Before she was found in a freezer, Monique Gilbertson had a troubled life
Monique Gilbertson’s life started to unravel long before police found her body in a freezer at a 55-plus mobile home park in Las Vegas.
In the last 30 years, she got divorced, ended a real estate career in which she had once excelled, lost her home to foreclosure, filed for bankruptcy twice and was accused of mistreating her elderly father, which attorneys representing her denied.
“I think she was lonely and craved attention,” said her friend Christine Marshall, who called the circumstances of Gilbertson’s death “disturbing.”
Police discovered Gilbertson’s body and have arrested a suspect in her death.
Daniel Roush, who also goes by the name Jazlynn Roush, faces a second degree murder charge and has pleaded not guilty. Police have said the two met at a Home Depot and that Gilbertson, who was 68, invited Roush to come live with her before their relationship soured and she kicked Roush out.
Roush found Gilbertson dead and thought she had taken drugs, a police report said Roush claimed. But Roush’s wife told police her husband had used Gilbertson’s money to buy Gilbertson cocaine laced with fentanyl and that Gilbertson overdosed in front of Roush, which Roush denied.
Marshall said Gilbertson took sedatives to help her sleep and was addicted to hydrocodone at one point a few years ago.
The Clark County coroner’s office has yet to officially identify Gilbertson or provide her cause of death.
‘Kind of wild,’ then success in real estate
Gilbertson was born Lynn Thomas in Buffalo, New York, according to Fred Carstens, her half brother, but changed her name to Monique at some point, maybe as an act of rebellion.
“She was kind of wild, I guess, when she was younger,” he said.
Gilbertson received her GED in Upland, California and studied at Chaffey College, two real estate schools and a bartender’s school, according to legal documents. Gilbertson earned her California real estate salesperson license in 1977, state licensing records indicate.
Her career was apparently successful; in the 1980s and 90s, she was repeatedly listed as a top real estate agent in newspaper stories and advertisements.
Divorce and disability
Things may have started to deteriorate for Gilbertson around 1999, when records show she and Steven Gilbertson were divorced in San Bernardino.
Steven Gilbertson couldn’t be reached for comment.
She later told her friend Marshall that she’d loved her former husband and didn’t want to get divorced.
Gilbertson’s career ended, too.
In a 2013 document, her attorneys for her father’s guardianship case said she had not worked for the past seven years “due to disability.” Her real estate license expired in 2009 and she does not appear to have been licensed in Nevada.
She lost her house in Rancho Cucamonga, California, to foreclosure in 2008 and declared bankruptcy in 2010, listing just over $4,000 in assets and more than $111,000 in debts, according to court documents.
Attorney Christine Owen, who represented Gilbertson in the bankruptcy case, said the claims against Gilbertson appeared to stem from credit card debt, medical bills and expenses related to the foreclosure.
‘Leave my dad alone’
By some accounts, Gilbertson had a difficult relationship with her father, Richard Thomas.
Carstens said her dad treated her badly.
Marshall said Gilbertson could be jealous when her father got attention. One Christmas, before she and Gilbertson became friends, she invited Gilbertson’s dad over. He didn’t want to bring his daughter and came alone.
The next morning, Marshall said she found a note on her car, from Gilbertson, that read: “Leave my dad alone. You have a husband.”
Faced with financial problems, Gilbertson moved to Las Vegas, where her octogenarian father had lived for years in a mobile home park. He owned two mobile homes through a trust, according to records, and she lived in one of them.
Gilbertson’s attorneys painted a more positive picture of their relationship in documents filed as part of her father’s guardianship case.
Her father paid for the move, which happened around June 2007, they said. Every day, the two would eat breakfast together, then go to a show or spend time together.
Contested guardianship
By 2012, Gilbertson’s father was suffering from dementia, according to court documents, and she filed to become his guardian, a role that would allow her to make decisions about his life and his assets.
Soon after her petition to become guardian, the Clark County public guardian objected. Gilbertson had been investigated by the Nevada Aging and Disability Services Division for allegations that she financially exploited her father, according to a letter attached to the public guardian’s petition to become his guardian instead.
The letter from aging and disability services said the exploitation allegation was “substantiated.”
The manager of Thomas’ assisted living facility claimed that Gilbertson had tried to take her father to the bank to sign checks and would talk about needing his money to pay bills, according to court documents.
Another staffer reported that Gilbertson visited with apparently homeless friends from California who wanted to talk to her dad about his finances, the documents stated.
In late 2012 or early 2013 her father returned home and the two began living together at the house where Gilbertson’s body would later be found, court documents indicate.
Elder protective services received a complaint that Gilbertson had told a home health worker her father fell and she left him on the floor a few hours to “teach him a lesson,” according to a 2013 letter included in court filings.
Gilbertson denied the allegations of mistreatment through her attorneys, who said her father bought a second home for her, that she worked to clean and repair her father’s property and that she couldn’t lift him when he fell because he weighed nearly 200 pounds. The attorneys said the aging and disabilities services division investigation found the allegations of theft “unsubstantiated.”
The public guardian eventually became Thomas’ guardian. He died in 2014 at age 89.
“This was not a loving, caring relationship,” said Homa Woodrum, an attorney who represented the public guardian in the case. In estate cases, she said, family members often view someone’s care as a secondary goal to preserving assets.
“I definitely think she felt entitled to those funds, whether before or after her father’s passing,” she said of Gilbertson.
Attorneys who represented Gilbertson in the case declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
‘She was different’
When Gilbertson showed up for a meeting with Matthew McArthur, an attorney who represented her in her second bankruptcy case last year, she brought her dogs with her.
The dogs wore outfits and that made an impression. She was the only person who ever brought dressed up dogs to an appointment with him, he said.
Gilbertson’s Facebook page had lots of pictures of herself and her dogs, Zinny and Tanya. In some, the dogs wore costumes.
Her friend Marshall said Gilbertson was especially devoted to her chihuahua, which she would dress in outfits that included sunglasses, coats and hats. If Marshall and Gilbertson went on an outing, Marshall would sit in the back of the car, because her friend’s dog had a car seat in the front.
Carstens thinks he last saw his sister in 1982. But in recent years, they occasionally talked on the phone. She was usually the one who initiated the call. She’d yell at him for not calling her and complain a lot, including about conflicts with her neighbors, he said.
He described her as “kind of a conspiracy theorist” who believed everything she saw on the Internet.
“I don’t want to say wack, but she was different,” he said.
It was Gilbertson’s habit of complaining that helped tip people off to the fact that something had happened to her, according to Roush’s arrest report.
She’d stopped visiting the office of her community association. She didn’t answer her door. And her vehicle was backed into her carport, something she’d complain about other people doing.
Marshall said people didn’t like Gilbertson. But they also didn’t know her.
To Marshall, she was a fun, if sometimes exasperating, person who loved soap operas and brought her dog on visits.
“It’s kind of sad to think those days are gone,” she said.
Marshall learned her friend had died when she heard on the news that a body had been found. She wondered if Gilbertson knew anything, then realized it was her house.
“I think it’s horrific,” she said.
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.
