Rise in Las Vegas Valley homicides means police solving fewer cases

At 8:30 a.m. each Tuesday, a room is indefinitely reserved at Metropolitan Police Department headquarters for homicide investigators to gather and talk about their unsolved cases.

The second-floor meeting place is tucked within the department’s southernmost building, backing Alta Drive near Martin Luther King Boulevard. As commuters buzz past on nearby Interstate 15, the investigators greet victim advocates and representatives of the district attorney’s office, Metro’s forensics lab and Metro’s analytics team to ensure everyone is on the same page.

“I walk around with this log with people’s names in it,” said Metro homicide Lt. Dan McGrath, referring to each open case. He listed three victims: Heriberto Marcial Diaz, Mark Santee, Mary Trimble.

Many more have died this year, but those three, and cases like them, stick with him, he said, because from an investigative point of view, the slayings were entirely random.

Diaz was shot while walking home from work.

Santee was shot while on the job.

Trimble was killed in her home.

“Those homicide investigations, when I look at the log, I can remember almost everything from that scene,” he said.

As this year’s homicide count continues to climb in the department’s jurisdiction, the weekly meetings keep old cases fresh.

“It’s, ‘Hey, where are we at? What do we have? Is there something else we can do? What are we waiting for?’ ” McGrath said. “There’s a lot of involvement.”

HIGH NUMBER OF HOMICIDES

The Metropolitan Police Department logged its 100th homicide July 23. Last year Metro didn’t hit 100 until Oct. 5.

This year’s count since has climbed, which means detectives entrenched in old cases are consistently juggling new ones.

“It takes a significant amount of time and effort and interviews,” McGrath said of closing a case.

As of late August, about 30 percent of the 110 cases Metro had seen this year were still considered open. The other 70 percent of cases were considered “cleared,” either after an arrest, a murder-suicide situation or a self-defense incident in which the suspect was killed.

“One of the reasons why we’re not at a higher clearance rate is because we’ve had a high number of homicides,” McGrath said.

Eighty percent of cases at the end of 2015 were considered cleared. Though Metro is trailing now, McGrath said he expects a clearance rate of 75 percent by the end of this year. Valleywide, only 62 percent of homicides have been cleared.

“There are at least three or four cases that I’ve been briefed on that, if we had more time to put together, or more people, that these cases could be solved,” McGrath said. “So that’s a challenge.”

WAITING FOR ANSWERS

On the other side of open cases are the relatives and friends waiting for answers, like Amber Santee. Her dad, Mark Santee, was killed April 27.

The 48-year-old father of three was working as a security guard at a southwest valley construction site, the home of a future apartment complex near Jerry Tarkanian Way and Hacienda Avenue, about half past midnight. That’s when he spotted a group of people stealing new TVs that were set aside for installation in a few of the new apartments.

He tried to stop them, detectives told his family. After a rough fight — he was a black belt in karate — at least one person in the group pulled out a gun and fired several rounds into the back of Santee’s head.

He died there. The group packed up and drove away.

“That’s pretty much all we know,” his 28-year-old daughter said. “There was no cameras.”

TWO NEW DETECTIVES

One of the reasons detectives are tight on time is because the department doesn’t have many detectives in the first place.

McGrath said 19 homicide investigators work with Metro. Nationally, homicide detectives are expected to close three to five cases a year, he said.

With Metro’s current homicide count, detectives would need to solve at least five cases each to close all the cases — without adding any other cases through Dec. 31.

Though Sheriff Joe Lombardo announced in August he planned to hire at least two new homicide detectives by the end of the month, it was unclear when those detectives would begin work. Metro focused significant resources on launching the new Spring Valley substation, which formally opened last week and was created to cut down on patrol response times in the west valley.

“It’s really a drain on your personal life and your family,” McGrath said of homicide work. “That is one of the main reasons why we’d like to have more people. But there’s nobody complaining in homicide.”

He said he’s called detectives away from their children’s birthday parties, family gatherings, even church. “And they don’t complain because they choose to be a homicide detective. It’s a prestigious position, but they’re very dedicated, hardworking, committed,” McGrath said.

JUSTICE FOR MARK SANTEE

A few weeks ago, after Mark Santee’s case dropped out of daily news reports, his daughter took it upon herself to build and paint three wooden crosses to honor her dad, then hammer them into the dirt near where he died.

She wrote “Mark Santee Jr.” on each. In the middle of the three, she hung a separate sign that reads, “#justiceforMarkSantee.”

“I miss everything about my dad — just his presence, him as an individual,” she said in her Henderson home this month. “It’s hard, accepting the fact that you have to go on with your life. But even though we don’t have information, I believe that there’s a matter of time, and it will all come out. You can only keep a secret for so long.”

Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter.