Las Vegas is a city that embraces the baser side of human nature, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it is also home to an array of shocking crimes that we will explore below. One of the city’s most famous crimes, the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, is missing because you can read all about it here. After you read this one. (And seriously, you want to read this one.)
10 Hilton Arson
The Las Vegas Hilton is famous for headlining acts like Elvis and Liberace, but the hotel is also the scene of one of the city’s most horrific crimes.
Philip Cline had been at his new job as a busboy at the Hilton for a grand total of two days when a fire broke out in an elevator lobby near him on the eighth floor. He alerted several guests and claimed he used a nearby wastebasket to throw water on the flames. The fire consumed much of the building, killing eight people and injuring 200 more.
[amazon asin=0679785892&template=*lrc ad (left)]Cline was initially lauded for his actions, but investigators became suspicious when he made a Freudian slip and told the police he had “grabbed a trash can and filled it with fire.” Homicide detectives questioned Cline further about his story and he finally broke down. He admitted starting the fire, but claimed he had done it accidentally when the joint he was smoking set some nearby curtains on fire. Investigators doubted that version of events when they were unable to replicate a fire starting in that same manner.
Cline was convicted of eight counts of murder and one count of arson and sentenced to life in prison. He later granted a jailhouse interview where he came clean about what really happened the day of the fire. A friend had given him a joint laced with PCP before work, warning him not to smoke the whole thing at once. Cline ignored this advice and—in a PCP-induced stupor—he used his cigarette lighter to set fire to some curtains. He is expected to serve out the rest of his days behind bars.
9 Supermarket Massacre[amazon asin=B00066FBQQ&template=*lrc ad (right)]
The United States has been plagued by a string of mass shootings in recent years and Las Vegas has not been spared from this epidemic. Early on the morning of June 3, 1999 Zane Floyd, a 23-year-old ex-Marine, walked the two blocks to a nearby Albertson’s supermarket carrying a 12-gauge shotgun. Floyd shot an employee near a row of shopping carts at the entrance before roaming the store and murdering three more employees.
Surveillance footage later emerged showing Floyd chasing his last victim, Zachary Emenegger, before shooting him in the back and then once more as he lie on the ground. Emenegger was severely wounded but alive and he decided his best option was to play dead. Floyd wandered the store before returning to the motionless Emenegger, pausing a moment before saying “Yeah, you’re dead.”
Having shot everyone he could find in the store, Floyd tried to flee on foot, but the police had the building surrounded. A standoff ensued as Floyd stood outside the store with a gun to his head, threatening to kill himself. The police eventually talked him into surrendering and Floyd was eventually convicted of four counts of murder as well as the rape of an exotic dancer he committed earlier that morning. He currently sits on Nevada’s death row[amazon asin=0977065804&template=*lrc ad (left)] awaiting execution.
This terrible incident is used by law enforcement when educating the public on how to respond to a mass shooting incident. Experts recommend hiding, fighting, or running from an attacker, but if those aren’t options, the best tactic is playing dead to survive, like Emenegger did.
8 The Biker Bandit
The casinos lining the Las Vegas strip are some of the most heavily surveilled places in the world. As a result, very few are robbed, and when they are, the perpetrators are usually quickly apprehended. This story is one of the boldest casino heists in the city’s history, and this thief actually almost got away with it.[amazon asin=B0091JKU5Q&template=*lrc ad (right)]
On December 14, 2010, a man parked his motorcycle in front of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino and walked inside. While still wearing his motorcycle helmet, the man walked up to a craps table and pulled a gun. The dealer turned over his chips and the robber ran back through the casino, speeding off on his bike into the heavy traffic of the strip.
The thief made off with $1.5 million in chips, but that would prove to be his downfall. The chips would either have to be turned in at the casino or sold to a third party. The first clue emerged a few weeks after the robbery when a Salvation Army bell-ringer tried to cash in a $25,000 chip given to him by a stranger. Shortly thereafter, a person calling himself the Biker Bandit appeared online offering to sell more of the $25,000 chips. Undercover Las Vegas police officers made contact with the Biker Bandit and arranged a meeting at the Bellagio to buy the chips. Police nabbed 29-year-old Anthony Carleo and charged him with the robbery.
The full brazenness of the Biker Bandit’s actions only became apparent after his arrest. It turned out that Carleo had been staying at the Bellagio as a guest when he committed the robbery, and he even returned to the casino afterwards to drink and gamble. He had also carried out another robbery of a different casino three weeks before the Bellagio heist, making off with $18,000. In one final twist, Carleo was also the son of a local judge. Carleo was convicted and received a sentence of 3–11 years for the Biker Bandit crimes.
