The Murder of Daniel Mendoza - Part 5 - The Driver

A guilty verdict answered one question in the murder of Daniel Mendoza.

It did not answer all of them.

In Episode 134, Part 5 of our series, we look at what surfaced after Ron Mortensen was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.

Much of the attention turned to Christopher Brady, the former Metro officer who drove the truck, handled the murder weapon, waited nearly two days to come forward, and became the prosecution’s most important witness.

The jury had heard Brady’s version of the shooting.

But there was a great deal they had not heard.

After the trial, additional information emerged about Brady’s internal affairs history, complaints involving his conduct as an officer, and allegations that raised new questions about his credibility and use of authority.

One claim became especially important.

During the trial, Mortensen testified that after the shooting, Brady described himself as “evil.” Later, another woman alleged that Brady had used strikingly similar language during an unrelated encounter months before Daniel’s murder.

Then another former Metro officer came forward with testimony that Brady had talked about carrying out drive-by shootings before the night Daniel was killed.

None of this proves who pulled the trigger.

But it does explain why so many people continued to question whether Brady had been examined with the same scrutiny as any other person connected to a homicide.

By the end of the 1990s, those questions had grown beyond Metro. A federal investigation was underway, Brady would eventually plead guilty to violating the civil rights of Hispanic people, and the debate over police accountability in Las Vegas had become impossible to ignore.

Through it all, Daniel’s father, Ramon, continued to return to the one truth no verdict or prison sentence could change:

His son was still gone.

Listen to Episode 134, Part 5: The Murder of Daniel Mendoza now at sinspod.co/134