Out Of Nowhere - the Wrongful Conviction of Kirstin Blaise Lobato - Part 1

Episode # 79 - Miscarriage of Justice: Kirstin Blaise Lobato Part 1

[Shaun] 

When Blaise fled the Budget Suites parking lot in May of 2001, she knew she had done what she had to do to protect herself. 

[John] 

Three months later, when a man was found dead on the opposite side of town, Las Vegas police ignored her alibi, ignored forensic evidence, and ignored common sense to chase a rumor. 

That would ultimately cost Blaise 16 years of her life.  

(Music - Pause for 8 seconds)

[Shaun] 

Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence, as well as missing persons and unsolved cases. I’m your host, Shaun

[John] 

And I’m your co-host, John

[Shaun] 

The case we have for you today is the story of a wrongful conviction that resulted in an innocent young woman spending more than 16 years in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. 

And which ultimately resulted in a brutal homicide remaining unsolved for nearly 25 years. 

Many listeners know that when we cover cases, we don’t typically take the time to describe the gruesome details of the crime because, let’s face it, those details just aren’t really relevant, and the purpose of the podcast is not to sensationalize these tragedies. 

The story we are going to discuss today is a major exception to that. The injuries suffered by the victim are critical to understanding the crime and to comprehending the injustice that occurred in this case. 

So right here at the start of the episode, I want to make it clear that this episode is going to have detailed descriptions of injuries, rising to the level of mutilation, and also, there is going to be some description of sexual assault. 

The people involved in this story are complicated. John and I often say that no one is any one thing. You are going to hear about people with histories of substance use, and we just want you all to keep in mind that we aren’t sharing these details to condemn anyone’s character. 

Everyone deserves justice and fairness under the law, and we’re including these details because they add a lot of important context and possibly help explain what was going through the minds of law enforcement. 

[John] 

It’s always our goal to create episodes that are victim-centric and ethical, so we wouldn't be including these details if they weren’t critical to the story.

Normally we start out an episode by giving you some background on the victim of the crime, but we’ll get to that. First, we want to talk to you about the person wrongfully accused of his murder, Kirstin Blaise Lobato.

Kirstin goes by Blaise, so that’s what we’ll be calling her for this episode. Blaise was born on December 14, 1982, in Las Cruces, New Mexico., and grew up in a very small town in Lincoln County, Nevada called Panaca. Panaca had a population of about 700 people in 2000 and only has about 1000 people today in 2025. 

Lincoln County is the county immediately north of Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, is about 20 miles west of the border with Utah and was originally settled by the Mormons. It’s one of the oldest towns in Nevada and is known for outdoor recreation like hiking, horseback riding, and riding ATVs. 

Panaca is described as being largely unchanged from when it was first settled --- a farming community where the sale of alcohol is prohibited, and one of only 2 places in the entire state where gambling is illegal. 

It’s worlds away from Vegas, literally and figuratively. 170 miles north, nearly a 3-hour drive. 

[Shaun] 

I think in a town that size we can assume it’s the kind of community where everyone knows everybody. She was raised by her father, Larry, and her step-mom, Becki, and she has a younger sister named Ashley. 

She ended up graduating from high school early, as she’s very bright and also a talented poet.

Blaise had it pretty tough growing up, with some traumatic occurrences in her younger years, including sexual assault. She admittedly went through periods of depression and developed a substance use disorder. 

After she finished high school in the spring of 2000 at age 17, she went through a breakup with her boyfriend, packed up her red 1984 Fiero, and left for Vegas. 

She originally planned to leave for a sort of vacation, just to figure out life for a while, but she ended up staying longer than she had planned. Blaise would later tell people that during this time, her drug use increased significantly. She was using meth and marijuana. 

Blaise spent the next year or so traveling back and forth between Panaca and Vegas. When she was in Vegas, she stayed with different friends, including some who lived in the Budget Suites on the east side of Vegas, near Sam’s town at the intersection of Boulder Highway and Flamingo. 

We’ve talked about weekly hotel rental places on the podcast before, and Budget Suites is one of those places in Vegas, known as “weeklies” where you can rent a hotel room by the week. Many folks use them as short-term apartments. 

