Las Vegas Unsolved

All witnesses, suspects, and purses of interest are considered innocent until proven guilty in a. Court of law. Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen with discretion. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we're going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Prime Time Crime. It's Kylie. Yes, this episode is out a little early. I decided to release it earlier because I will be a crime con tomorrow and I wanted it to be out and ready to go. So here we are. We only have really a couple things to talk about right now in true crime. There's no updates in anything that I've been following personally, but there was a couple of new things that are kind of breaking over the last few days that I. Wanted to talk about. So I'm not familiar with this person, but there was a plot to kill somebody named Jack Avery, who is a former member of a boy band called Why Don't We? And this story is crazy. I do want to start off by saying I don't understand how in twenty twenty six. People think they're gonna get away with a murder for higher type of plot. But yet here we are. So Gabriella who goes by Gabby Gonzalez, I guess she's a quote unquote influencer. She's twenty four, and her father, Francisco Gonzalez, who's fifty nine, are charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder. According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney, SO police said that there was this bitter custody dispute between Gabby and Jack and they have a seven year old daughter named Lavender. Between twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, Gabby is accused of seeking the assistance of her then boyfriend Kai Coringer to hire someone on the. Dark web to kill Jack Avery. In April of twenty twenty one, Gabby's father, Francisco allegedly sent ten thousand dollars to Cordrey as front money to use in locating, hiring, and paying someone to kill Jack Avery. And Kai Krdriy also faces the same charges as the other two. So this is a three person murder for higher plot gone terribly wrong because they got caught kai Cordry had allegedly asked the hit man to send him Jack's finger with jewelry still on it as proof of death. So these people allegedly are horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible. I don't understand how you can be so desperate to be in a situation where you would do something like this. Jack did an interview in twenty twenty. Five and he said that FBI agents had warned him that there was somebody that was allegedly attempting to kill him. Now, I don't know exactly how it came to be that they found out about this plot. If somebody was like undercover, I'm not really sure the circumstances surrounding that. But thankfully somebody came forward and did the right thing. And Jack now has sole custody of his daughter. So Gabby out here trying to do the most and do everything she can to get sole custody of her daughter. Now she has given it to Jack because she made a really, really bad choice. Jack has left La with his daughter, and he's basically just said that he doesn't really feel safe knowing what he knows. And Gabby allegedly posted bond which is crazy that there was a bond, so she posted two million dollars bail and. She is out now. And Jack believes that she's a flight risk and he does and feel safe, so he left La understandable. I would probably feel the exact same way if I were him, considering there were three people plotting to kill him. Also, allegedly, he's fearful of some of Gabby's friends and family because he said some of her friends basically showed up at his house and we're pounding on the door, and there is a restraining order now in place. Gabby did have a court date earlier this month, but she has not entered a plea yet, at least that we are privy to. But I'll be sure to keep you guys updated on this one. This is a wild one, but I do hope Jack and his daughter and the rest of his family are safe because these people allegedly. Are a little off their rockers. So I hope he stays safe and his family stays safe, and there is justice soon in this one, because you should never ever ever think that it's okay to hire somebody involve so many people in a murder for higher plot to kill the father of your child. That is the lowest of the low. All right, moving on to another case that I'm just becoming privy to. This was posted on True Crime Societies calling for a backup Facebook page, and it is about missing woman thirty five year old Lindsay Watts, who is missing from Edna, Missouri, since May nineteenth of twenty twenty six. Her cell phone was found in a ditch and all of her other personal belongings have been left at home. So this information is from Missing in the USA, and I'm just going to read it verbatim. Lindsay Watts, thirty five, was last seen at approximately eleven pm on Tuesday, May nineteenth, twenty twenty six, at her home at five to ten North fifth Street in Adena, Missouri. She had been coming home from her shift at the Blessing Center. A family member saw her at the house that night. By morning, she was gone. She never showed up for work on Wednesday and never called, in which her family says is completely out of character. When the Knox County Sheriff responded to her home, they found her car, her car keys, her wallet, and her money still all inside. Her cell phone was later found in a nearby ditch. The sheriff has called this case very concerning and described it as an isolated incident. Neighbors have reported seeing a vehicle speeding through the area on the night that she disappeared. On Saturday, dozens of community members gathered at the Knox County Courthouse for a priivisil. Lindsay's sister made an emotional plea for her safe return. Yesterday, marked exactly one week since anyone has seen or heard from Lindsay. If you have any information, no matter how small, contact the Knox. County Sheriff's Office at six six Zho three nine seven twenty one eighty six, Extension one. I am gonna go ahead and post her missing person's fire on my Instagram at Facebook pages. This is a weird one. It just doesn't really make any sense to me. Neighbors say that there may have been some disturbances at the home, but that they happened a long time ago, and it does appear that she also has a teenage daughter. Now I don't know the circumstances if her daughter lives with her or if the daughter lives elsewhere. This is from a muddyrivernews dot com article. Lindsey is described as five feet. Two inches tall, about one hundred and twenty five pounds. Like I said, she was last seen on Tuesday around eleven PM, and she does not have her car, her keys, her wallet, or her cell phone with her. This is definitely an interesting one. It doesn't really seem like law enforcement has any idea of what exactly happened here. They don't think that there is a danger to the public. So I'll keep you guys updated as this one plays out out. And like I said, I am going to be posting her missing persons fire on my Instagram and Facebook pages, so go check that out. And we are going to go ahead and get into today's episode already, guys. It is that time of year. It is crime Con time once again, and this year crime Con is in Las Vegas. We're bringing it back to the same place it was in twenty twenty two, and in honor of crime Con, I am doing a Las Vegas Unsolved mashup episode where I go over several cases that don't necessarily have enough information in detail for one episode, and I am mashing them all up together into one episode in order to highlight some of the lesser known cases that might not get a lot of attention, and these cases are significantly older. These are cases that happened in the sixties and seventies, so we're gonna throw it back. And honestly, these are my favorite type of episodes to do because I do get to highlight some cases that might not be very familiar to people. And again, I really like doing an episode that's focused on the city that crime con is going to be in because again, it changes it up. So, like I said, today, I'm bringing you several cases that remain unsolved, and like I said, these are decades old cases. Today I'm going to be bringing you the unsolved cases of Ralph Howard Alsop, Senior, Anna Sylvia just Alphonse Bass, Joseph O'Hare, Samuel Lemmel, and Evelyn Grace Shank. Now, interestingly enough, there is some overlap in three of these cases where the potential suspect could possibly potentially maybe be the same person. Usually it's rare to get overlap like this, but when I first started researching these six cases, I realize very quickly there is overlap and it ties into Las Vegas history and mob affiliations and all of that. So, because they all were kind of around the same timeframe. There is some overlap, and we're going to talk about that. But still, despite their being possible overlap and somebody that might have been involved in three of them, they all still remain unsolved and no arrests have ever been made in any of these cases. So that is why I'm covering them, and I think it's important to talk about them and just spread the word that yes, there are still cases from the sixties that are still unsolved, and the best way to spread awareness and spread the message about these cases is to talk about them. So that is exactly what we're doing. We are going to start with the death of Ralph Howard Alsop Senior in nineteen sixty six. On January nineteenth of nineteen sixty six, around eleven h eight pm, the Clark County Sheriff's Office received a call from Ralph Alsp Junior, who stated that his father had been shot near his home at two three five three East Warm Springs Road. Ralph was located in the front yard of his home inside of a fenced in area. Now the area where Ralph lived back in nineteen sixty six is now a gas station. In present day, Ralph was still alive and was transported to the hospital but died a short time later. An autopsy conducted on January twentieth of nineteen sixty six revealed that Ralph had been shot with a shotgun. The autopsy documented twenty one entrance wounds. So this was obviously a personal attack and it was overkill. There's really no need to shoot somebody twenty one times. That is unnecessary. And also it's crazy that he was still alive after being shot. Twenty one times. That is insane. There was a follow up search that. Was conducted and they found a twelve gage bolt action clip fed shotgun that was located by the Boulder Canyon Branch railroad tracks. So two men, one named Tom Hanley we are going to be talking about Tom Hanley a lot in this episode, and another man named Carl Black, were charged with arranging the murder of Ralph, but on March thirtieth of nineteen seventy, the district attorney filed a motion to dismiss the charges because two out of the four witnesses in Ralph's case had been killed themselves. We're going to get into it. So because the dismissal originated from the prosecution, the case against Tom and Carl could not be refiled, so essentially, allegedly they set up the murder of Ralph and they never could be charged for being involved with that again because of the DA filing emotion to dismiss the charges. So Tom Hanley and Ralph were associates, They ran in the same circles. And a common theme that you're going to see throughout these cases that I'm going to tell you about is a lot of the people that were associated with Tom Hanley also ended up dead in tragic, horrific ways. And we're going to get into who. Tom was and his background a little bit, because it's going to make a lot more sense when you realize what kind of man Tom Hanley was, what he was involved with, and this guy very much got away with murder. Time and time and time again. So we are going to