113 Randi Evers

Shaun On February fifteenth, nineteen ninety two, a birthday party was winding down inside a Las Vegas apartment near Paradise and Flamingo. Mike Evers, the guest of honor, had fallen asleep in his bedroom with his one year old daughter in the living room. His son, three year old Randy Leighton Evers, was fast asleep around eleven thirty p m.

John With the kids and her husband sleeping soundly, Tina decided to step out and continue the night with friends at a nearby casino. As she walked out of the apartment, she noticed her stepson lying on a blanket next to the couch in the living room. When she came home three hours later, Randy had vanished.

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, Sean.

John And I'm your co-host, John.

Shaun This week, we are bringing you the story of the disappearance of Randy Layton Evers. Randy disappeared from his family's apartment thirty four years ago this week. When we first started researching this story, we were struck by how the summaries of the case were very biased against Randy's dad and stepmom, and it made it seem that we would be able to find hard evidence about the two of them being responsible. We spent hours going through dozens of articles from the Las Vegas Review Journal archives, trying to piece together what had happened almost thirty five years ago. We've also submitted FOIA requests to try and get more details for this episode. We are going to share what we found so far, and will be sure to update you with any other information we uncover. As always, we are reporting based on the facts and the quotes that we have found and not necessarily about what online rumors say happened. We encourage anyone with information to come forward to Metro so Randy can be found. As always, we'll start with some background on Randy. Randy Layton Evers was born on December three, nineteen eighty eight, making him thirty seven years old today, but he was just three years old when he disappeared. His father is Mike Evers, who made his living working as a roofer. Mike was celebrating his twenty sixth birthday the night Randy went missing. His stepmom, Tina Evers, now Tina Logan, was twenty two at the time. Randy's bio mom is Alexis Maynard, who was living in Southern California at the time of the disappearance. And we know that Randy has a baby sister named Cassandra, but we don't have a lot of information on any other siblings he may have. Mike grew up in Ramona, California, which is a suburb of San Diego, and Tina grew up in Thousand Oaks. Mike dated Alexis for about four years, and he told the Review-Journal that he fought her for custody of Randy because he wanted to raise his son. And then in nineteen ninety, he married Tina. Randy lived with Tina and Mike off and on from about the age of six months old until he turned two. And then he lived with Tina and Mike continuously for almost the entire year before he disappeared. And Tina has said numerous times in the press that she loved and raised him like he was her own. Together, the family moved to Las Vegas in June of nineteen ninety one.

John Randy was so young at the time. We don't know a lot about his personality, but as a typical three year old, he loved his tricycle and he liked playing with toy guns. He had a history of severe inner ear infections which caused him to have poor equilibrium. He had tubes inserted in his ears to fix that. According to Tina, three friends flew into town from SoCal late Friday, the night of February fourteenth in preparation for the birthday party the next day, and Mike picked them up at the airport that night. Mike didn't go to bed until one a m he got up at six a m the next morning to go to work as a roofer. Tina said that at the end of the day, he was feeling tired and wasn't really up for a party, but Tina talked him into it. She and one of their roommates had spent about three hundred dollars on food, a cake, and some beer. People started showing up for the party around four thirty p m, even though it was scheduled to start at seven thirty p m, as people do. Guests included Tina's best friend Tammy's, Tina's sister and her sister's boyfriend, and a married couple from Ramona, California. Mike told police that he was so tired and he had four beers, and around eleven p m, he crawled into bed with his baby daughter and fell asleep. Randy fell asleep on the living room floor. A friend of the couple named Rick was sleeping on the couch. Tina went to Mike and told him she was going to go to the Gold Coast Casino with five of her friends and asked him for some gambling money. When she got back at three thirty a m, Randy was gone and Rick had gone into one of the bedrooms to sleep. She asked him where Randy was and if he had stepped over him on the floor on the way to bed, but he didn't remember. Tina guessed that was because he was intoxicated. Mike said that he never heard or saw anything after Tina of course, then called nine hundred eleven. She later shared that she was up front with the police and that a few partygoers had been smoking pot. Tina said she forgot to lock the apartment door when she left. They don't know how he was missing. They don't know if he walked out the door. They don't know if somebody took him. According to Metro Sergeant Matt Downing.

