Man gets 30 to life in Las Vegas rape and murder
A Las Vegas man convicted of rape and murder tried to blame the 55-year-old woman’s death on a seizure as he was sent to prison Thursday.
Prosecutor Christopher Hamner described the “savagery” of the November 2018 attack on Kelly Deanne Kazoon as senseless. The apartment where she was found was covered in blood, and when police arrived, Charles Talley was inside and naked.
“There was no rape,” Talley said Thursday at a hearing before District Judge Douglas Herndon. “She wasn’t raped. And then I did not beat her. She had a seizure. It was convulsions. I didn’t do that to her.”
Defense attorneys said Talley, a Navy veteran, suffered from brain damage and the effects of drug addiction. He was drunk and high at the time of the attack, they said. At his trial earlier this year, Talley’s attorneys argued that sex between him and Kazoon was consensual.
Prosecutors said Kazoon probably was dragged down a hallway of the apartment as she died bleeding, her fingernails scratching the carpet. Pictures from crime scene investigators showed blood-spattered walls, a blood-covered countertop and bloody handprints on the floor.
Kazoon suffered from multiple injuries, including a fractured jaw, a brain bleed, lacerations in her mouth and contusions in her throat.
The judge ordered Talley to serve 30 years to life in prison.
“Your complete inability to accept any responsibility for what was done to that woman is a scary thing,” Herndon said. “It’s a scary thing.”
Kazoon’s husband died in early 2016 after a battle with cancer, and she later walked away from the east Las Vegas home she had shared with him near Nellis Boulevard and Desert Inn Road, family members told the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the time of her death.
After the attack, Kazoon was rushed to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, where she died from injuries caused by strangulation and blunt force trauma.
Family members and prosecutors said Kazoon had considered Talley a friend.
“Kelly had a way of just making happiness happen in a room. She was very outgoing,” her sister, Alice Garcia, said on Thursday. “Kelly did not deserve to die.”
Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.
