2 Nevada prison inmates die, including double murderer

Two inmates at the state’s maximum-security prison including a convicted murderer died one day apart this week, the Nevada Department of Corrections announced.

So far in January, three High Desert State Prison inmates have died, according to corrections officials.

Michael Dorotiak, 43, was serving a sentence for coercion at High Desert, which is about 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas, when he was pronounced dead at University Medical Center on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Marlo Thomas, 52, was pronounced dead at Centennial Hospital. He was sentenced to death in 1997 for robbing and killing two prep cooks at a Las Vegas steakhouse in 1996.

Neither the Clark County coroner’s office nor the Nevada Department of Corrections had released the cause of either Dorotiak’s death or Thomas’ death yet.

Prison officials also recently announced that Brandon Hanson was pronounced dead in a fatal stabbing at the prison on Jan. 5.

Dorotiak and Thomas’ deaths are the fifth and sixth deaths at High Desert since the department completed the transfer of more than 2,000 inmates between High Desert and Ely State Prison in 2024.

On Nov. 7, High Desert inmate Hawk Urban, 27, was stabbed to death after a fight with his cellmate, according to the Nevada Department of Corrections and the man’s mother.

High Desert replaced Ely as the state’s highest security facility in September in a move that prison officials said followed “an uptick in gang activity and violence” at Ely and was part of an “effort to increase the safety of both staff and offenders.”

Contact Estelle Atkinson at eatkinson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @estelleatkinson.bsky.social on Bluesky and @estellelilym on X.