Shaun When they started the investigation, the police canvassed. There were lots of television ads and flyers. Nevada Child Seekers, a Las Vegas nonprofit that works with law enforcement to support families of missing children, had Randy's photo printed on postcards that were mailed out throughout the country. Those kind of have you seen me mailers that many of us are familiar with. And according to Nevada child seekers, this happened at least twice in the first year that Randy was missing. Patti Giles, who was the head of Nevada Child Seekers back in nineteen ninety two, repeatedly told the press that Metro and the FBI were following up on every lead that they got about where Randy could be. However, suspicion fell very heavily on the family. At first, the police focused on Randy's mom, Alexis. Alexis has or had legal custody of Randy, but he had lived most of his life with his dad, as we explained, and the police believed that she might have traveled to Las Vegas and kidnapped him. And there was some reporting that a friend of hers was in town that weekend, and that maybe she had the friend take Randy. But after some investigation, she was cleared of suspicion pretty quickly. Throughout this whole ordeal, Tina and Mike were suspected of being involved not only by authorities, but also the press and many Vegas locals as well. Some of their friends became subject of scrutiny, and there were claims that Mike had to be dragged out of bed when it was discovered Randy was missing, the allegation being that he was not taking it seriously at first. Also, initially, Tina and Mike refused to take a polygraph test, but according to Tina, they did finally decide to do it because they thought it would help shift the suspicion away from them. It's been reported that they each failed. One question. Tina told the press that the question they failed was about where Randy was, and she shared with the RJ what the police theory was. Quote, they think he was sold for drugs or to settle a drug debt. That's what she told the Review-Journal in nineteen ninety two.

John About a month after Randy's disappearance, Tina and Mike became the subject of a grand jury probe. Under the advice of counsel. They didn't testify to the grand jury. Tina's lawyer's name was David Shake, and Mike's lawyer's name was Steve Dahl. At the start of the proceedings, the district attorney at the time, Ulrich Smith, told the press that he planned to call between twenty five and fifty witnesses, and the proceedings were expected to last between two and four weeks. And ultimately he ended up calling over forty witnesses. The proceedings were secret, as all grand juries are. And he said that there are certain things that were pointing toward Tina and Mike. But he said whether they are guilty or innocent is not his decision or the grand jury's decision. Their friend and babysitter, twenty three year old Brenda Sue Smith, was also a target of the investigation. She had a criminal record for fraud and for being a con man, according to a pizza delivery boy. She was seen two days after the crime with Randy in her apartment. That allegation was never substantiated and she was never charged. And all three maintain their innocence, their lawyer told the RJ on March twenty seven, nineteen ninety two, that he had not received any discovery or evidence from the D.A.. He also said that he thought the D.A. had no theory to the case. They are using a shotgun approach. He said that he was doing his best to counsel his clients, but he had no idea what evidence the state had against them.

Shaun During the proceedings, the D.A. presented several theories about what had happened to Randy. Those allegations included conspiracy, sale of a person, child abuse, kidnapping, and murder. Mike's defense attorney argued that the conflicting allegations showed that the state did not have a clear theory about what had happened to Randy. And as we said at this time, no one knew where Randy was. But when the grand jury accusations included murder, Mike's told the RJ that he was stunned and he was confused. He said, the police don't tell us anything. There must be a body somewhere. But why haven't we been told? On April twenty eight, nineteen ninety two, the police executed a search warrant at Tina and Mike's apartment. And Mike at the time didn't give a statement to the press because he hadn't yet spoken to his attorney. But the RJ was able to obtain a copy of the affidavit attached to the search warrant. The police were looking for a document of some kind that would have shown that Randy had been sold. The affidavit contained statements from people that Tina had a drug habit, and she was in debt to drug dealers. According to their babysitter, Brenda Smith, who was also under scrutiny, said that Tina had mentioned to her that she had two thousand dollars saved up to get away. The police also said that the couple was broke, and that they displayed a lack of concern for their son being missing, and that the police had been misled by the couple, and it was later revealed that as part of this investigation, the police used wiretaps and surveillance to gather evidence on Tina and Mike. Tina's lawyer told the press they found nothing in the apartment, and the search warrant suggested that things that had belonged to Randy, like his toys and his crib, would be gone, and therefore the police likely did not expect to find what they did find, which was that items that belonged to Randy like his toilet training potty, his tricycle and his bed they were all still there. The lawyer demanded that the D.A. offer up exculpatory evidence to the jury. The grand jury continued into July, and reportedly Tina and Mike moved out of that apartment at this time as their exact address had been printed in the paper. July eleven, nineteen ninety two. Brenda Smith ended up taking a guilty plea to the charge of stolen property. Police had determined she was no longer a suspect in Randy's disappearance. She had passed a lie detector test, and she testified in front of the grand jury. So she was allowed to plead guilty to possession of stolen property. At some point during this investigation, they discovered some camera equipment in her apartment, which was completely unrelated to Randy's disappearance. But she was under a charge of stealing because of those camera parts being found. In the end, her sentence was two to four years in July.

