaults in her life, "They
basically blew me off."
"It's been my experience
that it doesn't do any good," Lobato said.
Lobato wept as she told of
being the victim of repeated sexual abuse as a young child. She
said her mother's boyfriend repeatedly molested her. The man
eventually served prison time.
Lobato said at the age of 13,
she was violently raped in the desert by a past boyfriend. At
the age of 17, she said, she was sexually assaulted by her best
friend's father after the man supposedly slipped something in
her drink.
Kephart then insinuated that
these incidents could have led Lobato to kill Bailey in a rage.
"You've had some pretty
bad experiences with men, haven't you?" the prosecutor asked.
"Yes," Lobato said,
but after acknowledging this, the defendant once again repeated
that she did not kill Bailey.
Informant: Lobato boasted;Inmate
kept log of her conversations with murder suspect
May 11, 2002 Copyright ©
Las Vegas Review-Journal
A jailhouse informant told
jurors Friday that Kirstin Lobato took pride in giving graphic
descriptions of how she killed and mutilated a man last summer
in Las Vegas.
"She was boasting about
it," said the witness, Korinda Martin.
Martin, 22, said she met Lobato
on July 23 at the Clark County Detention Center and kept a log
of her conversations with the murder suspect.
The informant said she recalled
one conversation in which Lobato commented, "Yeah, I did
an overkill, but he deserved it."
Martin said Lobato made the
comment after prosecutors filed a new charge in her murder case:
sexual penetration of a dead human body.
In other conversations, Martin
said, Lobato admitted cutting off the victim's penis and stabbing
him in the anus. The witness said she contacted authorities after
Lobato said she planned to avoid a murder conviction by falsely
claiming the victim had tried to rape her.
"I didn't feel that was
right," Martin said.
Martin, who is serving a prison
term for robbery and coercion, said Lobato knew the victim and
had picked him up on West Flamingo Road because she wanted methamphetamine.
"She referred to him as
Darrin," the informant said.
Lobato is accused of killing
Las Vegas homeless man Duran Bailey, 44. The man was stabbed
and beaten, and his genitalia were mutilated after his death.
"You've never mentioned
'Darrin' before today, have you?" Special Public Defender
Philip Kohn asked Martin during cross-examination Friday.
"When I was being interviewed?
No," the witness replied.
Upon further questioning by
Kohn, Martin also denied learning details about the slaying from
news accounts. She said she saw no television news in jail, and
Lobato clipped out all newspaper articles about the case before
other inmates could read them.
Earlier in the trial Friday,
prosecutors played a taped statement in which Lobato confessed
to police that she had cut off a man's penis while fending off
a sexual assault.
A weeping Lobato, 19, told
police she was in the midst of a three-day methamphetamine binge
and that she remembered little of what actually happened.
"I grabbed for as much
as I could hold down there," Lobato told Las Vegas police
Detective Thomas Thowsen in a recorded statement made prior to
her arrest in July. "I just remember grabbing as much as
I could, but I don't remember if I used an upward or downward
motion."
Prosecutors contend that these
words prove Lobato, of Panaca, is the person who killed Bailey
in a West Flamingo Road parking lot in July.
But Lobato's defense attorneys
have said these comments were not in reference to Bailey's slaying.
In her opening statement, Deputy Special Public Defender Gloria
Navarro said Lobato was referring to an incident in which she
fended off a sexual assault during a Las Vegas encounter with
a man in May, an incident Navarro said occurred months before
Bailey was slain.
Lobato told the detective in
her taped statement that she was severely impaired by three days
of methamphetamine consumption at the time she fended off the
sexual assault.
She said the man she fended
off had attempted to sexually assault her when she pulled out
a knife and defended herself.
She then said it was possible
that she had also struck him with a baseball bat. "I have
a baseball bat that I keep behind my (car) seat," Lobato
said.
Lobato, who cried throughout
the police statement, also revealed she was the victim of extensive
sexual abuse as a child.
"When I was 5 years old,
I was tortured every day for a year by my mother's boyfriend,"
Lobato said. "She knew about it, but she allowed it to happen."
After the taped statement was
played, Thowsen testified that when he arrested Lobato at her
Lincoln County home, she made other incriminating statements
to her parents.
"Mom, I did it,"
the detective quoted her as saying. "I have to do what I
have to do."
Lobato is charged with both
murder with use of a deadly weapon and sexual penetration of
a dead human body. If convicted of either charge, she could face
a potential life sentence. The defense's case is expected to
be presented in court sometime next week, and several witnesses
are expected to say that Lobato was not in Las Vegas at the time
of the killing.
