Mother of Pahrump woman killed in stabbing testifies at hearing

Donna Liebig clutched the arm of a bailiff as she made her way into the courtroom.

Breathing heavily, the 73-year-old looked up to the ceiling, readying herself to testify Thursday at the preliminary hearing for two of her five grandsons, Michael Wilson and Dakota Saldivar.

The teens, both 17, are accused of fatally stabbing and beating Dawn Liebig, Donna’s daughter and the teens’ mother, in July.

Prosecutors presented their case in front of Justice of the Peace Kent Jasperson, who will determine whether there is enough evidence for a murder trial. The hearing continues Friday in Pahrump Justice Court.

During Donna Liebig’s testimony, Deputy District Attorney Michael Vieta-Kabell asked her to identify her grandson, Saldivar, who sat in front of her, his long hair pulled down his back.

“He’s right here. The first table. He’s got orange and white stripes on,” she blurted out, crying from behind a handkerchief.

The boys often visited her home, which is only a block away, she testified.

Her daughter had four biological sons: Ian, Daniel, Michael and Dakota, she said.

She also knew her daughter’s adopted son, Michael Wilson, who had moved in about five years ago.

“She gave him a home when he needed it,” she testified. “He didn’t have any place to go.”

Prosecutors say that Wilson and Saldivar planned their mother’s death. Wilson confessed first, according to Nye County Sheriff’s Office arrest reports.

Saldivar “admitted that he and Michael Wilson murdered Dawn, because they couldn’t take her complaining,” the reports said.

They waited for their mother to fall asleep at their Pahrump home in the 6300 block of Wedgewood Street before stabbing her in a 25-minute attack, the reports said.

Wilson told detectives he stabbed his mother once in the neck, and Saldivar said he struck her in the head with a hammer about 20 times, the reports said.

The 46-year-old victim called out for her sons to help, according to the reports, not realizing that they were the ones attacking her.

On Thursday, Donna Liebig testified that her daughter was sick. She had previously suffered from a brain tumor and had cancer, though she couldn’t remember which kind.

The frail woman with wispy, white bangs said Dawn Liebig, who often visited her, had gone missing July 21. Wilson and Saldivar continued to visit her after that.

Saldivar had told her she was missing, she said.

“He didn’t know where she was, that she just got up and she was gone,” she testified.

Their mother had seemingly left without her purse, phone and car, witnesses testified Thursday.

All she took was a pack of cigarettes.

Two of Dawn Liebig’s sons, Michael and Daniel, were both in jail at the time. One had expressed concern for his mother’s whereabouts. Donna Liebig testified her brother-in-law also had talked to authorities.

The two sons living at the house told deputies that she went to visit a friend in Las Vegas, according to testimony. They also had said that she was suicidal.

Saldivar’s attorney, Harry Gensler, asked Donna Liebig Thursday if her daughter had been suicidal, to which she replied, “No.”

“Had she ever indicated anything like, ‘I can’t take it anymore?’” Gensler asked.

“Yes,” she said. “She was hurting bad.”

Nye County detective Logan Gibbs testified that he went to the home on July 31, after a deputy conducting a welfare check filed a missing persons report.

There, he said, he captured an hourslong confession on body camera footage, which attorneys will view Friday and argue over its admissibility.

Gibbs testified that Saldivar told the detective that about four months ago, his mother had attempted suicide using a knife and had conversations with the two boys about suicide, according to testimony.

He said the detectives got permission from the teens to look through their phones, which revealed text messages that were contradictory.

In one text, Gibbs testified, Saldivar told a friend that “my mom … passed away.”

“As we progressed through and everything, through the interview, Michael had stated that the story of her disappearing wasn’t true and that he admitted to killing her,” Gibbs said. “The specifics he had given me was that they had killed her in the living room, wrapped her up in blankets, put her in the back of the car, cleaned up, drove her out to the desert, buried the body.”

Gibbs said he found the decomposing body in a small ravine.

“When I got there, you could see the head or the jawline of the victim,” he testified.

Nearby, Gibbs found towels with dark, reddish brown stains.

“When I began to pull it out, a large knife popped out,” he said.”We kept on going. We got chunks of hair, household debris.”

He also found empty freezer bags and chicken bones.

As the sun came up in the desert, Gibbs testified that he looked around and found a folding silver pocketknife, four white rags, and a hammer about 80 yards from the gravesite.

At the home, investigators used Luminol, a chemical agent, to identify traces of blood on the couch and the walls.

“The Luminol popped,” Gibbs testified. “It was glowing almost all over the walls.”

Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter.