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Cold Blooded Murder Of A Night WatchmanEd. Note: Tb* is tin JfNWI i. a tsur part series by SUN Jtaff Writer George Manes on unsolved murders in Clark County.By GEORGE MANES SUN Staff WriterA night watchman was clubbed to death and afterward his killer methodically went about prying open several slot, pinball and cigaret machines at the Sapphire Room in East Las Vegas early in the morning July 20. 1966.Investigators, swarming over the cocktail lounge at Nellis and Tropieana, said the murder of James Gordon, 64, was among the most cold blooded crimes they had ever seen.Officers theorized the well-liked watchmen, referred to by many as the unofficial mayor of East Las Vegas, was probably killed with the same instrument his assailant, or assailants, used to pryopen the machines. But the murder weapon was never found.Gordon’s body was found by a waitress in the coffee shop adjoining the bar. She followed a path of destruction and wide open doors through a hallway connecting the cafe and the bar and almost stumbled over the body. Gordon’s nude body was lying face down on the blood soaked floor. The blood splattered a beer cooler several feet away.Gordon was evidently asleep when his killer entered the closed bar.Five months later police arrested two local men, one a criminology student at Nevada Southern, on murder charges, but they were eventually released. Two detectives are currently working on the case and report several new leads have developed recently.If officers had an abundance of leads in the Alsup murder, then there wasa veritable drought of clues in the slaying of Marylin Maines Sept. 1, 1966.Miss Maines’ body was discovered in a small gully lying underneath a clump of bushes 200 feet west of Blue Diamond and Industrial Road.The badly beaten woman died approximately 30 hours before she was found. Investigation at the scene showed the victim was dragged from the roadway and pushed under the bushes. According to Sheriff’s deputies, all leads have been exhausted and the case is dormant.Puerto Rican businessman Marcos Cruet had his Las Vegas pleasure-business trip abruptly ended April 27. 1967. when someone crushed his skull with a blackjack, according to Sheriff’s detectives.Cruet, in town for a convention, was found in his ransacked Casino Center hotel room. Active investigation iscontinuing with a search for articles known to be missing from Cruet’s room. In 1966, the biggest year for unsolvedMARVIN SHUMATEt- urders in Clark County, Sam E. Limel was found beaten to death on the 4(H) block of Casino Center.Limel, 66, was picked clean of all cash and valuables. Las Vegas police have been unable to round up any likely suspects in the robbery-murder and the case is now dormant.Perhaps the most intriguing and complicated of the unsolved murder cases was the gangland-type slaying of cabdriver Marvin Weldon Shumate on Dec. 2, 1967.Shumate’s body was found in the desert near Sunrise Mountain. He was shot in the chest with a shotgun and in the head with a .38 caliber slug.Sheriff’s deputies said the victim was hit behind the head with a blunt instrument. He was shotgunned from about three feet away. His lungs and heart were shattered by the blast.The assailants — deputies speculate there was more than one person — then gave the “coup de grace,” firing a pistol slug into the top of his head, above the right ear.The murder, thought to be the work of “pros,” had all the earmarks of a revenge killing, according to deputies.Shumate evidently was holding his hands up when the buckshot tore into the left side of his chest since his left arm was uninjured.Investigators found no footprints or auto tracks near the body. They theorize Shumate walked to the spot where he was killed.Authorities first believed the cabbie was killed because he knew of a plot to kidnap the son of a prominent downtown gambling executive, but the theory later fell through.(Tomorrow: The grisly slaving of cab driver Glenn (hristiernssen.)
Newspaper Details
Las Vegas Sun
Las Vegas, Nevada, US
Tue, Jul 29, 1969
Page 9
Full Page
Clipped by
Ted B.
NA, 07 Sep 2023
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