Man’s murder trial in attack of Las Vegas woman nears end
Images of a blood-covered apartment and Kelly Deanne Kazoon’s bruised and swollen face flashed on screens in a Las Vegas courtroom Thursday.
The 55-year-old woman had become homeless after her husband died and, prosecutors said, she was brutally attacked inside the east valley apartment on the 2900 block of Juniper Hills Boulevard in November 2018.
“What this woman endured in that bedroom is shown to you in every photograph,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Fleck said during closing arguments.
Jurors began deliberating first-degree murder and sexual assault charges against 52-year-old Charles Talley Jr., and the panel is expected to continue Friday morning.
Countering arguments from defense attorneys that Kazoon consented to sex with Talley, the prosecutor said Kazoon was likely dragged down a hallway, her fingernails scratching the carpet.
Pictures from crime scene investigators showed blood-spattered walls and a ceiling, with a blood-covered countertop and bloody handprints saturated in carpet.
“There is not one photograph in this case that suggests this was consensual,” Fleck said.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Hamner argued that Talley “savagely” beat and sexually assaulted Kazoon “in a variety of ways.”
The jury also saw images of Kazoon’s bloody face with her eyes bruised shut. She suffered from multiple injuries, including a fractured jaw, a brain bleed, lacerations in her mouth and contusions in her throat.
“How in the world would she end up looking like that?” Hamner said. “It’s not the face of someone who consented. It’s the face of someone who said, ‘No, I don’t want to do this with you.’”
Special Public Defender Michael Hyte argued that Talley was intoxicated at the time of the attack.
“Charlie was too intoxicated to commit first-degree murder,” Hyte told jurors, adding that “evidence favors consent” in the sexual encounter between Talley and Kazoon.
Police found a naked Talley inside the apartment on Nov. 24, 2018, before a dying Kazoon came into view, gasping for air, according to prosecutors.
Kazoon’s husband had died in early 2016 after a battle with cancer, and she later walked away from the east Las Vegas home she had shared with her husband near Nellis Boulevard and Desert Inn Road, family members told the Review-Journal at the time of her death.
After the attack, Kazoon was rushed to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, where she died from her injuries — strangulation and multiple blunt force trauma, including facial fractures.
Talley told police that he had known Kazoon for several years and insisted during an interrogation with detectives that their sex was consensual. He claimed to have “blacked out” from alcohol, but prosecutors pointed out that he recalled specific details about the day of the attack.
Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.