MUTILATION SLAYING TRIAL: Attack
reconstructed in court testimony
Woman told
people she cut off man's penis in LV, witnesses testify
By GLENN PUIT, May 10, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
The person who killed homeless
man Duran Bailey last summer unleashed a horrifying attack with
blatant sexual overtones, a medical examiner said in court Thursday.
Testifying in the murder trial
of Kirstin Lobato, Medical Examiner Lary Simms said he was responsible
for performing an autopsy on Bailey in July, about a day after
Bailey's body was found in a West Flamingo Road parking lot.
Simms said the autopsy revealed
Bailey, 44, had been stabbed in the testicles while alive. Simms
said at the time this wound was suffered, Bailey's pants likely
had been pulled down around his knees.
In addition to inflicting this
wound, Bailey's killer broke both of his upper and lower jaws,
knocking out six of his teeth, Simms said. Bailey's head had
been crushed from blunt force trauma, possibly from being struck
by a bat, and he had been stabbed in the forehead, chin and neck.
Then, after Bailey died, his
killer sliced off his penis and stabbed him in the rectum, Simms
said.
"There was a gaping large
wound to the scrotum. ... The penis was amputated at the base,"
Simms said.
This violent attack, authorities
say, was carried out by the diminutive and slender Lobato, a
19-year-old Panaca woman who is both soft-spoken and well-dressed
in court.
Lobato adamantly denies involvement
in the crime.
Prosecutors, however, say Lobato
was easily identified as a prime suspect in the case after she
told several people she had cut off a man's penis in Las Vegas.
In the opening arguments of
the trial, defense attorney Gloria Navarro said these comments
by Lobato were a reference to a sexual assault Lobato fended
off in Las Vegas in May, months before Bailey's death. Navarro
said Lobato wasn't even in Las Vegas at the time of Bailey's
slaying, and several witnesses are expected to testify to this
when the defense begins presenting its case next week.
On the witness stand Thursday,
Lincoln County adult education teacher Dixie Tienken said a distraught
Lobato showed up at her doorstep last summer and talked about
cutting off a man's penis while fending off a sexual assault.
Outside court, Tienken said
she believes Lobato is innocent. "I don't think she did
it," Tienken said. "I don't think she killed anyone."
Another witness, Panaca resident
Paul Russell Brown, testified that he overheard Lobato telling
his girlfriend last summer of an account similar to the one told
to Tienken.
"She was attacked by a
man and she defended herself with a knife," Brown said.
"She reached down and cut off his penis."
Brown said he has often disregarded
Lobato's stories because she was known to exaggerate.
"I've heard a lot of stories
so I sort of let it slide," Brown said.
And Brown's girlfriend, Michele
Austria, testified that Lobato told her only of having to use
a knife to defend herself during a sexual assault. She said Lobato
made no mention of cutting off a man's penis.
Today, a Las Vegas homicide
detective is expected to take the stand and accuse Lobato of
confessing to cutting off a man's penis in Las Vegas. The homicide
detective also is expected to say Lobato told police she was
in the midst of a three-day methamphetamine binge when Bailey
was killed.
During this binge, Lobato said
she had danced topless at a Las Vegas strip club and a swingers
club, trying to earn money to fund her drug habit.
Prosecutors have yet to present
jurors an exact scenario of how Bailey encountered Lobato, but
authorities speculate Lobato might have been seeking drugs from
Bailey when he was killed. Bailey had a small amount of cocaine
byproduct in his system at the time of his death.
During a court recess Thursday,
Clark County prosecutor William Kephart was asked to identify
the killer's motive.
"I believe the motive
had sexual connotations," Kephart said. "It was a drug-induced
angry state (directed) at someone who wanted more than she was
willing to give."
Prosecutor says conversation
ties teen to killing
By GLENN PUIT, May 09, 2002,
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
A prosecutor told jurors Wednesday
that a young woman's own words link her to a mutilation slaying
that occurred last summer.
In his opening statement, Chief
Deputy District Attorney William Kephart said Kirstin Blaze Lobato
told a teacher she cut off a man's penis while fending off a
sexual assault in Las Vegas.
He said these and other statements
link the Panaca teen to the killing of Duran Bailey, a homeless
man who was found beaten, stabbed and mutilated in a West Flamingo
Road parking lot in July.
"His penis was found severed,
completely cut off, in the trash around him," Kephart said.
Deputy Special Public Defender
Gloria Navarro told jurors her 19-year-old client was never at
the crime scene.
She said Lobato, in her statement
to the teacher, was referring to an unrelated incident in which
she was sexually assaulted months before Bailey died.
"The reason why there
is nothing to connect Blaze to the crime scene is because she
wasn't even in Las Vegas at the time," Navarro said.
The two different scenarios
were presented to a jury Wednesday afternoon on the opening day
of the teen's trial before District Judge Valorie Vega.