get into the next case, which is the death of Anna Sylvia Just She was known as Sylvia and she was only twenty eight years old when her life was stolen estimated between nineteen sixty seven and nineteen sixty eight. Records indicated that Sylvia left her home in Calgary, Canada, by bus in nineteen sixty six and was later reported missing after her family lost contact with her. Now, the circumstances surrounding her leaving Canada are very much unknown. There is no documented reason that she left Canada and how she ended up in Las Vegas. On March third of nineteen sixty eight, hikers discovered clothing, a purse, and either a birth certificate and or passport. I saw both. Reported in different articles, so I don't know if it was both items or one or the other. And also found were different blood stained items and they buried in a desert area that was located one mile north of the Henderson Dump. Authorities were contacted and they suspected foul play and discovered that the items that were found were those of a woman named Anna Sylvia Just And Following the discovery of these items, a man named Alfonse Bass came forward with information. He stated that he had driven a car that was occupied by a man named you guessed it, Tom Hanley. Also in the car were men named Michael, Alexander Marathon and Robert Adaberry. Alfonse stated that the group of men had picked up Sylvia in north Las Vegas and then drove to an area located near Sunrise Mountain. Tom Hanley told Sylvia to exit the vehicle along with two of the other men, and then they together walked into the dust. Sylvia never returned. Alphonse stated that he believed she was killed at the direction of Tom Hanley because there was allegedly an argument where Sylvia had asked Tom for a loan, asked him for some money, and he got angry, and that kind of led to her allegedly having her life taken at the order of Tom Hanley. So Alphonse was a big help to investigators. He tried to guide them to the area, but they were unable to locate any remains at that point in time. On March thirty first of nineteen sixty nine, Alphonse Bass was murdered. We are going to get into that shortly. But if you see a pattern here, everybody that comes into contact with Tom Hanley ends up dead. So on September seventh, of nineteen seventy human remains were found in a shallow grave four miles west of Henderson, Nevada. The remains included a skull with a depressed fracture. The cause of death was noted to be blunt force trauma, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide. Now these remains were considered a Jane Doe, they remained unidentified, although they did know that they belonged to a female. In twenty ten, the Clark County Coroner's Office submitted the remains for DNA testing and they were able to come up with the DNA profile and it was entered into NamUs. In twenty twenty four, Sylvia's missing person's case was reopened and case files were reviewed and they were able to identify Sylvia's ninety five year old sister and they were able to retrieve her DNA and compare it to the Jane Doe found in nineteen seventy. Sylvia was positively identified, and with this, of course, I'm sure sure her family those that were left were utterly devastated, but also probably so glad to have answers as to what happened, because in their minds, Sylvia was still missing. They had no idea what had happened to her, and at least now they're able to give her a final resting space and have a little bit of finality to what actually happened to Sylvia. Unfortunately, due to the timing it took to finally identify Sylvia. No charges were ever filed in her case, although it is alleged that Tom Hanley is the one who ordered her murder. By this point in time, tom Hanley was long gone, so her murder remains unsolved. No charges were ever filed, but at least they were able to identify these remains and give her family some type of answers. All right, so now we're going to get into Alphonse Bass. He was thirty six years old. So March thirtieth, nineteen sixty nine, around nine to forty pm, Clark County deputies were flagged down by a motorist and this motorist reported a house fire that was located at thirty seven eighty six East Lake Mead Boulevard. They located a male victim who was later identified as Alfonse Bass, and he had been badly burned. He was transported to a local hospital where he died the following morning from burn injuries and smoke inhalation. A neighbor reported seeing a green Ford Mustang leaving the area right before the fire started. It was determined that the fire was intentionally set, and none other than Tom Hanley was identified as a suspect, so Alfonse was scheduled to testify against Tom in the nineteen sixty six murder of Ralph Alsop, and he also provided statements implicating Tom in the murders of a man named Marvin Shoemate and Sylvia just There were some other men who were also charged in conspiracy in the murder of Alfonse and they were a man named Albert Dreyer who was an attorney and he was acting on behalf of Tom Hanley, and another man named Leroy Marsh Now Tom's wife later wrote a book claiming that Tom's son, who was named Andrew Granby, is the one that drugged Alphonse and set the fire that took his life. Tom Hanley is a true was a true terror to the city of Las Vegas. So who is this Tom Hanley and how did he get away with all that he got away with? So he was a key figure in several Las Vegas labor unions during the nineteen forties. He had a tempted to unionize casino dealers. He served as the head of the American Federation of Casinos and Gaming Employees and the Gaming and Office Employee Union. He was associated with the Binyon family and the Midwest mob He did plead guilty to the nineteen seventy seven murder of labor leader Al Bramlett, and even testified in a racketeering trial for the government two weeks before his