‘The system failed him’: Family wants answers in Nevada prisoner’s killing

The last time Gracie Hernandez spoke to her fiance, he told her he was going to get in line for a shower. The man she was planning to marry, Antonio Talavera, was serving time at Ely State Prison.

“He told me he loved me,” Hernandez said, remembering the phone call. “It was a good moment.”

Hernandez would never hear her fiance’s voice again. Later that day, Talavera was stabbed to death inside the prison.

Since April, Hernandez said she has struggled to get answers about what happened to him, or how it could have happened. Similar efforts by Talavera’s ex-wife and daughter have been unsuccessful, as well.

Months later, Antonio Talavera’s family is left without a death certificate. Despite their efforts, his loved ones say they have been unable to get a clear picture of what happened from Ely State Prison, the Nevada Department of Corrections, the White Pine County Sheriff’s Office or the Clark County Coroner’s Office.

“I can’t get closure yet,” said Hernandez, who like Talavera did, lives in Reno.

Multiple officials said that as the investigation into Talavera’s death is ongoing, information cannot be released at this time.

The death has led his loved ones to question the safety of Ely State Prison. But William “Bill” Quenga, public information officer for the Nevada Department of Corrections, said that it’s not always possible to control the violence within prison walls.

“Prison is not a college dorm,” Quenga said.

Violence at Ely State Prison is on the Nevada Department of Corrections’ radar, according to Public Information Officer Teri Vance. “We are working to curtail the violence,” she said, adding that she wasn’t ready to discuss the plans and procedures that will be put in place in order to do so.

In the last two years, the department has issued press releases for the deaths of seven people at the prison, three of who were killed in a fight there on July 30.

The department declined to release public records including incident reports, investigative reports and surveillance footage from the incident, saying that the records being released would “undermine the constitutional rights of a defendant to a fair trial.”

Talavera was scheduled to become eligible for parole in July 2025. He was 38.

‘A changed man’

Hernandez recalled speaking with Talavera at around 1:30 p.m. on April 16, the day he died.

According to a record of examination from the Clark County coroner’s office that was provided to the Review-Journal by the White Pine County Sheriff’s Office, Talavera was “assaulted” at 2:13 p.m. He died from multiple stab wounds, and the death was determined to have been a homicide.

The record said that the date of the examination was April 17. The next day, April 18, is when the department issued its press release about Talavera’s death.

It said only that he had been “pronounced dead.” It did not say that Talavera had been stabbed, or that the death was being investigated as a homicide.

Quenga said that his office never shares the circumstances of a death in their press releases because the determination is not made by the department, but by the coroner.

“I don’t talk to the coroner,” Quenga said, explaining that sometimes he’s not even aware of a determination made by the coroner’s office.

While the department’s policy has been only to announce that there has been a death, Vance said that including in a press release that a death occurred under suspicious circumstances is “something we could consider” moving forward.

‘Things feel crazy’

Talavera had been serving out a sentence for burglary with a firearm and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person or ex felon, records show. Hernandez explained he had a felony charge in California.

A felony complaint provided by Hernandez showed that Talavera had been convicted of felony grand theft in California.

“For his charges, he shouldn’t have been where there were killers wandering around,” Hernandez said.

Ely State Prison, which is the “designated maximum-security prison for the State of Nevada,” according to its website, also houses the state’s men’s death row.

Hernandez said that she received a letter from Talavera, which she didn’t read until after his death, in which he expressed concerns about his safety.

“If anything happens to me in there blame the homeboys cause things feel crazy and sometimes they be tripping,” the letter reads. Hernandez said she understood “homeboys” to be a reference to the prison gang that Talavera was affiliated with.

She recalled Talavera telling her that his gang affiliation was the reason he was being held in Ely State Prison.

“We try to spread our population out,” Quenga said. He explained that the more gang members are put together, the more active a gang becomes.

However, the department is also conscious of not putting enemy gang members in the same facility, Vance explained. This means that some members of the same gang will then, by default, be placed together.

“We’re noticing a little uptick in gang activity,” Quenga said. While the department tries to collect information by intercepting calls and consulting inmates, he said that “sometimes it just can’t be controlled.”