On May 25, 2001, when she was just 18 years old, Blaise survived a horrifying assault in the parking lot of that Budget Suites. She was headed over there to spend some time with her friends. She drove there in the very early morning hours. The parking lot was very dark, and when she got out of her car, a large Black man came out of the darkness and grabbed her and tackled her to the ground. She said he was an older man, and described him as a giant compared to her -- 6 ft tall and 200 pounds. Blaise was only 5’6” and maybe 100 pounds at that time.

She started to cry and he slapped her in the face. He told her “shut up, bitch.” She said she cried out for help, but no one came to help her, although there were some other people milling about in the parking lot.

He began pulling up her skirt and yanking at her underwear, and he pulled out his penis and attempted to rape her. 

Blaise’s dad Larry, had given her a butterfly knife, which she carried with her for self-defense. She pulled out the knife and stabbed the man in the groin area. 

He climbed off of her crying in pain, and she ran to her car and drove away. When she left him, he was lying on the ground and crying. 

She drove to her ex-boyfriend, Jeremy’s, house, but he wasn’t home. She left her car there with a note and walked to a nearby church where she called her friends that she lived with, and they came and picked her up. 

She didn’t immediately report the attack to the police because in the past, she had reported sexual assaults to the cops, and they “basically blew her off.”  Blaise believed it wouldn’t do any good. 

Also, at the time, she was using meth, and had been up for about 3 days straight before the attack. 

But, she did tell numerous people about this attack - that she had successfully fended off a rapist by cutting his penis in a Las Vegas parking lot. 

In mid-June, she and her friend Kimberlee drove together to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and she told her about the attack and that she had slashed the man somewhere near his groin, Kimberlee said she didn’t even get the impression the guy was hurt that badly, but mostly that what she did was enough for Blaise to get away. 

On July 2 or 3, 2001 she told her friend Heather that she defended herself against the sexual assault by cutting the man’s abdomen. Heather told the Intercept magazine: “I remember asking, ‘Well, what happened?’” “She said, ‘I didn’t stick around to find out.’”

There were at least 7 other people who Blaise told about this attack, including a former teacher of hers named Dixie Tienken. (TINE KEN)

[John] 

It was around the time that she shared the story of the attack with her friend Heather that she decided she was done with her partying lifestyle in Vegas. 

She wanted to stop using drugs and make a major change in her life so she drove her Fiero home to Panaca on July 2nd. 

She parked the car in front of her parents’ house and moved back in with Larry, Becki, and her sister Ashley. On Thursday, July 5th, she wasn't feeling well, and Becki noticed that she was very lethargic, so she brought her to the doctor. 

The doctor took both blood and urine samples on July 6th and July 7th. Becki was so concerned about her that she even took July 6th off from work to stay home with her. Thankfully, all of her tests were normal and there were no drugs in her system at that time

That Saturday, July 7, she finally started feeling better. Numerous people saw her around town that day, from the early morning into the evening. 

Court testimony shows that at least thirteen people, 8 of them not related to her, reported seeing or talking to her around her parents' home in Panaca between July 8th and July 9th. Neighbors, friends, and other non-relatives interacted with her between 10 am and the late evening. 

in the early morning of July 8th, Larry saw her sleeping on the couch in the living room when he got home from work at 12:30 AM, and Becki saw her still sleeping there at 5:45 AM when she got up for work. 

Around 7 am her cousin John stopped by the house, and said that a very sleepy Blaise still in her pajamas answered the door when he came over that morning to chat with Larry.

Around 11:30 that morning, several neighbors saw her out 4 wheeling in the neighborhood and later that afternoon around 3pm, a friend named Chris Carrington went to the Lobato house and worked out on their gym equipment and chatted with Blaise in the garage between 4-6pm. Her sister Ashley saw them hanging out together. 

During the day on July 8th, she was chatting with her boyfriend Doug on and off. He told her that he wanted to stop using drugs and get his life on track, and he asked for her help. 

Of course, Blaise being a cool and kind person, agreed to move back to Vegas to support him. That evening, he left Vegas and drove to Panaca to pick her up. Chris was still at the house around 10 that night, and he saw Blaise packing up to head back to Vegas. 

All those calls from Doug were made to her parents’ landline and are documented in phone records, as are the outgoing calls she made to Doug’s cellphone. 

She talked to him on the phone on July 8th no fewer than 8 times between 9 am and 11 pm, and once again on the morning of July 9th at 12:45 AM, when Blaise giving him final driving directions to her parent’s house. 