death. And he was also under the witness protection program. This heinous man allegedly that did all this bad stuff, allegedly was in witness protection at the time of his death. He ended up contracting hepatitis at some point in time, and that is essentially what led to his death. But he did die of natural causes in nineteen seventy nine at the age of sixty three. He and his son reportedly carried out contract killings for the Mob, casino owners and union boss. He was tied to a lot of deaths, like I said, but the charges never stuck. I'm going to link an article below that goes into more detail about Tom and his son. But these two men were menaces to Las Vegas and society. And if you google Thomas Hanley, he has featured prominently at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. There are many many articles about all that he did. I am really just brushing the surface here on Tom Hanley. But this man did a lot of really bad things and he never really had to pay for them. Unfortunately, he just kind of always skirted under the radar and very much seemed to me like the kind of person that got other people to do his dirty work for him and was able to get away with it time and time again. If you are interested in more info about Tom Hanley, please read the couple of articles going to link below, because this was such a rabbit hole for me. When I realized that these cases had overlap and connection, I just about lost it because typically that doesn't happen when I'm looking at these older cases. Typically there's no overlap, but this one, there was so many cases that overlapped. And then when I started googling Tom Hanley, I realized that this was way bigger than these three unsolved quote unquote cases, So be sure to check that article out. So next up is the unsolved case of Joseph O'Hare. Joseph was sixty seven years old on the morning of February eighth of nineteen sixty nine. Joseph had gone outside to retrieve his newspaper outside of his home that was located at one eight one six weld in Place when he was shot in the head by an unknown assailant. Joseph was conscious when he was transported to the hospital and stated that he was slow rugged when he went to get the paper. Robbery was ruled out as a motive because he was found with two thousand dollars in his pocket and he had several pieces of expensive jewelry on at the time of the attack. In the day prior to the attack on Joseph, there was a white camper with a blue stripe seen on Joseph Street, and it was also seen leaving the scene after the shooting. All include a photo of that on Instagram and Facebook on the post associated with this episode. Joseph was employed as a dealer at the Hotel Fremont that was located in downtown Las Vegas. Different people that were interviewed stated that he was also a bookie, which could have put him at risk, and others stated that he could have been targeted by the boyfriend or husband of the woman that he had been seeing socially. Joseph passed away on February twenty second of nineteen sixty nine from his injuries. There were different persons of interest, however, no arrest or charges were ever made. His case remains unsolved to this day. And really, what you see in a lot of these cases, it was back in the sixties in Las Vegas. Most people that lived there. Worked in casinos, or maybe they had some other involvement in being a bookie, or they were very prevalent in working in the downtown area. Vegas was a lot different back then than it obviously is now, and a lot of these people ran in the same circles, and there was a lot of bad people that lived in Vegas back then. And what we saw with Tom Hanley is he would eliminate people that got in his way or he was. Mad at for one reason or another. So in the murder of Joseph, it very. Well could have been somebody that was upset with him for something he did at work or something he did in his booky job, or like other people had suspected, it could have been the husband or boyfriend of the woman that he had been kind of seeing socially, so could have been a jealousy. Thing for sure. But despite that, no evidence ever came forward that led law enforcement to ever be able to charge anybody in connection with Joseph's death. Okay, next up is the case of Sam Ernest Lamel, who was sixty six years old at the time of his death. On October twenty fourth of nineteen sixty six, at around ten fifty pm, Las Vegas Police Department found a male lying on the sidewalk in front of four sixteen South Casino Center Boulevard. This man was bleeding profusely and it appeared that his pockets had been turned inside out, indicating that robbery could have been a motive. The victim was transported to Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital and unfortunately, his injuries were too severe and he passed away on October twenty fifth, a day later at twelve twenty five am. Unfortunately, he never regained consciousness. There was an autopsy performed and it was identified that the victim had in fact suffered a skull fracture, and the victim was identified as Sam Ernest Lamel, and he ended up being identified with his driver's license that was from the state of California. Sam had lived on First Street and was frequently known to go to Mint Casino that was located on Fremont Street. There isn't much known about the investigation into his death or any suspects, but as of current twenty twenty six. His case remains unsolved, but I do think there's an entirely huge possibility here that robbery was the motive. Maybe somebody saw him at the casino, maybe he won some stntial. Amount of money. He was followed, a robbery attempt was made, Sam likely probably fought back, and that's probably what led to the attack and his subsequent death. So unfortunately, there are no suspects that have been publicly named. His case remains unsolved, and given