John Tina and Mike gave a detailed interview to reporters from the Review-Journal. They told the paper that their friends had fallen under heavy suspicion. Tina told the R-j that Rick had been arrested, and a few of their friends had lost their jobs and their apartment at the complex where they worked because of the allegations of drug use and drug deals. She also said she was troubled and upset by the allegations of child abuse, because she had a childhood friend who had experienced severe child abuse. She didn't believe in striking children at all. She also shared that she had moved away from Thousand Oaks, California, to escape an abusive boyfriend, and Mike told the RJ to him that someone, Randy, would walk by his apartment and look in the window and think, okay, I'm just going to take that kid. Mike and Tina also shared this story that I wish we were able to find more details about. Unnamed local deejays here in the Las Vegas area apparently ran a contest where they offered a reward to anyone who gave them Mike and Tina's phone number. A neighbor of theirs called in and gave out their phone number, and the DJ called Mike live on the air. Tina said again that her neighbors were turning against them. Their good friends were being subpoenaed, but there was nothing for the police to find. They already knew everything. On August seventh, the state dropped the charges against Tina and Mike. The R-j described the DJ, Ulrich Smith, as being noncommittal as to why the charges were dropped. He said, we're withdrawing the proposed indictment. We're continuing the investigation. But he wouldn't comment on whether there was enough evidence. He said this was a legal question. He consulted with chief D.A. Bill Coote and decided to withdraw. He did say that it didn't mean they couldn't go back to a grand jury at a later date, though, Tina's attorney said the D.A. didn't give him any answers either. He said it was a fishing expedition. He told the RJ he wanted to say that for a while, but he had exercised restraint. But at this point it was abundantly clear that that's what it was. Mike said that it's about time this happened, and he told the RJ that he was trying to get Randy's case covered by America's Most Wanted.

Shaun On September tenth, Tina and Mike were subpoenaed by that same grand jury. The prosecutor told the press that Tina and Mike couldn't be indicted because they dropped the probe against them. However, naturally, their lawyers still encouraged them not to testify to the grand jury. She said that it wasn't the work of the grand jury itself, asking Tina and Mike to come in and testify that it was actually the work of the D.A., and he said that it was obvious that the state was trying to try the case in the court of public opinion. He said there had been a leak. So while grand jury proceedings are supposed to be private, someone had apparently told channel three local news that those subpoenas were coming for Mike and Tina. When and where they would be served, which in the end led to a confrontation on the Everss doorstep. Da Smith said the grand jury had invested a lot of time in the case, and they just wanted to speak to the parents before their period of service ended and a new grand jury was empaneled. He said they are interested in finding where Randy is and that they are simply curious. The Da said that they could potentially be found in contempt if they refused to testify, but that his office would not likely prosecute that charge. He said if they fail to appear, that speaks for itself, which I found pretty shocking for an attorney to say, knowing what rights people have. Chic, on the other hand, said the damage to Mike and Tina was done. The couple had been interviewed by the press several times and had made statements about what happened, and they have their Fifth Amendment rights to not testify. But when they do, they will continue to appear guilty and be scrutinized. He later said that he agrees his advice for them not to testify wasn't the best advice for parents who are trying to locate their kid. But he admitted he told Tina not to talk to the media because anything she said could be used against her. Mike's attorney said that the grand jury and everyone is curious about what happened to Randy, but Mike and Tina's statements are out there. They've been interviewed on TV and by the newspapers. They had nothing to gain by testifying and they risked again becoming targets. This article in the R-j also repeated that the police and the prosecutors had not shared whatever evidence they had that implicated Mike and Tina in Randy's disappearance. In the end, Mike and Tina did choose to assert their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to testify, and that fact continues to haunt the family decades later.

