Las Vegas man convicted of killing, dismembering wife dies
A Las Vegas man who made headlines by pleading guilty to murdering his wife and cutting up her body nearly 15 years ago died in prison Tuesday.
William Sites, 81, was serving up to 15 years on charges of second-degree murder and theft in the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City when he died while in hospice care Tuesday morning. He had been in the prison since March 2008, according to a statement from the Department of Corrections on Wednesday.
A cause and manner will be determined by the Carson City coroner’s office.
Sites told police he hit his wife Jan, 60, with a hammer at least once on Oct. 8, 2005, and then left her body in a recliner for three days before using her debit card to buy a hacksaw from Home Depot. He cut up her body in the couple’s bathroom and disposed of body parts in various trash cans while walking their dog Molly.
Sites’ case resurfaced in 2016 when the biological daughter of the wife he pleaded guilty to murdering flew from Oregon to Las Vegas to speak at Sites’ parole hearing, according to reporting from the Review-Journal.
“My life has changed dramatically since inmate Sites murdered my mother,” Jan Sites’ biological daughter told the Parole Board in September of that year. He was denied parole until October 2021.
Prosecutors could not pursue the death penalty because Jan Sites’ body was never recovered, the Review-Journal reported during the parole hearings.
Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Rio Lacanlale contributed to this report.
