Bloody palm print linked to suspect in 1998 Las Vegas killings

A bloody palm print on the corner of a Las Vegas newspaper from 22 years ago pointed to a man on trial in the killing of two elderly people a dozen years before he was arrested, prosecutors said Monday.

The killer used a 25-pound dumbbell to bludgeon 75-year-old Wallace Siegel before fatally stabbing 86-year-old Helen Sabraw in separate apartments at an assisted-living community near Flamingo Road and Maryland Parkway.

The slayings went unsolved for 12 years before DNA evidence tied Gustavo Ramos-Martinez to the case.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Giancarlo Pesci pointed to a crime scene photo that showed a bloody dumbbell near the body of Siegel.

“Next to that deadly weapon is that piece of the Review-Journal” from May 15, 1998, the day before Siegel was killed, the prosecutor argued, with the lower right corner of Page 7C of the newspaper enlarged on a screen in District Judge Douglas Herndon’s courtroom. “This item has the print, the palm print in the blood substance.”

Ramos-Martinez, who was 18 at the time, lived less than a quarter-mile from where the killings occurred, and denied to police that he had ever been to the property, which Pesci called “a lot of nevers and a lot of noes that just do not comport with the evidence.”

But defense attorney Abel Yanez said Siegel’s son, Jack Siegel, had a financial motive to kill his father. Jack Siegel’s siblings had chosen him to care for his father because he was not working at the time, Yanez said.

“The only logical conclusion is that Jack Siegel either committed or participated in the murders,” Yanez argued. “Jack is the one who had the opportunity in this case to commit both murders.”

Yanez pointed to Wallace Siegel’s blood, mixed with someone else’s, found on the steering wheel of his car and on carpet between the seats.

Yanez argued that even the possibility of Jack Siegel’s involvement in the killings created reasonable doubt about the guilt of Ramos-Martinez.

About a year ago, prosecutors agreed to withdraw the death penalty for Ramos-Martinez after defense attorneys argued that he was not mentally capable of facing capital punishment. The two sides agreed to a bench trial, in which a judge decides on the evidence rather than a jury.

In the nine years he has been in custody awaiting trial, Ramos-Martinez, now 39, has lost sight in one eye and has diminishing vision in the other, his attorneys have said.

Sabraw’s neighbor in the complex, now known as Oak Hill Senior Living, along with her son, found her body a day after Siegel’s body was discovered. She had been beaten and raped, suffering upward of 30 sharp wounds, prosecutors said.

Another prosecutor, Pamela Weckerly, told the judge that Jack Siegel was “forensically eliminated” as a suspect in both killings. Weckerly argued that the blood in the car was a minute amount, and not connected to the crime scene.

Authorities linked Ramos-Martinez to the slayings in 2010 after he gave a DNA sample while serving time in federal prison on an illegal immigration charge.

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.