Suspect in Girl’s Slaying Enters Plea of Not Guilty

Teenager Jeremy Joseph Strohmeyer pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a fugitive murder warrant only hours after Las Vegas authorities released a chilling affidavit that detailed what they describe as his confession to the sexual assault and strangulation of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson.

Making his first court appearance since his arrest in the casino slaying case a week ago, the 18-year-old high school senior from Long Beach was arraigned before Judge Michael Kellogg during a brief proceeding in the downtown Los Angeles Municipal Court.

Wearing the dark blue jumpsuit of a jail inmate, Strohmeyer was seated behind a glass partition and then whisked away by deputies until his extradition hearing, scheduled for June 13.

At that time, law enforcement officials in Nevada plan to attempt to return Strohmeyer to Las Vegas to stand charges in a crime that could bring him the death penalty. But Strohmeyer’s attorneys, defense counsel Leslie Abramson and Nevada attorney Richard Wright, are expected to fight his extradition.

In an affidavit filed in a Goodsprings, Nev., court seeking an arrest warrant for Strohmeyer, a Las Vegas homicide detective detailed how investigators homed in on the teenager and interrogated him.

“During Strohmeyer’s statement [to Las Vegas detectives] . . . he confessed to the crimes of murder, sexual assault and kidnapping of Sherrice Iverson,” the affidavit states.

Questioned by two Las Vegas detectives, Strohmeyer said he was playing hide-and-seek with the young girl in the Primadonna Resort’s video arcade before dawn May 25 when they began throwing spitballs at each other. The girl threw a “Caution--Wet Floor” sign at Strohmeyer, and he “admitted this angered him,” the affidavit states.

She then ran into the women’s restroom. According to the affidavit, Strohmeyer followed, grabbing the girl and forcing her into the handicapped stall in the corner. When she continued to struggle, he put his hand over her mouth, the affidavit says, removed her clothes, threw them all into the toilet, then sexually assaulted her with his hands.

When he heard three women enter the restroom, he sat on the girl, the affidavit says, placing her feet in the toilet so it would appear only one person was in the stall.

When the three women left, Strohmeyer sat up and saw that the child’s breathing had become, in his words, “labored.”

The affidavit states: “He figured she was brain-dead and didn’t want her to suffer so he put one hand behind her head and one hand under her chin and snapped her head like he has seen on TV. He heard a loud cracking sound but observed Sherrice to be still breathing, so he snapped her neck again harder, and at [that] point she stopped breathing.”

Sherrice was pronounced dead at 7:40 a.m. after her body was discovered in the restroom. Clark County coroner’s investigators determined the cause of death was “acute asphyxia due to strangulation.”

The document states that when Strohmeyer was finished, he wiped his bloody fingers with a piece of toilet paper and threw it on the floor, where police found it. He left the restroom, the affidavit says, and met his friend David Cash Jr. by the resort’s pool.

According to the affidavit, Cash “told investigators that he had asked Strohmeyer what had happened in the restroom and Strohmeyer told Cash that he had killed the girl.” The two left the casino and drove with Cash’s father to Las Vegas, where they spent the night.

Police have said that Cash told them he saw Strohmeyer struggling with the child in the restroom, tried to interrupt, then fled the room. Prosecutors have said they are evaluating Cash’s degree of involvement to determine whether to charge him in the case.

The affidavit also details how police located Strohmeyer--beginning with a now widely broadcast surveillance tape from a camera watching over the video arcade. In the tape, Sherrice is seen running into the women’s restroom, and a young-looking man with a T-shirt, shorts and backward baseball cap is seen following her.

Detectives found a young woman who had chatted with two men in the arcade--one who looked like the man with the backward cap, and his companion. The man with the cap, she recalled, had lifted his T-shirt to show off his pierced nipples. He told her he was only 18, and showed her the fake ID he said he had used to buy drinks in the casino.

After the surveillance tape footage was shown on television across the country, tips began to trickle in.

Long Beach police have said they were called by the parents of two female students at Woodrow Wilson High School after Strohmeyer allegedly told the students about his involvement in the crime.

Last Wednesday, Long Beach police set up surveillance in the subdivision where Strohmeyer lives. As detectives approached, he apparently swallowed a number of unidentified pills, and police took him to a local hospital to have his stomach pumped before taking him to the city jail.

Investigators said Tuesday that what they first labeled a “half-hearted” suicide attempt may have been a hoax.

“He told friends of his he was going to take drugs and act crazy,” said Las Vegas homicide Sgt. Bill Keeton. “This was an attempt to develop an insanity defense.”

But such statements by Las Vegas police and the free flow of alleged evidence in the case were roundly criticized Tuesday by attorney Abramson, who lashed out at Nevada authorities for what she portrayed as an orchestrated effort to “poison” the public’s perception of Strohmeyer.

Only hours after the affidavit was released, Abramson and Wright were in court seeking a gag order on all parties and witnesses in the case. Especially angered by the affidavit’s disclosure, Abramson told Kellogg that Nevada officials should be made aware “that we know what they have been up to.”

Ninety minutes after her appeal before Kellogg, however, Abramson withdrew the motion for a gag order after concluding that the courts here do not have jurisdiction to issue an order that would affect Nevada officials. “[Its] only effect . . . would be to keep me quiet,” she said.

But the attorney did win a court order barring any photos of herself or her client after telling the judge that their case and their lives could otherwise be imperiled.

Her office had received a threat Tuesday morning after it was revealed that she would be one of Strohmeyer’s attorneys, Abramson said. And her client, officials said, was temporarily moved from Men’s Central Jail to a cell in the Twin Towers jail on Saturday after complaining that he was being verbally abused by sheriff’s deputies. He was later returned to the Men’s Central Jail, where he is being kept in the infirmary, sheriff’s officials said.

“I just don’t see the need to expose any of us to danger . . . just so the media can have some more pictures,” Abramson told Kellogg.

“Mr. Strohmeyer has a right to not have his photograph taken . . . if it is going to jeopardize his right to a fair and impartial trial.