Lobato is charged with murder
with use of a deadly weapon and sexual penetration of a dead
body. If convicted of the murder charge, she faces at least 40
years in prison.
The body of Bailey, 44, was
found behind a trash bin across the street from the Palms.
In describing the cause of
death, a medical examiner pointed to two sets of injuries: head
wounds caused by blows from a blunt object and stabbing and cutting
wounds on the abdomen.
The medical examiner said Bailey
was dead when his penis was severed and his rectum was stabbed
and sliced.
About 10 days after the body
was found, homicide investigators were led to Lobato after learning
of statements she made to an adult-education teacher, the prosecutor
said.
The teacher said Lobato told
her she had severed a man's penis in Las Vegas while fending
off a sex assault.
"He had tried to put his
penis in her mouth, so she pulled out a knife and cut his penis
off," Kephart said of Lobato's account.
Kephart said the story could
not be true because the medical examiner determined Bailey's
body was mutilated after death.
The prosecutor said Lobato
told police that at the time of the encounter with Bailey, she
was at the end of a three-day binge on methamphetamine and that
she had been propositioned by Bailey.
"A dirty, old, stinky
black man," is how the defendant supposedly referred to
Bailey, Kephart said.
"No one like that is going
to do anything to me," the prosecutor said Lobato told a
cellmate at the Clark County Detention Center.
Before the trial, Lobato's
defense was expected to argue she was defending herself against
a sexual assault. Bailey had been accused of rape by another
Las Vegas woman a week before his death.
The expectation was furthered
by an August courtroom revelation that Lobato was a victim of
sexual abuse as a child.
But in court Wednesday, Navarro
said Lobato had nothing to do with Bailey's death.
The attorney said her client's
comments about defending herself against a sexual assault in
Las Vegas were not a reference to Bailey's killing.
Navarro said Lobato was talking
about an attempted sexual assault against Lobato at a Budget
Suites on the east side of town.
Navarro said that incident
occurred in May 2001, months before Bailey's death.
The defense attorney told the
jury that bloody footprints found at the scene did not match
Lobato's shoe size. The crime scene prints were nearly three
sizes larger than the size shoe Lobato wears.
"Kristin Lobato did not
kill Duran Bailey," Navarro told the jury. "She had
never even been to that parking lot."
MURDER TRIAL: Witness: Man
raped her week before his slaying
19-year-old
defendant might take stand in her own defense
By GLENN PUIT, May 15, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
The man Kirstin Lobato is accused
of killing was a crack-smoking rapist who attacked a Las Vegas
woman just a week before he was slain, according to courtroom
testimony Tuesday.
Also during Lobato's murder
trial on Tuesday, a defense attorney confirmed that Lobato might
take the witness stand today to testify in her own defense.
"It's a strong possibility,"
Clark County Deputy Special Public Defender Gloria Navarro said
when asked whether her client would testify.
Lobato, 19, is charged with
murder in the death of Duran Bailey, 44. Bailey's body was found
behind a trash bin in a Flamingo Road parking lot last July.
Testimony in Lobato's trial
over the past week has indicated Bailey was subjected to a brutal
attack, and that his killer severed his penis and stabbed him
in the rectum after death.
Police have testified during
the trial that incriminating statements Lobato made to police
detectives and others led to her being identified as a suspect.
When defense attorneys began
presenting witnesses Tuesday, the first witness they called was
a Las Vegas woman who reported being raped by Bailey just a week
before he was found slain.
The woman described Bailey
as a homeless man who smoked crack cocaine. She said she had
consensual intercourse on numerous occasions with Bailey, with
whom she would often trade sex for drugs.
A week before the slaying,
the woman said Bailey slapped her in the face. The woman said
she then told Bailey she wanted nothing more to do with him.
But within days, Bailey forced
his way into her apartment off West Flamingo Road and raped her
at knifepoint, she said.
"He pushed me down on
the bed and I said 'No,' " the woman testified. "He
said, 'I'm going to get what I want this time,' and he proceeded
to rape me."
The woman said she was badly
beaten by Bailey but that she did not immediately report the
matter to police.
"I had a warrant,"
the woman explained.
Eventually, though, she did
report the rape and police told her they were investigating the
allegations when Bailey was found killed.
The woman testified that she
went to the scene of the slaying after hearing a news report
about the discovery of the body. She said she wanted to see whether
the dead man was Bailey.
"I was curious if it was
him," she said.
On cross-examination, Clark
County Deputy District Attorney Sandra DiGiacomo sought to forestall
any effort by the defense to throw suspicion on the witness.
"Did you kill Duran?"
DiGiacomo asked.
"No," the woman
replied.
"Did you ask anyone
to kill Duran?" the prosecutor asked.
"No," the woman
said.
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