Man who carried out murder-suicide was on house arrest, DA says

The perpetrator of a murder-suicide that left a woman and two children dead had been released on house arrest last year in a child sexual assault case, officials said Tuesday.

“I believe also that at least one of the victims killed is one of the victims from the child sexual assault,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said.

Wolfson confirmed the man believed to have carried out the murder-suicide was Marvin Patterson. He was facing charges of five counts of lewdness with a child under 14, lewdness with a child under 16, kidnapping of a minor and two counts of sexual assault against a child under 16, court records show.

Metropolitan Police Department officers were called Monday morning to the Loreto & Palacio Apartments, near Durango Drive and U.S. Highway 95, after a man called 911 to report he had found several people dead with gunshot wounds.

The bodies of a man, a woman and two children were found inside the apartment, and another child who was shot was taken to University Medical Center while “clinging to life,” police said. Metro homicide Lt. Robert Price said the man shot the woman, children and himself, and that the shooter’s brother found the scene on Monday morning.

Patterson’s criminal case stemmed from an arrest in October 2022, court records show. He was initially placed on a $100,000 bail, but Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Diana Sullivan lowered his bail to $10,000 in December 2022. The judge also ordered Patterson to be placed on high-level electronic monitoring and to not have any contact with the victims or children under the age of 18.

He posted bond and was released on house arrest in December 2022, court records show.

“We argued strenuously against the bail reduction,” Wolfson told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

In a phone interview on Tuesday, Sullivan said that she reduced Patterson’s bail a year ago, and she did not remember much of the details of his case. She said it’s difficult for judges to know which defendants can afford to post high bail amounts.

“I follow the law, I follow the requirements that the Nevada Supreme Court puts upon us,” she said.

A Supreme Court ruling from 2020 requires judges to find the least restrictive means to ensure a defendant’s court appearance, and there are higher due process standards that have to be met for a judge to order bail that a defendant cannot afford, Sullivan said.

“Bail is really supposed to ensure their court appearances, but bail will not protect the community,” Sullivan said, adding that non-monetary bail conditions, such as electronic monitoring, are meant to ensure community protection.

At the time Patterson was arrested last year, his only criminal history in Clark County was a 2006 conviction for an attempted theft gross misdemeanor charge, court records show.

Sullivan also questioned why Patterson had not gone to trial in the year since he posted bail. Patterson’s case was transferred out of Sullivan’s courtroom and into District Court in March, following a preliminary hearing. His jury trial was set for April 2024.

“I made a decision a year ago and apparently nothing came out of it for a year,” Sullivan said. “What’s been going on in the last year? … I have no idea because I haven’t had the case.”

The child sexual assault case involved four different victims, according to transcripts of a preliminary hearing held in March. The victims testified that Patterson had inappropriately touched them, and two of the victims said he attempted to rape them when they were young teenagers, court records show.

Price said Monday that it was too early to say if there was a history of domestic violence reported at the apartment.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240.