He arrived around 1 AM and the two drove back to Las Vegas together. Both Larry and Becki were there to say goodbye but unfortunately, just 4 days later, Blaise came to the realization that Doug was NOT ready to give up drugs, so she called her parents and asked to come home. Larry drove to Vegas and picked her up on July 13th. 

Between July 2nd and July 20th, as many as 13 witnesses noticed and could testify that her car was never moved from in front of her parent's house

[Shaun] 

Now, we want to shift gears and talk about the murder victim in this case, Duran Bailey. 

Duran Bailey was born on February 25, 1957, in St. Louis, Missouri, which is how he got his nickname ‘St. Louis.’ Due to the circumstances of his life and his death, we will be unable to share very much about him or his early life. We know from his findagrave site that his mother was named Doris Lee Harper and his father was Oscar White. 

He moved to Las Vegas in 1999, when he was 42 years old. He lived in what was then called the Grandview Apartments, across the street from the Palms Casino, near Flamingo and Arville. He was living with his mom, but when she died, he found himself unable to keep the apartment, and he ended up unhoused. 

But, he still hung out around the apartment complex, spending time with other tenants, and at night, he would sleep under the freeway overpass near Flamingo. He was also said to be staying in a house behind the Palms Casino. 

The picture of Duran we get from the court records and other public documents is that of a man who was hardened by life on the streets, involved in drugs, and at times aggressively dangerous. The court testimony and police reports tend to emphasize his harsh lifestyle and his criminal conduct, including domestic violence. He was depicted as someone deeply enmeshed in street life – addicted to crack cocaine and willing to exchange drugs for sex. His neighbors warned each other to keep their distance from him. 

We should remember, though, that these portrayals come from individuals who knew him in desperate circumstances, so they may not encompass the entirety of who Duran was as a person. 

Unfortunately, Duran’s own voice and any redeeming traits are absent, and we are only able to hear about him through the worst events of his life. His criminal actions and many years of living unhoused may have left him isolated and estranged from his family, but several folks have left tokens on his memorial page. He was a son, a nephew, and a cousin, and possibly a brother and a friend. 

As with many victims of crime who come from marginalized backgrounds, Duran just didn’t get the same coverage in the media as other victims might, and the horrific details of his death became the focus of the story. 

[John] 

On July 8, around 10 pm, Richard Scott was passing through the parking lot of the Nevada State Bank located across the street from the Palms Casino , when he spotted an unlocked trash enclosure where the dumpster was kept behind a gate. 

The bank parking lot was just west of the Strip on Flamingo, next to the Gold Coast casino. Today, that Nevada State Bank location is closed, but the building is still there, and the parking lot still looks the same as it did nearly 25 years ago. 

Richard was unhoused, and he was frequently in the area. He noticed that usually this enclosure was locked up at night, but the lock had been cut and was lying on the ground and the gate was partially open. He decided to go inside and take a look to see if there was anything worth taking from the dumpster. 

The trash enclosure was a secured space, about 10 feet by 14 feet, surrounded by 6 foot high cinderblock walls. 

Inside the enclosure, beside the dumpster, he saw a man’s body mostly buried under pieces of cardboard and other garbage. There was a large pool of blood, and he believed the man was deceased. He ran to the nearest payphone and called 911. 

When the police arrived, they uncovered a horrific scene where it was evident that the man had died after a prolonged struggle. He had been badly beaten, tortured, and mutilated to the point where he was barely recognizable. Both his upper and lower jaw were broken, his face was swollen, and his skull was fractured. 

He had scrapes and gouges around his eyes. He had at least 6 broken and knocked-out teeth, and multiple stab and slash wounds, including four to his rib cage, and his carotid artery was severed. He had numerous defensive wounds on his hands and arms. 

He had lost nearly 40% of his blood volume, and the trash enclosure had a significant pool of blood on the concrete and the pile of trash he was lying on. 

His pants had been pulled down, and his waist was wrapped in plastic. His penis had been fully amputated, his scrotum had been stabbed, and paper towels had been stuffed into his groin area. He appeared to have been the victim of a sexual assault. Semen was recovered from his rectum and he had been stabbed in his rectum as well. We should note that those last two injuries had happened post-mortem. 

