Las Vegas police update 1991 cold case

A decades-old rape and murder of a mother of two in Las Vegas and an earlier, similar slaying of a woman in Colorado have been solved through DNA analysis, which included the exhumation their killer’s body, the Metropolitan Police Department announced Wednesday.

A friend and a relative of Sherrie Bridgewater, 30, found her dead in May 1991 in an apartment in the 1000 block of Monroe Avenue, homicide Lt. Jason Johansson said in a press briefing.

Teree Becker’s body was discovered in a Westminster, Colorado, field in December 1975, said Johansson, who noted that both women were sexually assaulted and strangled.

Johansson on Wednesday named their killer as Thomas Martin Elliott, who slain Bridgewater shortly after he was released from a decade-long Nevada prison sentence for raping a child in Carson City.

Elliott died by suicide in Las Vegas in December 1991 and buried here, Johansson said.

Elliott’s exact connection to Bridgewater wasn’t known, but both were known to have attended the same Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Las Vegas, Johansson said.

“We were, on the backside, able to provide two different families in this case closure,” Johansson said, “and that closure, resolution, came through close collaboration between not only two law enforcement entities… but also close coordination with our community partners.”

One of those partners was the Vegas Justice League, which paid for the pricey exhumation of Elliott’s remains, Johansson said.

The nonprofit is a group of philanthropists — led by Las Vegan Justin Woo — who have assisted Metro in solving cold cases through DNA-testing funding.

DNA technology

Breakthroughs in DNA technology helped police solve both cases.

In 2013, Las Vegas police submitted a sample from Bridgewater’s sexual assault kit to a DNA lab, Johansson said.

“At that time we were not able to put a name behind the DNA profile” of the suspect, he said.

However, upon entering the sample into a national database, investigators determined the perpetrator was also linked to Becker’s killing, Johansson said.

That year, a collaboration between Las Vegas and Westminster authorities was born, he said.

Further DNA testing in 2018 and 2022 led to Elliott’s identification, Johansson said.

Still, investigators couldn’t be “100 percent” sure it was him until they had DNA from his remains, he said.

That’s when the Justice League stepped in to fund the excavation, which was performed in October, Johansson said.

Samples from Elliot’s tissue and bone fragments were sent to another DNA lab, confirming what authorities already suspected, Johansson said.

Bridgewater’s parents have since died, but police were able to contact her two sons to share the news, Johansson said.

“Unfortunately, it took a long time to get to this point, but these are some of those cases that would not be solved with any other technology at the time are available to detectives,” Johansson said.

Johansson said his unit would continue pursuing its unsolved killings, noting that on Wednesday he received a call from another victim’s family inquiring about a cold case.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.