Man sentenced in death of Las Vegas police informant
A man tied to the killing of a confidential Las Vegas police informant was sentenced Thursday to at least 10 years in prison, and he faces several more charges that could add decades to his sentence.
Less than a year ago, Christopher Weygant and his attorney worked out a deal with prosecutors that let him temporarily walk free after he pleaded guilty to battery with use of a deadly weapon in the April 2018 death of Bailey Beck.
But in the time since that agreement was laid out in court, Weygant, now 33, has been charged with robbery, burglary, conspiracy, drug possession, child abuse and running from the police.
In July, prosecutors agreed to drop a murder charge against Weygant, and he pleaded no contest to battery with use of a deadly weapon for his role in Beck’s death. He was facing a maximum of seven years behind bars.
“He decided to be a one man crime wave during the time the court released him from custody,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo said on Thursday. Standing in a courtroom lined with defendants facing murder charges, the prosecutor called Weygant “by far the most dangerous person in this room right now.”
Defense attorney Abel Yanez argued that Weygant had maintained his innocence in Beck’s death, and that his prior felony convictions, dating to 2005, were nonviolent.
Weygant told Senior District Judge David Barker that he accepted the deal in Beck’s death because “I didn’t want to go to trial and lose. I’m obviously a criminal,” but said he was innocent of the most recent allegations. “I’ll sign a life without the possibility of parole (agreement) if I’m found guilty of armed robbery, burglary, high-speed chase, any of that.”
The judge ordered him to serve a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison.
Authorities have said that Beck turned police informant after she was arrested in March 2018, having been caught transporting drugs in a car owned by since-suspended Las Vegas lawyer William Gamage.
Weygant and other members of the gang he belonged to learned that Beck had been cooperating with authorities. At a house party in the southwest valley, Weygant injected Beck with a “hot shot” of heroin and methamphetamine, which was meant “either to harm or kill her,” the prosecutor has said. At the time of his plea, prosecutors said they would have difficulty proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the injection resulted in Beck’s death.
Beck crawled downstairs and locked herself in a garage, where she spent the next 48 hours before going to Spring Valley Hospital Medical Center where she died. Along with narcotics in her system, Beck had a head injury, but authorities do not know how it occurred. Her cause of death was ruled blunt force trauma.
“At the age of 30, she was murdered,” Beck’s sister, Danielle Anthony, told the judge on Thursday. “I know that in this courtroom, we’re not calling it that, but that’s what it will always be to me … We may never know all that she went through in her final days.”
No one else had been arrested or charged with murder in Beck’s death.
Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.