He did not have an ID on him when he was found, so investigators were not able to identify him at first, and he was known as John “Palms” Doe. 

The initial coroner's report was that the blunt force injuries were consistent with an assault with a baseball bat or with a fall against a cement curb. He had more than 30 external injuries and a dozen internal injuries. He was 5’ 10” and weighed 133 pounds. 

Initially, his time of death was estimated (this is important for later) to be between 10 and 18 hours prior to the discovery of his body, so sometime between 4:30 AM and 12:20 PM on July 8. 

[Shaun] 

Detectives Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle were assigned to the case. 

Numerous pieces of evidence were collected at the crime scene including:

22 fingerprints

3 cigarette butts;

A chewed piece of gum;

Tire tracks leading away from the enclosure.

A single set of bloody shoe prints around the enclosure and one on a piece of cardboard that covered his face in a men’s size 9 or 10. 

Note, that the forensic investigators immediately verified that these shoeprints were not made by Richard when he went into the enclosure; his shoes were clean. 

Police officers were still gathering evidence early in the morning of July 9th when a woman named Diann Parker approached the crime scene. 

She told officers that she lived in the Grand View apartment complex, which was located on the other side of the parking lot, with her roommate, a man named Steven King (no relation). She was pretty sure she knew the dead man. She said she had been raped last week and that he was likely the guy who did it. 

Detectives Thowsen and LaRochelle could see that Diann had bruises on her face and neck. They went back to Diann’s apartment to interview her. Her apartment was only a few minutes walk from the trash enclosure.

She told detectives that the man who had died was called “St. Louis” or Duran. They were acquaintances, and he was known to spend time around the apartment complex. 

On occasion, he would pay her for sex with drugs. She told the detectives that on July 1st, she was drinking beers and hanging out with a few other men who lived in the complex. Duran was hanging around the building and saw her with them. He didn’t like that she was spending time with these other men, so he approached her and slapped and threatened her in front of them. 

These neighbors got angry at Duran and told him to get out of there, and they warned him to leave her alone. They told Diann that they would watch her as she went back to her apartment to make sure she got home safely. 

Later that day, Duran returned to her apartment while Steven was at work. She told Duran to go away, and she didn’t want anything more to do with him. He forced himself into her apartment, beat and raped her at knifepoint. She was afraid to go to the police at first because of her criminal history and possible open warrant but did go to the police 3 days later because Duran returned and tried to break into her apartment again. 

When she reported the crime on July 5, she went to UMC and was interviewed there, and her injuries were documented. Diann had two swollen, blackened eyes; a bruised mouth, where he held his hand to it to keep her quiet, and bruising on her neck where he had pressed the knife to her. 

On July 5th, she told the officer that reporting the rape was going to get her killed. She also told the police, “If you all don’t catch him, I will be dead.” When she asked the officers to protect her, they told her they couldn’t offer her any protection: 

Officer: “You've got  to do what you've got to do to protect yourself the best you can.” 

Diann: So if he breaks in the door, I have permission to kill his fucking ass, don’t I?

Officer: If anyone breaks in your house, you have a right to protect yourself. That’s the law. Whatever it takes.

Diann:I know Texas law, if you kill em outside, drag em in.

Officer: That’s not the law here. Okay. But if somebody’s breaking in to your house, you have the right to protect yourself. Just like any citizen in Clark County, you know. That’s the way it is. Whatever you have to do to protect yourself. 

Diann: Cause, see. I don’t wanna be scared to walk outside my house.

Officer: Oh I understand that. I understand that. But, you know, at this point, You’re probably gonna be scared to walk outside until he gets locked up. That’s just the way it works. I mean so that’s what we gotta do. 

The officers who took her report did not do any additional work to try to locate or arrest Duran. They didn’t show Diann mug shots so she could identify him, they did not accept her offer to drive around with them to places Duran was known to hang out so they could apprehend him, and they did not run a criminal background check on Duran or his alias “st. Louis” to even attempt to find out his full name either. According to Hans Sherer, they would have found his record, and they could have obtained a warrant for his arrest. 

[John] 

Homicide detectives showed Diann a photo of the deceased man from the bank parking lot and she said, yes, that was Duran, and that, yes, he was the man who had attacked and raped her on July 1st. 

The detectives also asked Steven some questions, and they examined their shoes for blood but didn’t find any. 