the fact that it happened in nineteen sixty six, the perpetrator likely is no longer living. I guess could be living, but at this point would be extremely elderly and time is running out. So these cases are of the utmost importance because they are so old and the people that know something about these cases are aging as well. So that is why time is of the essence, and it's so important to share these stories because you never know what's going to spark something in somebody's brain. Okay, last case we are going to get into is that of forty five year old woman Evelyn Grace Shank. She went by the name Grace, so that is what I'm going to be calling her. So. Grace was a night clerk at the Travel Lodge motel that was located at two eight three zero South Fifth Street in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was allegedly kidnapped on February fourth of nineteen fifty nine between eleven PM and eleven forty pm. The worker that showed. Up to relieve Grace discovered that the switchboard en desk area was unoccupied and Grace was nowhere to be found. So this man went ahead and called police and reported her messing. Once investigators arrived, it was discovered that approximately one hundred and seventy four dollars had been taken, and there was an all points bulletin that was broadcast, and they went ahead and set up roadblocks in Henderson, A, Boulder City, and in Las Vegas in an attempt to find Grace. They figured if they were able to get on this quickly, they might be able to safely recover Grace and find out who took her. Unfortunately, three days later, on February seventh of nineteen fifty nine, the body of Evelyn and Grace Shank was discovered near Mountain Springs in a flood drainage area by people that were riding on horseback. Grace's cause of death was homicide via a gunshot wound to the head. They were able to determine the murder weapon was likely a thirty two WCF Revolver, and at the time of her death, Grace had been wearing a fourteen carat yellow gold ring with two white pearls that was a size eight, along with a yellow gold snake band wristwatch, and these items were taken from Grace. And have never been recovered. So obviously the person that took Grace robbery was obviously the motive, wrong place, wrong time for Grace, and they also took advantage of the fact that she had on for the time, pretty expensive jewelry and also took that. Investigators do believe that Grace was kidnapped in order to prevent her from reporting the robbery, which to me just seems so dumb to go through the hassle of kidnapping somebody and taking a life over a one hundred and seventy four dollars, which I know in nineteen fifty nine was a lot more money than it is today, but I personally just don't think that there's any amount of money that is worth taking a life over. So I was able to track down a photo of the Econo Lodge as it looked back. In the sixties. So Grace's kidnapping and murder happened in nineteen fifty nine, so it looked very similar, I'm sure, in nineteen fifty nine as it did in the photo from the sixties. And there's also a picture of what it looks like now. It is still. Standing and I'm going to be posting that on my Instagram and Facebook pages. Unfortunately, in Grace's case, there is no active leads, there is no suspects, and. It remains a very cold case. Now. There are also is photos of the jewelry that she was wearing, the ring especially there's a photo of the ring, and I think it's important if you were around in Las Vegas back in the day in nineteen fifty nine, and maybe you found a ring at a pawnshop that looked very similar to the one that Grace had, that could be something that could be a potential clue. If you were gifted a ring by somebody that you knew that looked very similar to the one that Grace wore, or same thing with the wristwatch, that could be a potential clue that could blow this investigation wide open. I know it was a long time ago, nineteen fifty nine was a long time ago, but it is never too late to get answers to some of these cases that have been cold for such a long time. So I'm going to be posting all of the associated pictures with this episode on my Instagram and Facebook carousels. And I'm actually going to be releasing this episode a day early because I will be a crime con on Thursday, and. I release my episode's Thursday. But I always get so involved in the crime con of it all that I forget to publish the episode. So I'm bringing you this episode one day early on Wednesday. I'm probably post it even a little earlier in the day on Wednesday, so that way it is up and I can post all the photos that are associated with it. I can do my little right now in true crime, and we have a little Las Vegas Unsolved episode. If you are headed en route to crime Con, you can listen to it on your way to crime Con. I am so looking forward to the weekend and getting to meet some of you. Guys in person. I think it's so cool that I have people that listen to me weekly that I'm going to be able to meet at Crime Con. I also get to meet so many of my podcasting friends that I have not met before, and then reunite with those that I have met before, and get to go see some of my favorite podcasters. And it's just going to be a really great weekend and I can't wait to learn and soak it all in and come back and report all of the experiences and things that I learned on the weekend. So I hope you guys have a. Great rest of your week, a good weekend, and I will see you next week. We will have a guest episode next week from my friend Holly over at Crime with Holly, I am going to be doing a right now in true Crime at the beginning of that episode, and I will also be recording my Crime Con twenty twenty six recap once I get home, so stay tuned for that as well, and I will see you guys next time. Have a good one, stay safe, and I'll see you then. Bye.