John Then, in January of nineteen ninety three, Nevada Child Seekers was asking the public to donate to a twenty five thousand dollars reward fund. They held a press conference, but Mike and Tina weren't there, which of course led to more speculation about their possible involvement. Lieutenant Wilbur Jackson said that they refused to come in for questioning, refused to talk to the police, have never asked about Randy, and that he couldn't think of a single person who went to the party who told the truth to the cops. A month later, Nevada child seekers had only raised three hundred dollars. But in February of nineteen ninety three, an anonymous local businessman promised a reward of fifteen thousand dollars if someone came forward before March ninth. That sparked more rewards and the fund grew to twenty seven thousand dollars. Local agents were assisted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and a new federal program called Project Alert, America's law enforcement retiree team that helps with kidnapped or missing children. And this was one of the first cases they ever worked on, although we can't find any information on Project Alert currently and we're unsure if it still exists. Then in April, channel three got everyone's hopes up by prematurely reporting that Randy had been found in California. We couldn't find any details about that, probably because it didn't turn out to be true. In December of ninety three, a boy who resembled Randy was taken into state custody. A man flagged down officers and swore that he had seen Randy. The police went to the apartment and discovered three adults and a boy that looked like Randy in the home, along with large quantities of heroin. But unfortunately, it wasn't Randy. Hundreds of tips had come in over the first two years, and in February of nineteen ninety four, Nevada child seekers kept the search going, releasing an age progressed photograph which we will share at the time. The only original investigator left on the case, Larry Hannah, said that everyone who was at the party is still a suspect and said that Randy's disappearance was not a planned event. The article also said that the parents and the others at the party were only ever questioned once, and that became a repeated theme. Parents not acting right, not reaching out to police, not actively searching.

Shaun By Randy's fifth birthday in December of nineteen ninety three, Mike and Tina had dropped out of sight and no one had heard from them. Not their lawyers, not Nevada child seekers and Nevada child seekers explained to the Review-Journal that Randy couldn't be featured on America's Most Wanted because no one could be sure it was a stranger abduction. Mike and Patti Giles of Child Seekers both seemed to think that it was someone who knew the couple that was responsible for his disappearance. And according to Patti Giles, this was the only case Nevada child Seekers was working on that wasn't a runaway or a parental abduction. March four, nineteen ninety five Lieutenant Larry Spinosa started re-interviewing people from the party where Randy disappeared. He said, quote, to confirm leads that indicate immediate family members might be responsible. He said he couldn't confirm if an arrest was coming. The month before, he had told the press that he had no new information, and at this time he wouldn't share what any new information or leads were that were causing him to re-interview everyone at the party. But that weekend, Metro questioned between twenty and fifty people. However, it seems those interviews didn't yield any new information. After the fifth anniversary of his disappearance, the Review-Journal did an interview with Hannah, the lead investigator and the head of Nevada child seekers, who at that point was now Jill LeMaster. She told the R-j that Mike and Tina were never, ever cooperative from the beginning. In contrast, Larry Hannah said that Mike and Tina's original reaction to the police. While it was unusual, it wasn't entirely unexpected. This is a quote from him. It was possibly propagated by an adversarial attitude that might have developed early on. Whether that attitude was developed through perception on their part or actions on our part is not explicit. The Evers's have always been available to us. They've responded to any questions we've had. I wouldn't say they've avoided the police in any way. He of course, wouldn't share with the paper where the couple was living based on what had happened to them in the past. But he did say that he was in touch with them, and also with local law enforcement where they were living, and there had been no reports or problems with the couple's other children.