The detectives decided that neither of them were suspects in Duran’s murder because they were very calm and cooperative.

About a week later, on July 17th, the detectives got a copy of the report Diann made at UMC on July 5th, and all the details matched up with what she had told them on July 9th. 

Included in the report were the apartment numbers of the neighbors who had stood up to Duran when he slapped Diann, so they went back to the Grand View Apartments to talk with the manager and find out those men’s names.  

The manager said they had never caused any trouble, and when the detectives ran a criminal background check on them, it was clean. The detectives didn’t bother to interview them or even drop by their apartment. 

On July 23, the detectives returned to Diann’s apartment to do a formal, recorded interview with her. During the taped statement, she said that she “forgot” to tell them when they first came to her apartment on July 9 that she had bloody pants and a shirt. She said they were bloody from when she was attacted. 

Detective Thowsen asked if she still had the clothes and she said, yes, but told him she’d washed them, and the detective just dropped it. 

What’s interesting about this is that Diann never mentioned any blood or bleeding as a result of the attack on July 1 in her report. When her injuries were photographed at UMC, she didn’t have any cuts or bandages. 

The detectives asked them about bloody clothes and shoes on July 9th, but suddenly they weren’t interested in any possibly bloody clothing on July 23rd. 

What is clear from what she told the officer and the detectives is that Diann was terrified of Duran. She repeated over and over that she feared for her life after he showed up on July 4th and pounded on her door and windows and threatened her. She asked the police for help but got no help from them

She believed he had murdered someone in the past, and he had threatened to kill her if she went to the police. She told the officers, “If you don’t catch him, I’ll be dead. “

[Shaun] 

I really agree with you, when I was researching this, all of this felt really off. It feels like Diann, and her neighbors, and even possibly Steven at least should have been asked about their whereabouts during the suspected time of Duran’s death, because it seems you have a starting point with a motive here, possibly, and they all live so close to the crime scene.

One thing I read was that Steven, Diann’s roommate, would later say that Duran didn't “live” in that trash enclosure. That wasn’t where he was known to hang out or to sleep. So that seems to imply that Diann wouldn’t have just known that the deceased man in the enclosure would likely be Duran. Which makes it a little suspicious that she would walk over there less than 12 hours after he was found dead and say she thinks she knows who the dead man is. 

For me, there’s something missing to this part of the story here. 

I have more to say about the folks who lived in the Grandview apartments in our next episode. 

For now, we are going to turn back to Blaise. 

On July 20, 2001, homicide detectives Thowsen and LaRochelle got a call from a juvenile probation officer in Lincoln County named Laura Johnson. Officer Johnson told the detectives that she had heard from a teacher named Dixie Tienken, that a former student of hers told her that she had cut off the penis of a man who attacked her in Las Vegas.

That former student, of course, was Blaise. As we mentioned earlier, Blaise had told several people, including Dixie, that she had been attacked and had cut the man’s penis to get away. 

Laura Johnson relayed this rumor to the officers, and they decided to travel to Las Vegas immediately, with a crime scene analyst and a flat bed tow truck to tow Blaise’s car back to the crime lab.

Johnson told the officers that Blaise had a criminal past, which was not true, and when officers ran a background check on Blaise they found no criminal history, just that Blaise had been the victim of sexual abuse years earlier. 

The detectives decided not to reach out to or question Dixie first to verify what Officer Johnson had told them. It’s been alleged that this was because Johnson told them Dixie might alert Blaise they were coming to arrest her and she would flee, or maybe the detectives just reached that conclusion on their own. 

In any event, they seem convinced Blaise was the murderer based on what Johnson said that Dixie said that she said. 

I know this double hearsay wording gets confusing, but this is what happened.

[John] 

The detectives arrived at Blaise’s parent's house, and they told her they knew she was attacked in Las Vegas and they were investigating the death of a man. 

She assumed they must be talking about the man who attacked her at the budget suites in May, and was surprised to hear that the man who attacked her didn’t survive, but she wanted to cooperate with their investigation. 

Blaise was 18 at the time, and the detectives read her her Miranda rights before they interviewed her in her parents’ house. She agreed to be interviewed. Neither of her parents was present for the interview and she also didn't request a lawyer.

Her statement was recorded, and you can listen to it, just like we did.. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes but keep in mind the recording is almost 25 years old and it’s very low quality. 

