Metro encourages people in violent relationships to leave or get help, following Las Vegas murder-suicide

Geri Evelyn Hanson spent the last minutes of her life on the phone with police, trying to get help.

Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Dan McGrath spoke to the Las Vegas Review-Journal about her death hoping that it might encourage someone in a violent relationship to leave before it’s too late.

“The ultimate abuse is taking someone’s life,” he said.

Geri Hanson, 50, died from multiple shotgun wounds early Tuesday morning, the Clark County coroner’s office said. Police have said her ex-husband — identified through public records as 58-year-old Ted Neal Hanson — killed her before taking his own life.

Police were dispatched to the La Villa Vegas Mobile Home Park about 2:40 a.m. Geri Hanson had been cut and shot and was trying to get help.

Officers found Geri Hanson dead on a neighbor’s doorstep. They didn’t arrive in time to save her, but police had been there before.

Ted Hanson had a history of domestic abuse, both with Geri, to whom he was married for about a year, and in a previous marriage.

Public records show Ted Hanson married Judy Brown in summer 1990. The couple was arrested on May 5, 2008, when a marital dispute led to Brown firing a handgun at Hanson.

Arrest records show that the serial number had been removed from the handgun, and both people had “signs of injury.”

Because of conflicting stories, officers couldn’t determine the primary aggressor. But they did identify that Hanson was prohibited from owning a firearm because of domestic violence convictions in 1989 and 2000, according to the arrest records. Family court documents show that the pair divorced in 2009.

McGrath said police were still working to determine where the shotgun used in Tuesday’s slaying came from.

Ted Hanson also had an extensive history of violence with Geri, whom he married in 2012. Police responded to four domestic violence events in September 2013, shortly before their divorce.

But the relationship continued on and off afterward, neighbors said Tuesday.

“The hardest thing to know is what goes on in people’s homes,” McGrath said.

In 2015, at least 43 deaths in the state were connected to domestic violence, the Nevada Network Against Domestic Violence’s annual homicide report, released this week, shows. Perpetrators killed themselves after a domestic violence-related homicide or attempted homicide 11 times. Most of the victims were women and most of the incidents involved firearms.

McGrath encourages people in violent relationships to seek help and says bystanders should call the police if they think domestic violence is occurring. Las Vegas police are trained to handle certain aspects of domestic violence cases, but it often takes a friend or a relative’s support for a victim to get out.

“There are places, there are things to be done, there’s people out there who will try to help them,” he said.

Contact Wesley Juhl at wjuhl@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0391. Find @WesJuhl on Twitter.