John The apartment complex where they lived was demolished in two thousand and five, and now it's just an empty lot. In two thousand and three, when Elizabeth Smart was found safe, the Las Vegas Sun reached out to Tina, who said that the case gives her hope that her little boy could be found. We went through several grand jury proceedings because the police thought we were suspects. We went through all that and they never charged us with anything. And my son is still missing. Mike and Tina divorced in nineteen ninety seven, and that was the year that Randy would have turned nine years old. There's an article that was published around that time that I found really nice, and I wanted to share it. It's entitled turning nine Should Have Been the Time of a missing Boy's Life by John L Smith. Imagine fourth grade. What a great time to be alive. You're old enough for Little League, but too young for girl problems. Pimples and puberty are years away. But you're mature enough to read between the lines. The world is in its ideal orbit. When you're nine years old, you're not a baby anymore, nor are you expected to act like an adult. You can impress your family with endless facts, but you aren't punished for a display of ignorance. After all, you're only nine. If he were alive and I suspect he is not, Randy Evers would have turned nine yesterday. If he were in school, and I think he is not, he would be in the fourth grade, old enough to read goosebumps mysteries, to sort of understand adult jokes, to read the sports page and argue the merits of Michael Jordan's jump shot. Old enough to impress your father with your appetite. Your mother by washing the dinner dishes and everyone else by your ability to work a computer and program a VCR at nine, your parents are still the most important people in your life. If he were alive, Randy Evers might be doing and feeling all these things and celebrating his big ninth birthday. There would be ball, gloves and oil and model planes to build, lawns to mow and dogs to feed. They would be homework to do. Or more likely to avoid until the last possible moment. But I don't think that Randy Evers is doing any of these things. I think all his birthdays and big plans came to an end in nineteen ninety two. Randy was three when his parents, Mike and step mother Tina Evers, reported him missing after a late night birthday party for his father. His parents speculated that he had been kidnapped, perhaps even by one of their own friends. Police began pursuing another theory that the parents had something to do with Randy's disappearance. A grand jury was convened in March of nineteen ninety two to consider whether evidence existed linking the couple to their son's disappearance, but the case was withdrawn from consideration after nine witnesses testified before the end of the year. Randy was the subject of local and regional search efforts by missing children's organizations. Efforts the boy's parents failed to participate in. Mike and Tina Evers left Las Vegas months ago. In fact, everyone associated with the case outside of law enforcement has left town, police Detective Larry Hanna says. Hanna has worked the Evers disappearance since the beginning. He has twenty four years of experience with the Metro Police Department and has spent six years working missing persons cases. The Evers vanishing was his first big assignment, and he has worked hundreds of hours attempting to solve it. He respectfully declines to offer his theory on the boy's disappearance. I feel I have a good sense of what happened, but I can't prove it, Hanna says. It's still actively being worked when we receive information that can be pursued, but everything that could be looked into has been looked at. But by no stretch. Is this case closed? We have no current active leads we are pursuing, but every once in a while something trickles in and we work on it. Not that plenty hasn't already been done. Surveillance was conducted along with court authorized wiretaps and phone registers. Every unit in the police department has been in some way impacted by the Evers case, Hannah says from basic patrol to the intelligence section, everyone has something to do with this investigation. Nevada Child Seekers has a standing fifteen thousand dollars reward for information leading to the apprehension of those responsible for Randy's disappearance, and the police are still willing to listen to anyone who has firsthand information related to the case. For his part, Hannah says that he does his best to leave such troubling cases at the office when he goes home. He's a father of two. I know where those children are. I know what kind of parent I am to them. Most abuse and neglect suffering happens to children in the home by family members. I'm aghast at what some people do to their children. People do to their children what they wouldn't do to a piece of personal property they cared about. For the record, the detective is well aware that Wednesday was the boy's birthday and that Randy would have been nine years old. It's an age when a child is bursting with promise and standing smack in the middle of fourth grade. In all, it's a great time to be alive. In twenty fifteen, a detective was working cold cases, including Carla Rodriguez, who we've covered before. He believed he had found that Randy was alive and living in the western US through DNA databases at the time, he said. We are working to collect DNA on other persons, to compare it to Randy's DNA, to see if it's him. He was referring to Alexis, who told the RJ that she did provide a DNA sample, but unfortunately the child was not Randy. In twenty twenty two, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children updated Randy's photo with an age progression. In the most recent interview with Alexis, she told the RJ that Metro messed up the investigation by solely focusing on indicting Mike and Tina. They didn't inform her her son was missing until a week later. The disappearance has affected her forever, she said. It changed her personality and made it difficult for her to raise her older daughter, who needed to be raised by other family members. I kind of fell apart after my son disappeared, she told the RJ. When the RJ reached out to the family for comment after thirty years, this is what they quoted Tina as saying. Look, you guys have ruined my life, so I have nothing to talk to you about. And I will never have anything to talk to you about. You guys have ruined my family. The police have ruined my family. Sadly, Mike died at age forty eight in twenty fourteen, never having known what happened to his son. According to Nevada child seekers Heather doto, a program manager, she told the RJ, we still hold out hope if he is alive, if somebody sees him, if anybody sees that age progression picture and recognizes it, that could be a huge help in finally solving the mystery of what happened to this boy.

Shaun Today, Randy would be thirty seven years old, and we will be sharing those age progressed photos of what he might look like today, along with how he looked back when he first disappeared at three years old. He has dark blond or light brown hair and blue eyes, and as we mentioned, he had tubes surgically put in his ears when he was a baby. Randy has a scar near his left eye, and when he was last seen, he was wearing a black shirt and black pants, likely pajamas with a blue diamond design on the knee, and his hair had a two to six inch tail in the back. If you have any information, please contact the Las Vegas Metro Police at seven oh two eight two eight two nine oh seven. Thank you, as always for listening. John and I are going to continue our conversation about this case in this week's Swing Shift. A reminder that we record a bonus episode every week and you can subscribe at sinspod.co/subscribe and help support the show. Thank you for listening. And remember, what happens here happens everywhere.

John Thanks for listening. Visit since podcasts for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and threads @sinsandsurvivors If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at sinsandsurvivors.com

Shaun If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or need support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website. sinsandsurvivors.com A Las Vegas true crime podcast is researched, written, and produced by your host, Shaun and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website. sinsandsurvivors.com

John The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.