“My kids are born into the gang life,” said Kristen Lovato, Talavera’s ex-wife and the mother of his five children. She said it was one reason why she and her ex-husband went their separate ways. Talavera had been changing course away from that life, she said, but “just a little too late.”

“He was a changed man today with Gracie,” Lovato said. “And I loved it.”

Seeking answers

“My daughter had a hard time telling me,” Lovato said, adding she was among the last among Talavera’s loved ones to learn of his death.

Lovato received a call from Talavera’s daughter, Serina Talavera, 19, who took on the responsibilities of being her father’s next of kin.

At first, Lovato said her daughter only asked what a family is meant to do when someone dies. When Lovato asked her why she was asking, Serina Talavera said she’d gotten a call from Ely State Prison and had been told that her dad is dead.

Hernandez, Lovato and Serina Talavera were all put in touch with a White Pine County Sheriff’s Office detective who had been assigned to the case.

When Lovato said she first called Detective Paul Bath, she said she was informed that her ex-husband’s death was registered as a homicide and that there were two other individuals involved.

Since then, the detective hasn’t provided more information, the family said.

“I know the details are hard to accept, but I think we need that to move forward,” Hernandez said. “And we are denied that.”

“There’s not really much I can say without getting myself into trouble,” Bath told the Review-Journal. The investigation into Talavera’s death by the White Pine County Sheriff’s Office is still ongoing.

Before the individuals involved can be charged, the investigation will need to be concluded and passed on to the Office of the Inspector General, Bath explained. This office is responsible for performing criminal investigations pertaining to both prisons and prisoners.

Bath said he’s fielded five or six phone calls from Talavera’s loved ones, which he said he always returns within a week or so. “I know that as a grieving family, that’s probably not good enough,” Bath said. “You want answers right now.”

While the Clark County coroner’s office and White Pine County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Talavera’s cause of death, Captain Todd Fincher of the sheriff’s office said no further information was to be released “due to this being an active homicide investigation.”

Information from the inside

During one attempt to call the prison for answers, Lovato said she managed to get through to a nurse working inside Ely. While they wouldn’t share any information, the nurse told Lovato that if she wanted answers, she should look on the Prison Writers website.

Prison Writers is a nonprofit with a mission of highlighting voices from incarcerated people on the issues that impact them.

“I started prison writers almost 10 years ago for the very specific reason to give prisoners a voice, because they literally had none,” said Loen Kelley, the organization’s founder.

On July 20, an inmate at Ely State Prison named Gilbert Paliotta wrote to Kelley in a letter seen by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, saying that in April, he had “witnessed another murder” at the prison.

“I’ve been a hostage at the E.S.P. for thirty (30) years, and I have never seen it this violent,” Paliotta wrote.

Paliotta also wrote a story on Prison Writers titled “Inmates are dying at Ely State Prison in Nevada.”

When Lovato visited the site and saw Paliotta’s story, she believed he was writing about the death of her ex-husband, as Paliotta referenced a death in April.

“It’s well known that people die here,” Paliotta wrote.

Vance said that the department needs to review the specific allegations in Paliotta’s writings before responding to them.

Bringing Talavera home

Serina Talavera embarked on the difficult journey of trying to bring her father home.

“They just started talking to me about the cremation,” Serina Talavera said of early conversations with the prison. She and her mother, both Arkansas residents, drove to the Giddens Memorial Chapel in Las Vegas to try and figure it out.

On April 26, the cremation permit was issued by the state, according to an email sent from the chapel. The permit was the first time anyone learned Antonio Talavera’s time of death, Hernandez explained.

Attempts to get any records from the coroner’s office in person were unsuccessful, his loved ones explained. On Aug. 19, a redacted copy of Talavera’s autopsy was provided to the Las Vegas Review-Journal by the Clark County coroner’s office.

“To this day we still don’t have the death certificate or anything,” Serina Talavera said. “But we do have the ashes.”

Serina Talavera, Lovato and Hernandez continue to look for answers from inside and outside of the prison.

“It’s hard to sleep at night knowing that he will never come home,” Hernandez said. “The system failed him in so many ways.”

Contact Estelle Atkinson at eatkinson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @estellelilym on X and @estelleatkinsonreports on Instagram.