At no point did the detectives tell her the location of Duran’s murder or the date he was killed. When they showed her a photo of Duran, she didn’t recognize him. 

She told detectives about the attack and attempted rape as we described it earlier. She told them that the man was much larger than she was - twice her weight and significantly taller and gave them the cross streets of the Budget Suites hotel where it happened, and even mentioned landmarks nearby. 

At no point did she mention a dumpster or a trash enclosure. 

She said she had used her butterfly knife to defend herself but she didn't know if she severed the man's penis or what she had done with the knife. She also told them that when she managed to escape, the man was lying on the ground, crying, still alive.

Here’s a short excerpt:

Question: After you got done struggling with him, was he on the ground or standing up? 

Answer: He was on the ground. 

1. Was he making any noise at that point? 
2. He was, he was crying.
3. And what did you do next? 
4. I left.

The detectives asked her if she had maybe hit Duran with something. She admitted that she had been using a lot of drugs at that time, so she maybe wasn’t that clear on what happened. 

In the recording, it sounds like she started to say “it’s possi–” … “It’s possible” –  but stopped herself and said that she did carry a baseball bat in her car. 

Blaise told the detectives that she didn’t report the assault because she had been up for 3 days on meth and hadn’t slept. In fact, she had been using meth for the week leading up to the assault and for the week after. 

The detectives asked her what shoes she was wearing. She told them she was wearing black high-heeled platform shoes and gave them to the detectives. 

She also told detectives that she had met another woman who she thought may have also been raped by that same man in the past, though she didn’t know her name. 

Another Question: Okay and did this person say anything about something happening to her or did she just seem upset?

Answer: She said that she had been hurt and that she couldn’t believe that something like that happened and she just kept saying it over and over.

1. And how soon was it that you talked to her before you were attacked?
2. It was afterward already.
3. After you’d been attacked?
4. Yea, this has already been over a month ago.

Detectives were talking to her just 12 days after Duran’s murder, and she mentioned that she was attacked over a month ago.

In case you missed that, the timeline doesn't match up at all, and assuming that’s all true, this should have eliminated her as a suspect, or at least prompted the detectives to keep asking questions. 

Instead, Detective Thowsen sounded a little surprised but concluded the interview without any follow-up questions and turned off the recorder. 

She was then placed under arrest for first-degree murder and her car was seized into evidence. 

[Shaun] 

I feel like this first episode has been a lot to take in already, so before we start to conclude this one, let’s review a few things that we know and a few of the facts that aren’t coming together at this point. 

Obviously, we have the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, but there are some glaring things that weren’t lining up here right from the start.

First of all, the detectives were relying heavily on hearsay when they went to question Blaise, and they definitely were ready to arrest her immediately when they left Vegas, hence that’s why they came ready with the tow truck and forensic investigator. It’s like their minds were already made up. 

Secondly, they never told her the date or location of the crime, but as she was describing what happened, some of the details of what she told them should have raised some serious issues for detectives, such as:

Blaise described the attack taking place in an open parking lot, and it’s obvious she’s not talking about the dumpster enclosure behind the bank. 

Now granted, the trash enclosure at the Nevada State Bank is in the corner of a parking lot, but that is in a commercial strip mall and not at all to be confused with a weekly motel parking lot. 

Blaise was pretty much living in that weekly at that point, so she was familiar with that lot and knew what she was talking about. She gave them the cross streets and described the nearby surrounding area such as Sam’s Town, the Fountains, and the shopping center. This is the east side of Vegas. 

The location of Duran’s murder, which was across the street from the Palms casino, is 8 miles away from the Budget Suites and Sam’s Town. Sam’s Town is on the far east side of Vegas while the Palms is close to the Strip, but would be considered to be more on the west side. 

Also, Duran was a thin man, 5’ 10” and 133 pounds. Blaise was 5’6” and 100 pounds. She said her attacker was “a giant’ compared to her. 6 feet tall and 200 pounds. It would be a little odd that she would describe a man of Duran’s build in that way. She also did not recognize Duran’s photo. 

The forensics revealed that Duran was horrifically and brutally murdered. If the attack and self-defense happened how Blaise described it in her statement, those injuries in no way match what Duran sustained. This wasn’t a case where a man bled out from a single stab wound to the groin, which was all that she confessed to. 

Also, Blaise also did not have any injuries, no bruises or cuts from fending off a recent violent attack or committing one and there was no record of her being treated in any emergency room for any injuries. 

And, just to continue on that train of thought, if the detectives had checked in with any medical clinics in Panaca or Vegas to see if Blaise had been treated for any injuries around this time, they likely would have learned of her trips to the doctor with her stepmom Becki on July 5, 6, and 7, and that on those days, her blood and urine were negative for any illness - but also for any drugs.

When Blaise described the attack to officers she told them that she had been up for three days before the murder using meth, and had even been using drugs the week before and the week after. 

It should have been obvious at the time of that July 20 interview or at least in the following few days with even the most minimal follow-up that this timeline didn’t make sense and that something wasn’t adding up.  

The initial arrest report, written by LaRochelle did not state that Blaise confessed to the crime or that she provided any details of Duran’s murder. 

However, once Blaise’s trial starts, the detectives called this recorded statement, “a confession” to Duran’s murder, although at no point does Blaise confess to murdering anyone. 

What she did describe was fighting off an attacker by attempting to cut his exposed penis and made no mention of killing him. 

The way these inconsistencies were explained away by the detectives seemed to be simple - drugs. Blaise just didn't really remember what had happened because she was really high. 

And it appears the detectives put more stock in a bizarre exaggerated rumor that Laura Johnson allegedly heard from Dixie Tienken than any actual police work. 

[John] 

Detectives did speak to another one of Blaise’s friends who lived in Las Vegas, Steven Pyszkowski. She’d done some work for his business in June of 2001, before moving back to Panaca. When the police interviewed him on July 23, 2001, he told them they had the wrong person and their timeline was off, because he hadn’t seen Blaise since July 2nd. Also, she had told him about that attack and it had happened at the end of May. 

On July 26, detectives finally interviewed Dixie, Blaise’s teacher. What Dixie had to say, didn’t match up with what Laura Johnson had told the detectives, though. 

Johnson had told them that Dixie said that Blaise was feeling guilty about what she had done and was hiding out at her parents’ house and was planning to paint or hide her car. She told detectives that Dixie said that Blaise asked her not to tell anyone about the attack. 

However, Dixie said none of this to the detectives. She confirmed to the detectives - twice - that Blaise and she believed the man was still alive when Blaise drove away, that Blaise had said he was stumbling and trying to stand up when she drove off. The two of them searched issues of the Review-Journal online to see if they could find out anything that had happened to him. They searched from the last week of May through June 1 but didn’t find any stories about a man with a cut penis. 

Dixie told the detectives that she guessed the man’s biggest problem was probably figuring out how to explain his injury to his wife if he had one. 

It’s also ridiculous to claim that Blaise would have told Dixie not to tell anyone about the attack, when Blaise herself had told about a dozen other people. She wasn’t keeping it a secret at all. 

[Shaun] 

This whole interview shows that both Blaise and Dixie were certain the attacker was alive, and just makes me confused as to where Johnson got her information. I don’t know if there was just odd rumors going around these small towns about Blaise. 

 Dixie’s account is so drastically different from what Laura Johnson told the detectives that it’s likely they would have dismissed Blaise as a suspect if they interviewed Dixie directly after speaking with Johnson, instead of just taking her word for it. 

Also, Dixie would later explain to the press that Detective Thowsen kept stopping and starting the tape recorder while she was giving her statement, and it’s been alleged that he may have been attempting to edit her statement to get it to match up with Johnson’s. 

[John] 

The amount of misconduct by the detective alleged in this case is really just staggering. 

Blaise was also offered a plea deal for manslaughter for which she would have served 3 years, but she turned that deal down because she said she was innocent. She did not kill Duran Bailey; she had never met him or attacked him in any way.

As you said, there’s just been so much to take in in this first episode, so let’s just go ahead and end it here. Next week, we will go into detail about the forensic testing, the jailhouse informant, and the outcome of the murder trial. There’s just so much more to cover, so make sure you’re subscribed and following us on social media so you don’t miss anything. 

Also, be sure to email us at sinsandsurvivors@gmail.com or message us on Instagram at SinsandSurvivors with your thoughts about this case. 

Thank you as always for listening and remember what happens here happens everywhere.